Halloween: Resurrection

Part of my month-long goal of watching/reviewing nothing but horror movies was to delve a little deeper into the Halloween series.  I love the first film (who doesn't?) and thought the second was not-quite mediocre.  I opted to skip the next four in the series, partly because I preferred seeing the direct sequels to Halloween II and partly because Netflix was streaming Halloween H20 and Halloween: Resurrection, the seventh and eighth in the franchise, respectively.  I watched these two movies back-to-back, and while I found a lot of stupidity in H20, I was still entertained.  Will that trend continue with Resurrection?

It depends.  Is Michael singing along to "Hip-Hop Hooray"?

Three years after the events in H20, we catch up with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).  The past few years have not been kind to Laurie.  It seems that the person she decapitated at the end of the last film was not, in fact, Michael Myers.  Apparently, Michael managed to find an EMT worker with a similar build, crushed his larynx, swapped clothes (and mask) with the worker, and scampered off into the night, leaving poor innocent EMT guy to get his head chopped off by Laurie.  Aside from going against twenty years of Michael Myers logic --- this is the Timex of slasher villains, the man who won't stop ticking --- and having Michael resort to trickery, like any normal wuss, this also means that Laurie has been committed to a psychiatric institute, which may or may not be for the criminally insane.

Well, she has the "crazy eyes" part down pat

I'm not exactly sure, since Laurie has resorted to faking a comatose state to avoid medication and treatment, but it sure seems like she's there against her will.  Oh, and there's a patient who is celebrating Halloween by wearing a clown mask (a la John Wayne Gacy) and reciting his favorite serial killer statistics.  Side note: Gacy, Dahmer, and Myers all came from the greater Chicago area...do losing sports teams contribute to serial killing?  Anyway, Laurie is faking the degree of her craziness because she knows Michael will come for her someday.  And he does.  This time, he kills her when she stops to do something absolutely, ludicrously stupid.  They could have stretched this into an entire movie (Halloween II, anyone?), but the filmmakers opted to squeeze all that into the first fifteen minutes or so.

Huh.  The last film went to great lengths, completely ignoring the continuity of the previous three films, to bring Michael back to his family-hating roots, and Resurrection has him finally kill his little sister in the beginning of the film.  What the hell is this film going to be about, then?  A reality television-styled webcast, naturally.  Freddie (Busta Rhymes, who seriously got top billing in the movie) and his business partner (Tyra Banks) are filming a webcast, because that is how you make money in the 2000s, right?  Um, sure.  The pair select a group (that happen to mostly know each other) to spend the night in Michael Myers' childhood home in Haddenfield, Illinois.  The idea is for Freddie to dress up like Michael and scare the crap out of the group as they discovered "clues," planted by Freddie, that explained Michael's behavior.  Think Ghost Hunters, but with a prankster involved.  There is only one problem...Michael Myers is actually living in the sewers beneath his old home, and he doesn't like visitors.

Michael, about to kiss a man to death

At this point, I would like to point out that two of Halloween: Resurrection's most famous cast members are African-American.  Why does that matter?  Really, it doesn't.  It just reminded me of Eddie Murphy's classic stand-up:

So, just in case Haunted Mansion hadn't convinced you already, Eddie Murphy is not always right.

The acting in Halloween: Resurrection is fairly shitty, across the board.  When Busta Rhymes is the top-billed actor in the film, you know there is a problem.  It's not that Busta is terrible (although he is), it's just that he's not good enough to headline a major film.  I thought he was alternately ridiculous (like when he laughed like Muttley)...

...and just plain annoying (when he tried to act), but I wasn't expecting a whole lot from him, as an actor or a character.  The main girl, Sara (Bianca Kajlich) was practically void of personality, which is usually enough to survive a slasher flick.  American Pie alum Thomas Ian Nicholas and Save the Last Dance-r Sean Patrick Thomas were similarly underwhelming.  The only supporting cast members that stuck out were Katee Sackhoff (for being a fame whore), Daisy McCrackin (for showing intellectual boobies), and Luke Kirby (for being obnoxious and unrealistic). 

