Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

From http://www.nitehawkcinema.com/wp-content
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Director: Rick Rosenthal

Screenplay: Larry Brand and Sean Hood

Cast: Busta Rhymes (as Freddie Harris); Bianca Kajlich (as Sara Moyer); Thomas Ian Nicholas (as Bill Woodlake); Ryan Merriman (as Myles Deckard Barton); Daisy McCrackin (as Donna Chang); Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #68

[WARNING - THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS]

If Halloween H20 (1998) was a perfect end to a franchise, give or take its flaws, than Resurrection is a diarrhoea stain on said end. As much as Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) is atrocious, that was as much down to viewing a theatrical cut that was badly put together to the point of shambolic. Resurrection has no excuse, arguably the worst of them all technically in spite of how technically slick it is for how lifeless the result is. Even with higher production values than most of the franchise, the result here for all its surface gloss is as vapid as you can get even in the context of a slasher film sequel. A great deal of this is that the early 2000s are for me one of the worst periods of American cinema to ever exist in terms of the mainstream. Yes, great films were still being made in the USA at this point, but somehow because of how great of year 1999 was, there had to be a nosedive to address the balance immediately after. For every good film, there's a Dude, Where's My Car (2000), the live action Scooby Doo (2002), to a larger extent the dead end of post-Scream (1996) trendy horror films which Halloween: Resurrection firmly belongs to when they fell off the rails. In the eighties you can accept horror franchises getting away with contrived sequels, but during the early 2000s, which I grew up in, you suffered from a dire aesthetic that made such films less tolerable let alone one-off new premises. Flat, colourless direction, using flashy post-MTV editing and sheen that is ultimately tedious, a dreary American high school veneer, and terrible alt-rock and c-grade nu-metal, stuff in vast contrast to film franchises back in the decades like A Nightmare on Elm Street that had synth scores, glam metal and gooey special effects alongside their rainbow colour aesthetic and infectious sense of fun.

From http://horreur-web.com/nouveau/wp-content/
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The problems inherently start with the prologue. The ending of H20, a perfect franchise conclusion, was already intended to be written over with disregard for the emotional investment it would provide viewers, Michael Myers surviving a decapitation and Jamie Lee Curtis reduced to a cameo. Ironically however I find that whilst it's a cheap shock to kill Laurie Strode off - more so now in reflection of how, done other times in A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, and mainly to final girls, it's becoming problematic for me in the disposal of the characters - it's the only part of the film which has any interest despite also being inherently blasphemous in rewriting the previous prequel's ending. Also knowing it was Curtis openly finding a way so she didn't have to keep appearing in further sequels, respect for her if any, softens the blow. There's some emotion investment and tension to be found in a mentally frayed Strode taking a one last stand against Myers, using traps and planning for him in a mental institution, making the duplicitous decision of changing the narrative of H20's ending, when they could've either remade the series or found another way around it, at least palatable in some way despite the bitterness of it.

After that, it's a completely different film, once which feels like a generic slasher with the Halloween title and iconography slapped onto it, about a group of people entering the Myers family house as part of an online reality TV show, to explore it and according to the show's brain Freddie Harris (rapper Busta Rhymes) try to understand how one of America's worse serial killers came to be. The terrible aesthetic of the era doesn't compromise the moodiness of film, some semblance of atmosphere which does redeem the results a little, but it cannot sustain itself as everything else is dreadful. Flat, overbearing musical stings, lifeless quips instead of dialogue and so forth. The worst offender is the editing, so choppy and constant like so many films from the 2000s onwards that you may actually be able to mark when this terrible creative decision started to infect Hollywood films just from carbon dating the Halloween franchise.

