Halloween: Resurrection

It’s the end of an era. Kinda. I now present the final recap of the final movie in the Halloween franchise (I’m not counting the two very recent Rob Zombie remakes which I may or may not watch at a later time when I am feeling especially courageous.)

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So here’s the skinny. We open on a psychiatric hospital where Jamie Lee Curtis is being kept. Because she’s crazy now. What made her crazy? asks the brand new nurse, conveniently allowing the older, more experienced nurse to provide us with some very helpful exposition. Because Michael Myers is a sneakity-sneak, says the older nurse. As if it wasn’t enough that he tried to kill her…a lot, we find out that in the last movie, when he tracked her down at the private boarding school in California and got decapitated, he didn’t actually get decapitated. He dressed up a paramedic in the Michael Myers’ clothes and then Jamie Lee Curtis killed the paramedic. So now she’s crazy because she feels guilty. Oh, except not. She’s not crazy. She’s PRETENDING to be crazy and hiding all of the psychiatric drugs the doctors prescribe in her Raggedy Ann Doll. How did poor Raggedy Ann get dragged into this? Then Michael Myers shows up (I find this to be a charmingly ironic reference to the original film in which Michael breaks out of a psychiatric hospital…except now he’s breaking in. Life’s funny.) And then he literally walks through the big secure door into Jamie Lee Curtis’ cell but it’s cool because Jamie Lee has been waiting for this and she has a trap ready and she almost kills him but then she feels an uh-oh-what-if-this-is-another-paramedic-in-disguise-feeling so she tries to take off his mask but then he kills her. And that is the end of Laurie Strode. But only the beginning of the movie. So I guess everything is cool now, right? He’s finally killed his sister. But then Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks decide to produce a reality tv show (Pure fiction. Can you imagine if Tyra Banks actually did this for a living?) and stream it on the internet. The show puts a bunch of attractive college-age people like that one guy from American Pie and some other vaguely familiar late 90’s/early 2000’s type actors in a house overnight. But it’s not just any house. It’s Michael Myers’ childhood home. Naturally. What not even Busta Rhymes could predict, however, is that Michael himself has been living in a weird dungeon cavern tunnel area below this house since he killed Jamie Lee. So that’s neat. Michael gets pretty annoyed because all of these people are wandering around his house with cameras on and being fake-scared for the tv audiences and so he’s like, well, fine, I guess I can kill you or something. So then all of them die gruesome horrible deaths. Except Busta Rhymes and this one girl Sarah who is obviously the smart one of the group. They live mostly thanks to this cute befuddled geek who has been using the super cool screen name Deckard to talk to Sarah online for like months or something. Anyway, he uses his internet powers (mostly, watching stuff on the internet) so that he can do whatever the 2002 version of texting is to her phone/texting device thing (I don’t exactly understand how they’re communicating but whatever). Busta Rhymes electrocutes Michael Myers and then they take his body to the morgue. He’s totally dead now. Except then his eyes open and the coroner screams. Credits.

I’m feeling a little sad that this series is over but I’m about to start watching the Friday the 13th movies so stay tuned for more slasher movie magic.

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!

love, elizabeth

Halloween H20: The One With All the Famous People

We are so close. Have you missed any recaps? You can catch up here or by clicking on the tab at the top of the page.