Katee Sackhoff, in her best scene

Jamie Lee Curtis was fine, but her character dies before the opening credits, so that's not much of a help.  Look, I don't normally care how good the acting is in slasher films, but the quality here is such a huge drop from H20 that it distracted me.  Aside from Kajlich's good girl --- who has no motivation to be in this plot --- everyone character was ridiculously one-note.  Everything Sean Patrick Thomas said involved food, Katee Sackhoff spent her entire time trying to act like a wannabe actress, and Kirby and McCrackin jettisoned logic as soon as they entered the Myers house.  As for Busta...well, he occasionally narrates his thoughts aloud.  I would have been fine with stereotypes (they're all going to die, anyhow) but these characters were just obnoxious.

This isn't director Rick Rosenthal's first experience with Michael Myers.  He also directed Halloween II; this time, though, John Carpenter wasn't around to ratchet up the effectiveness of the gore.  While I am willing to blame the awful acting on Rosenthal (somebody had to tell the actors to keep it up), I do get the distinct impression that his directorial intent was overridden a few times in this film.  The first clue comes from the alternate promo poster, which was used for the DVD cover:

Someone took the original poster and photoshopped-in the supporting cast.  That's not a crime, of course, but it was done incompetently.  Aside from the odd and unnatural position of the knife, Jamie Lee Curtis is shown as she appeared in H20, with short hair.  It is also worth noting that the end of the film throws an unexpected twist in; the entire film seems to be building up to having Sara rescued by her internet buddy, but at the last minute somebody else --- who should have died from multiple stab wounds --- comes in and saves the day.  That was unexpected and also makes the internet buddy subplot fairly worthless.  That is because the theatrical ending wasn't the original one; through terrible editing, Monster Crap has still-frame proof that internet buddy was supposed to save the day, but the ending got changed --- they were just too lazy to completely re-shoot the sequence.  So how much of this mess is Rosenthal's doing, and how much was due to the interference of the producers?  It's hard to say, but I think both failed to make this movie entertaining, suspenseful, or horrifying.

Case in point: Michael politely waits for their conversation to end

Halloween: Resurrection is not completely without value.  Tyra Banks was killed off-camera, so audiences were spared her "acting."  There are ten kills and some ridiculously inappropriate nudity.  The actions of the characters are frequently idiotic enough to evoke laughter from any thinking person.  Michael Myers gets electrocuted in the testicles, an area that I don't think anyone has thought to attack before.  Even when you add all that up, there isn't much going for this movie.  When you factor in the fact that Michael isn't being creepy, he is just killing trespassers in his own home, it becomes obvious that Resurrection has lost sight of what makes Michael Myers cool.  He needs to kill for unknown reasons, and he shouldn't ever resort to trickery.  What a mess; no wonder they let Rob Zombie reboot the series after this piece of crap.

The entire time I spent writing this review, I had this song stuck in my head.  Mister Busta Rhymes, tell 'em what I did:

The Fountain

If I could live forever, I would avoid ever seeing Requiem for a Dream again.

Darren Aronofsky has a reputation for making movies that mess with your head.  I will admit that I haven't been keeping up with his career (I'm seeing Black Swan this weekend, but I still haven't see The Wrestler), but this fits with my first-hand knowledge of his works.  I enjoyed his first film, Pi, because it was weird; I hate Requiem For a Dream because I found it pretentious and ridiculously depressing.  But the man is up for another Oscar nomination and is going to direct the X-Men spin-off, The Wolverine, so I thought I should check out the man's work.

Those with elephantine memories might recall The Fountain as one of those Hollywood projects that was destined to fail.  It had a big budget and some big name actors attached, but it never got made, even after Brad Pitt grew this fantastic beard for the lead role:

Beard tentacles!

Sadly, Pitt left the picture to star in Troy, which wasn't good, and Aronofsky was left back at square one.  But, being a determined man, he retooled the script, cut the budget in half, and convinced two fairly big name actors (Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz) to star in the film.  Even this didn't keep the movie from flopping in the box office, but with an auteur like Aronofsky, that doesn't necessarily indicate a bad movie.

The plot is difficult to summarize.  It is not told in a linear fashion, but that is not because the plot is trying to postpone a relevant twist until the end of the movie.  No, this movie is nonlinear for symbolic purposes.  There are actually three storylines.  The first involves a Spanish Conquistador searching for the fountain of youth for his queen, the second is about a modern-day scientist that is desperately trying to cure his wife's brain tumor, and the third is about a futuristic astronaut that is trying to reach a distant nebula.  Making things extra difficult, Hugh Jackman plays Tomas, Thomas, and Tom in the three storylines, respectively, and Rachel Weisz plays Isabel and Izzie, respectively.  Man, this is getting complicated even before I attempt to summarize it.