From http://horrorhomework.com/blog/wp-content/
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Another factor is how, in this early 2000s period, likable young adult characters in American horror films were starting to disappear on the wayside; brutally, a lot of slasher films from the eighties don't have memorable characters, but American horror before at least, at its best, had likable figures. Unfortunately, I suspect a side effect of Scream's popularity, particularly its witty script by Kevin Williamson, was that many future films in this genre attempted to follow its lead without decent scripts of funny dialogue or actors who could perform charisma instead of vitriol. Busta Rhymes is notoriously bad in the film but it's not only the dialogue that does him a disservice, comparing Michael Myers to a killer shark doing no one favours, but how unspeakable wooden he is on-screen too. If the production had to cast a hip-hop artist in a role, they should've remember one film previous, rather than suddenly develop short term amnesia, and how that worked perfectly in H20 with LL Cool J proving to have incredible cinematic presence; instead of remembering this you have Busta Rhymes who doesn't, someone who is probably as charismatic as you can get in his albums and music videos but certainly isn't here. It's worst knowing, even against stiff competition in previous sequels, Bianca Kajlich is a terrible void of a final girl with little to work with, how obnoxious Katee Sackhoff is as a shrill fame obsessive, how already painful it was to have a vulgar pothead in a film by this point when it was still a relatively fresh idea from 1999 or so, how embarrassing it is for Sean Patrick Thomas' entire dialogue to be food based culinary observations of a bad diet turning Michael Myers into a killer, and how the only memorable person in the rest of cast is Daisy McCrackin because a) she's vaguely feisty as the psychology student who yet flirts with others out of her own desire to and b) I have an obsession with natural redheads with leads to utter idolisation.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PArel5N0k0Q/UIOZeS3Tw9I/
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As bland as it is, Resurrection at least had an interest idea within that could've been drawn out and worked on, dealing with the internet and reality TV as early as it did. My Little Eye (2002) was neck to neck with it in the same ideas but imagining the cynical nature of reality TV involve literally travelling around serial killer's mind, taking liberties in something close to meta-parody in cramming the Myers home with blatantly fake explanations for his life like a baby chair with straps on it, is a clever idea. It's also clever to have the final girl being helped online by a potential love interest watching the show as it airs, something that in any other film could've be stretched into a truly memorable movie. But Resurrection is entirely wasteful as a movie, even making The Curse of Michael Myers more bearable in comparison. It would take until 2007, and a full blown remake of the first film, to continue the franchise, completely starting from the beginning. It's not surprising why having revisited Halloween: Resurrection. 

Secret Beyond the Door (1948)

From http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Posters/S/Poster
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Director: Fritz Lang

Screenplay: Silvia Richards

Cast: Joan Bennett (as Celia Lamphere); Michael Redgrave (as Mark Lamphere); Anne Revere (as Caroline Lamphere); Barbara O'Neil (as Miss Robey); Natalie Schafer (as Edith Potter)

Synopsis: Celia (Joan Bennett) meets Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), a handsome architect theorist, during a vacation and immediately marries him. She finds herself however in a position of immense mystery from the get-go. That he can be constantly aloof or away all the time. That he had a late wife and a surviving son he did not tell her about before they were married. That his home includes his likable sister Carol (Anne Revere) but also a mysterious secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) who has her head constantly covered in a scarf. That he likes to collect rooms, exactly transporting rooms to his home where murders have taken place, the seventh door at the end kept locked with no one allowed to enter it...

With Secret Beyond the Door, you find yourself within a sub-genre of psycho-dramatic films from the late forties and so forth which, in spite of the Hays Code, tapped into areas of psychology and symbolism for pulp melodrama which, even if it may be naive at points, now drips with a murkiness and macabre nature that's immensely powerful. Alfred Hitchcock acquired the assistance of surrealist artist Salvador Dali with Spellbound (1945) and merely tapped into the gothic mists for Rebecca (1940) five years earlier. Films like The Spiral Staircase (1946) or The Seventh Veil (1945) - between some phantom zone of melodrama, horror, sometimes even supernatural, maybe all the above - with mainly female protagonists and all shot in rich monochrome that makes the atmosphere more palpable, feeling like shadow drenched hallucinations. Secret Beyond the Door brazenly wears this as its evening gown with the opening narration by Joan Bennett describing the symbolic meaning of lilies and boats in dreams as such objects are presented onscreen at the same time, as if daring you to object to how blatant it is.