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So remember way back in Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers when we learn that Jamie Lee Curtis aka Laurie Strode died in a car accident? Well, guess what, you guys…Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t die in a car accident. No. She faked her own death and went into hiding. 20 years later, she is living under an assumed name, Keri Tate, and also she’s a principal at an isolated boarding school. She teaches classes in literature (nice continuity from the original film) and, totally coincidentally, her students are reading Frankenstein and have really keen literary insights like, “Everyone the doctor loves is dead so he can finally confront his monster face to face.” Jamie Lee Curtis is understandably a traumatized wreck after being almost murdered by her brother for two whole movies (or one very long Halloween night depending on how you look at it) so even though her son, Josh Hartnett, is going all Little Mermaid on her: “I’m 17 years old! Stop trying to control me! I need to live my own life! I need to be free to go camping with my friends at Yellowstone National Park or wherever! Excuse me whilst I make out with my girlfriend, future Oscar-winner, Michelle Williams!” Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis’ old nurse gets her house broken into and the neighbor boy, future dreamboat Joseph Gordon-Levitt, tries to be helpful but is killed with a hockey skate to the face. This is the 7th movie in the franchise. Michael Myers ain’t messing around. So Michael kills the nurse and pretty much everyone else that gets in his way and steals the Laurie Strode file which obviously explains how he can find her after all this time. Does anyone else feel like this movie is trying too hard to actually provide a feasible explanation for Michael Myers’ abilities? You seriously do not have to worry about this, Director Steve Miner. I don’t know if you saw Halloween III, sir, but in it, the bad guy steals Stonehenge and sets it up inside his toy factory so he can take over the world. Just saying. Side issue: there is a fairly creepy scene where Michael steals a woman’s car keys and her car while she and her daughter are in the rest room, reminding me why I never stop at deserted rest stops NO MATTER HOW BADLY I HAVE TO PEE. YOU CAN TOTALLY GET MURDERED THAT WAY. Meanwhile…LL Cool J is apparently the entire campus security system for this boarding school. But that’s just his day job because he actually really wants to be a screenwriter. He spends the first half of the movie on the phone with his special lady reading the sexy thriller screenplay he wrote. Hey, we’ve all got a dream. But obviously LL Cool J is very distracted and isn’t paying a whole lot of attention to his security guard duties. Again, the film feels it necessary to explain how Michael Myers is able to calmly stroll in through the front gates without being noticed. I’d really hate it if I felt like this film was straining credibility. And it’s about this point when Jamie Lee Curtis decides to tell the guidance counselor, who is also her boyfriend, about how her name isn’t really Keri Tate and how her brother is actually a crazed serial killer who goes cuckoo on Halloween and her boyfriend is like, “Hahaha, JLC, you are soooooooo funny!” And Jamie Lee is like, “I’m not even a little joking.” He is really, really surprised. So then Michael shows up and, as he is wont to do, he kills some teenagers that get trapped in a dumb waiter (because their school is old and creepy and this is a Halloween movie, remember?). Scary piano music, blood, stabbing – it’s a whole big thing. Josh Hartnett is suddenly like, “Uh-oh, my nut-job Mom was totally right!” and he and Michelle Williams go screaming across campus and almost get murdered because Michelle can’t figure out which key on her enormous key ring unlocks the dorm. But then Jamie Lee Curtis and the guidance counselor save them and Michael sees Jamie and it is ON. Because now she is sooooooooooo going confront her monster face to face. So she makes all the surviving people, like her son and Michelle Williams, get in the car and drive away and then she starts screaming, “MICHAELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!” super loud. Which seems a touch unnecessary since Michael always knows where people are but whatever. He chases her around and then falls out of a window and he’s dead. And the police are like, “Well, I’m glad that’s finally over,” and then Jamie Lee Curtis steals an ax and the coroner’s van and is like, “No one move!” and she drives off with Michael’s dead body. Except, of course, it’s not his dead body. It’s his totally alive body and he is trying to get out of the body bag and so Jamie Lee crashes the van and Michael gets pinned between the van and a tree and he reaches out his hand to his sister and she starts to reach back and for one glimmering second you think, is this what it’s all come down to? A touching moment of redemption between evil serial killer brother and functioning alcoholic sister? But then Jamie Lee Curtis whacks off Michael’s head with the ax. Credits.

Okay, for the reals…he has to be dead now right? How is there another movie? Still to come…the final film in the Halloween franchise (minus the two Rob Zombie remakes I am going to watch at a later date). Halloween: Resurrection. Stay tuned.

love, elizabeth

Halloween VI: The Curse of the Irish, I mean…Michael Myers

Halloween is mere days away and we’re on the home stretch! Be sure to check out the recaps for Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

