Like I said in my review of Halloween H20. That was the perfect ENDING to the original version of the franchise, there was no need to continue. But that movie made a big profit and so all the studio cared about was making more profits, hence, another sequel was created and released in 2002. I wouldn’t have minded that so much if they’d really tried to make another decent horror film. They managed to somehow convince Jamie Lee Curtis to come back again, which would have been all the more reason to give her something to work with and display her considerable acting skills. Maybe after finally killing Michael, Laurie finds herself still haunted by him in her dreams, we could see her slowly descend into madness, eventually donning the mask herself, in an effort to destroy Michael by “becoming” him, or something? I’m just spit-balling here. They just should have tried harder. Instead they basically had Curtis in a glorified cameo, which did nothing but undo the satisfactory conclusion to H20, and then get back to a bland generic slasher film.

They got Rick Rosenthal, director of Halloween 2, back to direct this one, with the script written by Larry Brand & Sean Hood. We learn that after Laurie stabbed Michael at the end, one of the paramedics came to check his body, but Michael was still alive. He grabbed the man by the throat and knocked him out, and then switched clothes with him. So it was the paramedics body that was loaded into the body bag and put in the ambulance that Laurie then stole. And when it crashed, and “Michael” was trapped, he was unable to speak, because the real Michael crushed his larynx. So Laurie actually beheaded an innocent man. And, once again, Michael disappears and hasn’t been heard from since.

I’ll admit, that’s actually pretty inventive, as far as explaining the “resurrection” of Michael Myers in the film, compared to previous sequels which had him getting shot, burnt, crushed by a car, etc., and then simply getting back up. We still don’t know how he could see after his eyes were shot in Halloween 2. But I digress.

Flash forward 2 years, Laurie is in a mental hospital, having snapped after the identity of the man she killed was revealed. But we see that it’s all an act. She’s been pretending to be silent and nearly catatonic, while only pretending to take the medication the staff gives her, because she knows that Michael will come back for her eventually, and when he finally does one night, she’s ready for him. She lures him up to the roof of the institution, where she has a trap ready for him, which catches him by the leg and dangles him upside down over the side of the building. Laurie gets ready to stab him but hesitates, wanting to check under his mask first, to make sure she gets the right man this time. But when she gets close, Michael stabs her instead, she manages to reach up and kiss him on the lips before falling to her death.

Michael gets free of her trap and hands the knife he stabbed her with to another one of the mental patients in the hospital, so we’re left to imply that this patient is blamed for killing Laurie, as Michael silently walks off into the night.

Here’s the thing, this opening sequence I just described could have been a decent sequel to H20. Expanding it, instead of just being the first 15 minutes or so of this film, this should have been the entire film. Give us some more scenes of Laurie in the asylum, show her getting therapy, as the doctors fruitlessly try to get through to her, maybe bring back Josh Hartnett as John to visit her, likewise failing to get any reaction for her, show Laurie still haunted by thoughts of Michael and the guilt she feels over the innocent man that she killed. And then on Halloween night, have the power go out as Michael returns, and having a him stalking her and some other patients and doctors, nurses, and guards throughout the asylum, leading up the final confrontation. Admittedly, this is thematically similar to the plot of Halloween 2, but at least then Laurie’s death would have felt more meaningful, instead of just like a glorified cameo.

But instead that’s it. So where does the film go now?

We flash forward another year. A web company is in Haddonfield, and has cast a group of local college students for a show to be broadcast on the internet. On Halloween night, the students will be locked into the old Myers home, and their activities will be streamed live online. While this goes on, Michael (who apparently has been living like a bum underneath the house this whole time) shows up and starts killing them one by one, while we see a bunch of kids elsewhere watching the show on the computer, convinced that everything, including Michael, is just part of the script. Eventually they figure out that it’s real, and the audience starts texting instructions to the kids in the house, warning them of Michael’s location.

I don’t know, it was 2002, I guess this film was trying to be relevant by utilizing the internet in the plot, but it just came off as bland. Among the college kids trapped in the house, this film managed to assemble a pretty decent cast, include Starbuck herself, Katee Sackhoff, along with Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Thomas Ian Nicholas. But their roles are all generic and uninteresting. That’s no fault of the actors, it’s the material they were given. Tyra Banks is also along as co-owner of the company that set up the show, but she barely makes an impression. And for some reason this film gives most of it’s time to Busta Rhymes, as the other co-owner of the web company. I guess because LL Cool J did such a good job in the last film, the studio figured that they’d better get another rapper for this one? But Busta Rhymes is no LL Cool J. He constantly talks in this wannabe exaggerated “gangsta” dialect. And, even worse, we see him using Kung Fu to fight Michael Myers.

He also spouts such creative one-liners as “Trick or treat, motherfucker!” and “Hey, Mikey! Happy fuckin’ Halloween!” And after he kills Michael (yes, Michael Myers was defeated by Busta Rhymes…let THAT sink in for a moment…) by electrocuting him (in the balls) and then setting him on fire, Busta looks at Michael’s charred corpse and says “Looking crispy, Mikey. Kentucky fried mutherfucker, may he never ever rest in peace.”

The final scene has Michael coming back to life in the morgue, about to attack the female mortician. But nobody was interested in seeing a sequel to this garbage. So, thankfully, that never took place. This film is straight up wack, yo.

GRADE:

Available on Amazon