From https://sarcastig.files.wordpress.com/2011/
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With a solid foundation in Bennett as Celia - charismatic, able to play both feistiness against Michael Redgrave but also vulnerability - the resulting story is a dark tinged melodrama where, like many of this sub-genre of Hollywood cinema, the character drama is writ large and practically decorates even the interior decor. The rooms which Mark Lamphere has actually come much later in the narrative, revealing a darker sense of his personality as they revolve around scenarios like a man drowning his mother in the basement during a flood, but long before their appearance everything proceeding it builds a sense of problematic emotional currents which Celia has to negotiate. His secrets, his disconnect with his smart and polite speaking son, the issue of his first wife dying with as much emotional baggage as many describe it to Celia, and various emotional strafes which paint the walls of Mark's mansion home. A large portion of these films are how they take the melodrama and mix it with other genres like mystery or the gothic to such extremes, the former becoming more heightened whilst filtered through the later.

From http://crimsonkimono.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/54242872.png

A lot of these films also have very female-centric perspectives, usually with female protagonists or with a substantial amount of female side characters nearby to dominate the screen. Ironically while its now in the current decade where women have more influence and a chance in having diverse roles in films, an argument can be substantially made that the more feminist and stronger choice of roles came about in films like this from decades before in vast contrast to the gender inequality that might've taken place off the silver screen. Even if you have to skirt around the dated gender politics once in a while, the sense of dominance found in the women in this film - Bennett, Revere, O'Neil, Natalie Schafer as the talkative, overactive friend of Celia's Edith Potter - and how vital their performances are for the story are pronounced. Annoyingly though Secret Beyond the Door bungles its ending. At two points it has the chance to finish its narrative in two completely different ways, eventually deciding to complete itself in a way that feels like a compromise goes against its tone, a happy ending that needed for more time to justify or different writing to make work. It's either in lieu to giving the audience a happy ending regardless of it being appropriate for the tone, without building it far enough, or because of Hays Code concession. Because of this, the strange mood created before is dampened from what was built up perfectly beforehand.

From https://amjohnson3.files.wordpress.com/
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[Spoiler Warning]

The first event, capped by an incredible mist bound sequence in the woods, suggests Celia has been killed by Mark, which would've such a grim ending to leave on. This is less of an issue when this is not the case as, per a lot of Fritz Lang's pulpier films, plot twists like in a serial are common in his filmography, leading to one of the most overtly strange moments where, with Redgrave as his own defendant, judge and prosecutor, Mark puts himself on trial for his desire to kill her. The second time however is when Secret Beyond the Door falters, Celia trying to cure Mark of his desires for murder, a built upon misogyny that has yet to lead to actual murder but keeps threatening to appear, dealt with so abruptly in the ending. In spite of the moral muddiness of the whole narrative, and whole sub plots like the son being ditched and unresolved, all it takes is Celia to council him with psychobabble and everything is all okay, left to cosy up in the sunny in the final shot on the same sun lounger together, resulting in an utterly absurd finale jarring against what came before.

[Spoiler End]

From https://newgranadarecreationcenter.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/
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Technical Detail:

As this is a Fritz Lang film, it would be criminal to not touch upon the quality of his films technically. An auteur, he is yet someone who predominantly made genre films and works were openly about enthral his viewers, the exceptions like M (1931) standing out in their potency against the other great pulpier films. His auteurist status for me is found in how you can tell you're watching a Lang film in style, in the mood and atmosphere of his movies. Films in colour exist in his filmography, but Lang's worldview makes greater sense in black-and-white, every corridor or street with potential secrets and surprises to be found hidden in the shadows. The bar he raised in terms of style - composition, use of shadows etc. - was so high from his twenties silent epics to a film like Secret Beyond the Door that it's enough to qualify as a style of his own.