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I’m actually not entirely sure what happened in this movie. When last we left Haddonfield, New Jersey, Michael Myers had escaped from jail. It’s 7-ish years later and this is the one where the screenwriter tries to explain/justify all the hijinks of the first five movies. Haddonfield is now like that town in Footloose except Halloween is banned and not dancing and there’s no John Lithgow (which is really too bad for everyone involved). We open on an…abandoned hospital/warehouse? where the teenage niece of Michael Myers, Jamie, is giving birth…(btw, we never get a straight answer about the baby daddy but whatever). Then the baby is taken away from her so that it can be sacrificed or cursed by Druids…or something. In case you’ve been reading all of these recaps and wondering a) why Michael Myers has made family-murder his life’s work or b) how Michael Myers continues to live and breathe after being shot, stabbed, drowned, beaten, burned up in multiple fires/explosions, and buried alive, it’s very simple: Michael Myers was born under a weird celestial convergence, the sign of Thorn (an ancient demon curse). And because we all know the Irish are to blame for everything…we find out that on Samhain, the Druids would pick a family line to sacrifice in order to save everyone else. Duh! Jamie manages to take her baby and escape from the robe-wearing cult people and then Michael shows up because he has scary-good timing and also because we have a lot of ground to cover so we need to get to the killing. Jamie manages to flee to the (like everything else in Haddonfield) deserted bus station and call…a radio station? The radio deejay has spent the majority of his time on the air making tasteless Michael Myers jokes until Jamie calls and is all like, “I need help! Michael Myers is back! Dr. Loomis, are you out there?” And honestly…if it was ANY OTHER PERSON ON THE PLANET, I would be like, “Jamie, sweetheart, you are living in a dream world if you think that an old psychiatrist is sitting at home on Halloween listening to shock jock radio just in case you call in” but this is Dr. Loomis and his crazy knows no bounds. Then Michael Myers arrives and Jamie hides her baby in a cabinet in the ladies’ room (a perfectly reasonable place to hide a baby, in my opinion) and he chases her to a barn where he kills her on a corn thresher but not before she’s all, “You can’t have my baby, Michael.” Michael really, really doesn’t like it when people tell him what’s what so he goes on another killing rampage while he searches for the newborn. Meanwhile, Tommy Doyle is all grown-up. You don’t remember Tommy Doyle probably because I probably didn’t mention him but Tommy Doyle was the kid that Jamie Lee Curtis babysits in the first movie. He’s a teenager by Halloween IV and now he’s…Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd/Tommy Doyle is basically a first-degree paranoid nut who lives in an attic and spies on the neighborhood, listening to the police scanner and recording everything. He’s pretty interested in killing Michael Myers and has been waiting all this time for Michael’s return (sheesh, at least SOMEONE besides Dr. Loomis gets it!) Also meanwhile (did I mention there are a lot of side stories in this movie?), Kara and her son have moved back in with her parents. This is bad times because Kara’s dad is extremely abusive, like…Lifetime channel movie abusive, and he spends most of the film slapping Kara around and calling her son a bastard until he gets killed by Michael (I shed no tears). Oh, did I forget to mention Kara’s family’s last name? It’s Strode. As in Laurie Strode. As in…the family that adopted Laurie Myers after her family was massacred by Michael. What a crazy random happenstance. Tommy finds the baby in the cabinet at the bus station and names it Steven and then he and the retired Dr. Loomis spend the rest of the movie trying to save Kara and her son and the baby from Michael who chases them to another creepy abandoned hospital (I feel like Haddonfield needs to stop building these) where we find out that this other doctor has been doing experiments on pregnant women to somehow implant and control the Druid curse in order to harness its power. And stuff. He and some other doctors are doing some secret medical experiments involving genetic mutation and fetuses or something but then Michael kills all of them. So that’s cool. Then Tommy beats Michael Myers with a lead pipe. And just when you think all the main characters are totally going to survive this, Dr. Loomis is like, “Uh, yeah, I have some stuff to take care of…in the creepy hospital…with the serial killer. Okay, bye.” Dr. Loomis shouting. Credits.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. It’s coming.

love, elizabeth

Halloween IV and V: Michael Myers Is the Worst Boyfriend Ever

At this point, you know the drill. No prison can hold him, no man can kill him. “I prayed that he would burn in hell but I knew, in my heart, that hell would have not him.” Apparently, Michael Myers is also too evil for hell. You can also read the recaps for Halloween I, Halloween II, or Halloween III: Season of the Witch. IF YOU DARE…