Here's the gist of the stories.  Tomas the Conquistador wants to save his queen from the Spanish Inquisition; she convinces him that the only way to do that is to find the fountain of life.  If he succeeds, she will become his wife.  The movie shows him being convinced by the queen and in the jungles of America on his search.  There are no Spanish accents to be found in this film, though.  Thomas is a talented neuroscientist whose wife, Izzy, is terminally ill.  Instead of accepting her death (as she has), he throws himself into his research, desperate for the breakthrough that she doesn't demand, but he so desperately needs.  Tom is inside a large bubble (who needs a spaceship in the future?) with only a few personal items and a dying tree (that might be Isabel?  Maybe?); his goal is to reach a nebula and be consumed by it, which will somehow give renewed life to the tree.

The three stories are mixed together so that they all climax at about the same time.  The obvious implication of the characters names is that they are the same people/souls, and all three stories are trying to find a way to come to terms with death.  Now, that is a pretty big issue --- does this movie have what it takes to handle it?

Not especially.  It's overly ambitious (do you really think they're going to come to a satisfying conclusion about eternal life here?), but that doesn't mean that the actors or director did a bad job assembling this movie.  Yes, I'm a little suspicious as to why Pitt had to grow such a massive beard but Jackman just grew a goatee, but that doesn't negate what was done on screen.  Since the movie is, essentially, divided into three distinct parts (regardless of how interconnected they may be), each part deserves a satisfying conclusion.  Do they get it?  Well...not so much.  What viewers do get is a few half-baked ideas about eternal life.  Does eternal life mean living as normal folks know it, or does it mean joining some other consciousness?  Is eternal life a good thing, or a curse?  Is it better to fight or accept death?

I don't know what to tell you.  You would think a movie that tackles such deep issues would take a definite stance on this, but I'm not seeing it.  Of course, Aronofsky could be making a singular point and is just obscuring it in metaphors.  Maybe.  But I think it is more likely that the confusion I felt while watching the movie is representative of the film's message.  Life and death are The Big Issues, and this movie is not nearly equipped to deal with them.

My problem with The Fountain could have been with its pretentiousness.  It certainly is full of itself, but I'm okay with that when a movie is trying to make a big statement about important things.  No, my problem is with its execution.  There are three storylines in this movie; there only needs to be one.  I actually liked the modern day story; the acting was good, it had the most believable characters, and it had the most depth.  The other two story lines are just weird.  Do we need a Conquistador that literally turns into flowers?  That seems doubtful.  How about a tai chi practitioner that eats tree/woman bark to sustain his life?  Unlikely.  Both of those storylines were beyond odd to watch and, in the end, they left me speechless.  That's not a good thing.  I was only rendered speechless because I don't like to curse out loud when I'm home alone.

Why is this tree hairy?  ***sound of head exploding***

The film's biggest crime is not even its WTF moments.  It wants to be an important talking piece about death, but it falls so short of its goals; this movie isn't bad because it aimed for the stars, but because it fell so short.  By cut-and-pasting the three narratives together, The Fountain succeeds in drawing parallels between its three Toms and their situations.  That same process cheapens the emotional impact of modern-day Thomas' story; his Izzie has warmth and depth and is genuinely interesting, but the subtlety of Rachel Weisz's performance is lost when it is edited to parallel a bizarre space bubble riding, tree-eating cosmonaut.

The Fountain is what many critics might call an "interesting failure."  That sounds a little pompous to me, but there is some truth to it.  There is no denying that Darren Aronofsky is a talented director.  His movies are always visually imaginative.  He gets some very good performances from his actors, even in unusual roles.  I didn't like the story lines of Christmases past or future here, but the primary storyline had some very good acting.  Rachel Weisz was excellent as Izzie, Hugh Jackman was good as Thomas (less good as Tom and Tomas, though), and the supporting cast was solid.  Ellen Burstyn, Ethan Suplee, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mark Margolis, and Stephen McHattie all make appearances in this movie, although only Burstyn has the opportunity to act much.  Now, if Aronofsky could just make a movie that isn't miserable to watch, he'd be great.

Despite the impressive visuals and the occasionally impressive acting, The Fountain is still a narrative mess.  There's a small voice in the back of my head that keeps suggesting that maybe I don't get it, but I think I do --- and I'm not impressed.  What is the lesson here?  Maybe the bigger the central idea, the less convoluted it needs to be.