From http://p7.storage.canalblog.com/79/51/110219/54242914.png

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

A large portion of this sub genre of Hollywood psychodrama would not likely be added to the Abstract List or is on film-by-film basis. They're mainstream Hollywood pictures in that, even if they have overt moments of strangeness like Spellbound's Dali created dream sequence, have straightforward plots and presentations. It entirely depends on each film whether any dig into the furrows of the abstract necessary to get on the List. In the case of Secret Beyond the Door, it doesn't especially after its ending compromises the mood it perfectly generated before, even going as far as ripping off the ending of Rebecca for itself in a pointless plot twist.

Nonetheless, it feels absolutely necessary to cover these films on the blog as they're films I cannot believe didn't have a pronounced influence on some of the directors whose back catalogue would get on the Abstract List. Dario Agrneto is one - contrary to popular belief of viewing him as the Italian Alfred Hitchcock, Argento is far more influenced by Fritz Lang, and the kind of bizarre psychodrama here, including the whole subplot of the murder rooms, would fit the entire Italian genre of giallo mysteries to a tee. Cementing this is knowing Joan Bennett, three decades later, would translate from Hollywood to Argento's Suspiria (1977), having experience the psychological weirdness of Michael Redgrave's mansion to becoming the head principal of a sinister ballet school in Germany, in some semblance of connective tissue. Then there's Guy Maddin, the one man film depository who must've been fed on this sort of psycho-melodrama alongside his obsession with silent cinema. Whilst this film wouldn't qualify for the list, to tip my hat to its likely influence is vital.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6_Q14j8rC3E/maxresdefault.jpg

Person Opinion:

A fascinating gem in Fritz Lang's filmography somewhat marred by a pointless ending, tied up in too clean a bow and deserving the murkier quality of the story. Still utterly rewarding and gorgeous to look at, but with some concessions to deal with in terms of the full result.

Szindbád (1971)

From https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/21/
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Director: Zoltán Huszárik

Screenplay: Zoltán Huszárik and János Tóth

Cast: Zoltán Latinovits (as Szindbád); Margit Dajka (as Majmunka); Éva Ruttkai (as Lenke)

Synopsis: As he dies alone, dragged along in a cart across the countryside door to door, Szindbád (Zoltán Latinovits) a libertine upper class womaniser, and his life are presented as a kileidoscope of memories which skip back and forth in time, all the women he's ever loved, the ingulgences he has partaken in, and all the ennui and dissapointment he has felt with the modern world of turn-of-the-century Hungary.

Szindbád begins like a Stan Brakhage short, a series of images of plant life and nature in extreme close-up which prepares a viewer not for a conventional narrative but a work entirely structured around sensation. In Szindbád, as one Criticker user by the name of Lepra perfectly summed up, you get Marcel Proust on film, where objects and motifs trigger new memories of old events for the protagonist, bleeding into each other and disrupting conventions of how time is usually depicted in cinema. Events early in Szindbád's life meld with those from the future, with only the grey in his hair to visually differentiate events, the viewer as unstuck in time as he is throughout the ninety minutes  running time.

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Based on short stories by Hungarian writer Gyula Krúdy, the film emphasises the importance of all five senses to fully appreciate it's tone. Szindbád, an utter womanising cad who is yet also compelling to follow because of Latinovits' performance as him, lives in a fully fleshed out world, one that is not so in terms of content only but also the tangibility of it. Rarely do films actually go further in adding tactility to their worlds but here it's a vital part of Szindbád's life in terms of his experiences being played in front of the viewer.  The interchanging of the natural world, from spring to summer, against the man made world in all its sights and sounds. The fashions and decor of turn-of-the-20th century era Hungary. Food depicted as more than mere nourishment but both visually stunning, close-ups turning it into alien shapes and colours, but also in a prolonged dining scene between Szindbád and a waiter an intrinsic part of human behaviour in how it is consumed and how people interact around eating, even the choice of mustard used for flavour painting details on the protagonist and others. Rather than a clear narrative trajectory to guide one, or the ghastly nature of biopic where events in a character's life from birth to death follow clearly signposted event markings, its instead a series of little intricacies which become the centrepieces for the protagonist and how we learn more about him, the type of details usually ironed out as insignificant in many others films but widen perspective of Szindbád the figure here.