*SPOILER WARNING

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Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers

Aaaaaaaaaaand after a short entre-acte involving…Stonehenge…(???)…we’re back to Michael Myers who is all unconscious from being burned alive in the hospital 10 years earlier. I really feel like we can blame the majority of this movie on the chatty paramedics who are all like, “Lalala, let’s have an exposition party in the ambulance with the unconscious Mike Myers!” so they spend a bunch of time talking about how Michael’s sister (Jamie Lee Curtis, if you’ll recall) died in a car accident (OMGGGGGGGGGG) and her daughter Jamie Junior is now in foster care. And this news is apparently so jolting that it wakes Michael Myers from his fire-coma and he is way overdue for bloodshed so he kills the paramedics and crashes the ambulance. Jamie Jr. keeps seeing visions of Michael Myers so she’s pretty freaked out. But peer pressure knows no bounds so when all of the other kids are like, “haha, jamie’s a scaredy cat! also her uncle is a serial killer, nanananabooboo,” Jamie decides she has to go trick-or-treating like the other kids and must, inexplicably, wear a clown costume identical to the one Michael Myers wore 20 years previous. Meanwhile, Jamie’s foster sister is like, “Crap, having an adopted sister is totally cramping my style, how am I supposed to get smoochy with my boyfriend?” But it doesn’t really matter because her boyfriend is a super sleaze who is making it with the sheriff’s daughter (so, of course, they’re both going to die). Actually, pretty much everyone dies in this movie, except Jamie Jr. and the doctor. Did I forget to mention the doctor is back? Well, he is, and once again, he spends most of the movie running around town with his gigantic pistol and yelling at the incompetent law enforcement. You know…the ushe. Michael Myers ends up crashing his car into an abandoned mine. But then Jamie decides she needs to touch his hand…because I know whenever my uncle chases me all over town on Halloween trying to stab me, that’s what I do…and OMG, SHE IS NOW PSYCHICALLY POSSESSED BY MICHAEL MYERS. Then she tries to stab her foster mother with scissors. The end…and Michael Myers is definitely dead this time. For real. ….

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Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers

So after Halloween IV, the little girl is super traumatized over the whole my uncle-is-a-serial-killer thing so they put her in a hospital for disturbed children (they apparently have one of those in Haddonfield, New Jersey). So while she’s busy being psychically connected to Michael Myers, Michael is busy waking up from his like…eighteenth coma. And because of Jamie’s creepy powers, she can now predict who Michael is going to kill next because she can see inside his mind and…stuff. I don’t know, they don’t really explain this very well. This movie has one of my all-time favorite Michael Myers moments of the entire franchise so far in which he shows up in a sleek black sports car, pretending to be the slutty babysitter’s dirtbag boyfriend (who he has already dismembered) and she gets in the car and starts yelling at him about how he’s a terrible boyfriend. And for some reason he doesn’t kill her. Then when she yells at him to stop at the gas station so she can buy cigarettes…he does. Michael, are you losing your killer instinct? Oh yeah, and the crazy doctor is back and has decided to use Jamie Jr. (who is like 8 years old, by the way) as BAIT FOR THE SERIAL KILLER. So they hang out in Michael’s childhood home and the doctor’s like, “Hey Jamie, brush your hair like Michael’s sister was doing when he, you know, MURDERED HER” and Jamie Jr. is like “Omg, this doctor is crazy and I feel that there is an inordinate amount of pressure on me to help catch a murderer but whatever.” And then Michael shows up and stuff goes down. And Jamie Jr. runs up to the attic where Michael has apparently been sleeping…in a coffin…and, like any sane eight year old, she lays down in it. And then Michael comes upstairs and just as he’s about to stab her, she says, “Uncle?” AND THEN SHE TAKES OFF HIS MASK and we see a single tear on his cheek. And they have a tender half of a second before Michael is like OMG NO I AM EVIL!!! And then the doctor beats him with a stick. And the police take him into custody. And he is totally locked up forever…until like five minutes later when Jamie somehow ends up at the police station that has…exploded…and Michael’s cell is empty. Credits. For real.

Next up…Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers.

love, elizabeth