From https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/572004943.jpg?
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Because of this Szindbád builds a protagonist with greater depth but also with significance for everyone surrounding him even if they have a single scene, brief apparitions who still have a greater importance in their details and effect on Szindbád's life. Highly sensual, whilst it has countless moments from the perspective of Szindbád fetishing women, in gowns and dresses, in states of undress usually placed against nature, like a nude woman rolling in snow in a constantly reoccurring memory, it like Proust's In Search of Lost Time emphasises has even a figure only seen once has a pronounced effect on Szindbád's entire view of reality. These women's visages and words literally embedded in the memories depicted on the celluloid, becoming more than more idolised figurines. The wife of a chemist, older, contrasted against a youthful self who wore old hats, cut against each other in the editing. The flower girl who jumps off her window in a top floor apartment. The matriarcal figure of Majmunka (Dajka) who Szindbád is constantly with and has befriended, reading his diary and as much contributing to his reflections as the one solid foundation of happiness in his life. The old women who help him when, as ill health and possible mortality leans ahead, Szindbád struggles between religious salvation and his disdain for modernity.

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/23057/
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An utter bastard at times, even bribing a familiar friend at one point to go to confession at a church with his sins, Szindbád the character in nonetheless behind this all a compelling figure. Without chronology dictating where the moral compass should be, a viewer is left instead with a much more complex as a real human being is. Like how one is constantly at odds with the protagonist of Proust's monolithic tome, (at least for myself), as much as sympathetic for them, the protagonist here is the same. Stripping away any crass chauvinism of the type found in a lot of these sixties and seventies films, period or not, about decadent men who wooed women, instead you have a figure who's as much a loner who has lost his glory days, sulking around, as you have a man of possible virtue when he's able to actually think of others or muse about the world. Knowing that its explicitly based on the author's own life, thus leading a sense of self criticism of himself with the sharpness of a scalpel, the director/co-writer Huszárik is able to translate a figure who's more than just a Casanova stereotype.

From http://www.moviemail.com/img/still/30672/Szindbad-30672_5.jpg

Technical Detail:

Hungarian in origin, Szindbád takes a page however from its cousin films from the former Czechoslovakia. Extensive editing and densely constructed montages of images are used that, like Stan Brakhage, force one to re-judge the visual textures of the world, where a kitchen preparing food is turned into an alien one and, in the case of oil floating on top of soup, into even cosmic qualities like a coffee was in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967).  One is forced to linger on the textures and sensations of said texture, even if scent and taste have to be improvised from the visual images only, with great emphasis unlike many other films on the notion of space and sensation, something absolutely vital for a film like this entirely about little details like the decor of a nightclub or the various delicacies that ultimately help, alongside too much wine and womanising, to Szindbád's death by (likely) cardiac arrest and also providing the paints to compose a picture of him for us as viewers.

From http://www.moviemail.com/img/still/30672/Szindbad-30672_1.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Abstract/Avant-Garde/Expressionist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Because of a lot of cinema ignores depth to the visual and sensual image in favour of surface gloss, without being forced to for a lack of a better term to open one's eyes wide and take in detail with them, a film like Szindbád which emphasises the small interactions of life right down to the clothes is far more of a visually stimulating work and also absolutely startling to tackle at first when one is used to images being edited together rapidly without time to absorb them. Strangely, despite the fact that in real life outside a cinema one is constantly aware and engaging with one's environment in the exact same way, this is rarely transported to cinema, a literalisation of the notion of cinema as escape which however means that, when it is transported, it leads to alienation for those not willing to adapt to it, and going beyond being glossy numbness of many mainstream films to a full aesthetic palette for those viewers willing to adapt to it. This is not merely to make the film look gorgeous only, which is absolutely is anyway, but also to present a tangibility, pronounced and rewarding in a great deal of Eastern European cinema of the time but pronounced here, which creates a fully formed world onscreen with every object having touch to it and evoking additional emotions alongside the main emotional drive as a result. Aptly, a film of memories swirling and intersecting together at once, creating what is felt as an actual period between life and death, where the tactility of its content further enforces the Proustian context of each little detail evoking whole periods of life for Szindbád. The result is overwhelming but completely in context of full tangibility.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fab53vsPVHw/TjJ7cY5l8jI/
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Personal Opinion:

Even amongst the heavy weights that came from Eastern European cinema at this point between the sixties and seventies, as experimental and bold as you could find in the medium in spite of the dangers of censorship in communist Europe, Szindbád is a bold entity in itself, a one-off rightly acclaimed for a director in Zoltán Huszárik who tragically was not able to venture forth further into feature length films, baring one other work after, before his death. It took years of reflection, first unable to gauge with it fully, but now upon greeting each other, apt for this film's content, it evokes a great deal of warmth and reflection for me. 

Supernatural (1977)

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Directors: Simon Langton, Alan Cooke, Peter Sasdy and Claude Whatham

Screenplay: Sue Lake and Robert Muller

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #4

A club of occult minded older gentlemen will allow new members into their fold if only they can tell a story of horror that'll scare the members. If they succeed, that person joins the club; if they don't or the validity of the story is suspect, they are killed. So beings the eight episode horror anthology Supernatural, in which tales of vampires to werewolves are spun to the viewer in the tradition common to BBC television, set bound interiors with natural, on-location exterior sequences, and emphasis on psychological drama and dialogue, following various forms of revenge, haunting or macabre goings-on.

The stories vary in quality, starting off slowly with Ghosts of Venice, about an older retired actor (Robert Hardy) who goes back to Paris under pretences likely due to ghosts or his own fragile mind. Things pick considerably however with the sole two parter early in the series, an elaborate tale of a countess (Billie Whitelaw) getting four lovers who scorned her when she was a commoner to stay her at her late husband's woodland manor, something feral in the woods picking them off one-by-one. The series is an okay programme, respectably watchable, but when it's at its most interesting is when, even if they're a side character, women are primarily at the centre of the episode's story or their motivators. Women getting revenge on those who've wronged them, women who've severed their "morals" whether for good or bad, the two parter in particular taking the idea of a woman getting her justified justice over others to its most blackest, in terms of its ripe melodrama, an even riper performance by Ian Hendry, as a former revolutionary turned government lapdog and arms dealer, and a bleak hearted revenge story of a woman scored tasting, if only a little, of Angela Carter's later novel The Bloody Chamber (1979) even if it doesn't have the sensual intensity in look to the match the book's prose. That the result is both stage bound and yet very elegantly put together in visual look, creation an odd contradiction throughout the series for its artistic aspirations, adds to this mood.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WfWSiZ_J9Y8/hqdefault.jpg

The others are of worthy mention are Viktoria and Night of the Marionettes. The later of an older father travelling Europe with his wife and grown up daughter to research the journey Mary Shelley took to reach her novel Frankenstein (1818), becoming the mother of modern horror literature, weaved into a story still deliciously grotesque for a BBC TV production about life sized marionettes. It leads to the one overtly artistic moment of the whole series when we see a puppet show with creepy costuming mixed with a ting of Asian orientalism and German Expressionist decor. It also has Pauline Moran as the adult daughter stealing the episode with her most heightened moments, with her almost pointed teeth and wild stare.

Viktoria is amongst the eight episodes as personal favourite, a wheelchair bound Romanian countess bumped off by her English husband, but able to get revenge when her old gypsy nanny created a doll with her soul within it and gives it to her surviving daughter. This episode also shows that, at its best, the most interesting episodes could also be feature length stories by themselves as much as they work in their near hour long forms, turning into a constantly shifting concoction of events and plot twists which keep you on your toes. Secrets about the husband, the psychodrama of the second wife (Catherine Schell), who is entirely innocence and well meaning but finds herself in the midst of the emotion vacuum of the family she's married into, the dominance of the very homely governess who looks after the daughter, and of course the daughter's relationship with the doll which naturally turns to more gruesome events.

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/supernatural3big.jpg

That's not to say the other four episodes aren't rewarding - one is a strange take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by way of the myth of doppelgangers in which an Englishman does all her can to ruin a German family who were willing to embrace him into their fold as a son-in-law - but Supernatural is a mix of that which is merely okay and that which is actually memorable. When it succeeds it does well as much as it fluffs good ideas with weak execution. As a result its one of the weakest of the British genre television programmes I've seen from this era but that's not without at least giving the best moments of it their fair due.

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5BfOad2Y_ds/VWrTBi3QBGI/
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Vampire Princess Miyu (1997-8)

From http://pics.filmaffinity.com/kyuketsuki_miyu_
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Director: Toshiki Hirano

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka, Mitsuhiro Yamada, Sadayuki Murai, Tamio Hayashi, Toshiki Hirano, Yasutomo Yamada, Yuji Hayami and Yutaka Hirata

Voice Cast: Miki Nagasawa (as Miyu); Asako Shirakura (as Chisato Inoue); Chiharu Tezuka (as Yukari Kashima); Kokoro Shindou (as Hisae Aoki); Megumi Ogata (as Matsukaze/Reiha); Mika Kanai (as Shiina); Shinichiro Miki (as Larva)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #3

Originally posted on my other blog 1000 Anime in October during my Halloween viewing, the TV series spin off of the manga of the same name is sadly a case of how I hate episodic storytelling in anime unless it does its best to make every story compelling, or connect it into even a loose framework of some interest. That may come off as a spoiler for the review I'm linking to below, but the experience if nothing else, alongside an ending that would've been great by itself if not with the context of how its set up, is worthy of being read if not seeing the actual series. In lieu to it, the late eighties straight-to-video version is still worthy of interest for me, but in terms of great disappointment, Vampire Princess Miyu is the first big example for this series of reviews of horror television.

A link to the full review is available HERE. Be warned, there are spoilers within it.

From https://animeblurayuk.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/
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Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)

From http://moviefiles.alphacoders.com
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Director: Steve Miner

Screenplay: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode/Keri Tate); Chris Durand (as Michael Myers); Josh Hartnett (as John Tate); Michelle Williams (as Molly Cartwell); Adam Arkin (as Will Brennan); LL Cool J (as Ronald "Ronny" Jones)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #67

When I first reviewed this film on Letterboxd I knew my over-excited positivity would decrease a little on the rewatch, even admitting this in the review itself, but after the mess that was The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), H20 is a breath of fresh air. Even if Halloween parts 4 to 5 were fun, H20 feels like a necessary re-write when usually discontinuing continuity in horror sequels comes off as insulting to previous films. Unlike most of the other sequels in the franchise, only part 3 Season of the Witch (1982) aiming for something profound, you have a film here in H20 which finally deals with what most horror sequels never do, a final girl dealing with her survival in a way surprisingly thoughtful. The final result is more significantly flawed than on a first viewing, but still an admirable attempt considering the franchise could have easily circled the drain by now as Friday the 13th and any horror franchise usually does. Where twenty years on from the first film, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has been under witness protection as Keri Tate, headmistress of a private boarding school in California, a single mother with a nineteen year old son John Tate (Josh Hartnett) who feels caged living with her, a functioning alcoholic and plagued by nightmares of her brother Michael Myers still. In a slasher film which actually deals with survivor trauma and psychological scars, it becomes unfortunate for Laurie when Myers has found out where she lives, in a prologue back in Haddonfield, and intends a family reunion.

The biggest distinction from previous films is how H20 looks and feels like a glossy A-list Hollywood film even if it's less than eighty minutes long. The sudden shift from electronic synth you fell in love with from John Carpenter to a full orchestral score by John Ottman and Marco Beltrami may be jarring at first but for the film in general this sudden shift to a more gloomy, classical style turns out to be a great virtue to give it its own personality and cut the dead weight of the previous films from it. Steve Miner surprisingly, considering how memorably gritty Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) was, is able to transition to this style well as a director, in how the camera glides along corridors or the gothic ting slightly felt, even in sunny California in the late nineties, in the night-time scenes. It does have to juggle this seriousness with a more comedic tone - the snarkier, self reflective dialogue that came after Kevin Williamson and Scream (1996), or LL Cool J as the gate guard whose ultimate goal in life is to become an erotic novel author - but considering how for the most part H20 takes itself seriously, the tone is appropriately dark when it needs to be.

From https://klling.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/halloween-h20-2.jpg

The irony is that the traditional slasher that takes place in the middle of the film, of Michael Myers stalking Josh Hartnett and the young cast (including a young Michelle Williams) is the least interesting aspects of H20. Everything about Laurie Strode is compelling, helped by Jamie Lee Curtis' performance and how the story takes the character's plight seriously, a person constantly plagued with nightmares and, through a love interest Will (Adam Arkin), a background detailed of her having to struggle with being the lone survivor of the first film without resolution but only shock. It's a surprisingly level of depth for this genre and it also finally explains the issues I had been sat on the wall with slasher films about, stuck between liking them and hating the genre, in how whilst the economy of the genre is compelling (a killer picking people one by one), it's the Italian counterpart the giallo which is ultimately more rewarding. Even if the stories could be ridiculous, there's more concern about the plot in giallo with the murders having to be emphasised in context of said story, in vast contrast to the slashers which, sadly, mostly don't spin forward memorable plots to add to their main meat of narrative. Most of what's made the Halloween sequels interesting is the build up to death scenes or the plots, no matter how silly they got, and it's clear here that, unless you're talking about the first film where John Carpenter was such a talented working director, scenes of slashing are ultimately tedious for me by themselves like shoot-outs and fight scenes are in action movies.

From https://www.filmtipps.at/kritiken/Halloween_H20/
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As a result, the film lags badly in the middle. Thankfully said film is so short this doesn't sabotage the whole narrative but on revisiting the film it's a drastic effect on your viewing experience difficult to shake off. Why H20 still manages to succeed in the context of all the other Halloween sequels, barring Season of the Witch, is that there's more to engage with. From the nice cameo of Curtis' real life mother Janet Leigh as Strode's secretary Norma to LL Cool J, who was also able to make something as dumb as Deep Blue Sea (1999) bearable with his charisma, a lot still stands out and that's before you get to the climax proper. A proper sequel to a horror film, rather than just repetition, where Strode gets an axe and goes after Myers herself. Here, even if the film's still a popcorn horror flick, you can make an argument for it being symbolic of a woman having to conquer her demons, or for the viewer of any ilk to place themselves in Strode's shoes and portray Myers as any form of psychological or physical bogeyman, and especially with its end moment, it should've been the best way any franchise finishes. Sadly this wasn't the case - Halloween: Resurrection (2002) is next before they remade the series - but it doesn't detract from Halloween H20's reward barring the dreadful Creed song over the end credits.

From https://billsmovieemporium.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/h20-2.jpg