Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:17 am
This film more closely resembles V & VI for its amazingly missed potential. Mistake #1 was casting Busta Rhymes anywhere near this picture. Acting that requires him to act like something other than a petty thug is unbelievable. V had the dude in black, VI had the fucked-up Celtic cult, VIII has us exploring the inside of the abandoned Myers house. "Haunted house" is still a decent, if overdone, setting for a horror flick. This bitch was also helmed by Rick Rosenthal (who directed Halloween II), so there is at least a trace of talent in the chair. The sets designs were done well & the music does its creepy-best riff on the John's old melodies, but the ball is still dropped cos of two main reasons. The actors (except for Jamie Lee's brief appearance) could have been permutated in any order & the story could've remained the same. The performers brought no life to their characters & as a result, watching them get killed is like watching someone stab a couple pages of bad rehearsal notes. & holy dear Christ, writing w\ respect to the characters & their interactions with each other was pathetic. It looks like they went to the "Generic Horror Bit Player" handbook & copied shit verbatim. However, the cinematography around the old house is done much better than a film like this deserves. Such an atmosphere hadn't been set since IV.
There are parts of the film that border upon absurd; a couple death scenes which were painfully unrealistic & unspectacular, but the worst scenes are the ones where Busta & Michael Myers are duking it out. Earlier in the film, Sean Patrick Thomas gets into a knife fight w\ Michael to decent effect. Why? Cos it didn't look over the top or just put in for the "bad-ass" effect. Busta actually breaks out some martial arts out Michael's ass & it looks about as good as the scene in "Resident Evil 2" where Milla Jovovich has to fight a dude in a rubber suit that's supposed to be twice her size.
What we have here is a decent setting, (at first, at least) interesting plot, good cinematography, good set design, adequate directing, crap character development, crap character interaction, crap dialogue, & crap writing. So much potential is wasted. & now that Jamie Lee isn't doing anymore of these, the producers could've used all the momentum that had a chance to instead of falling flat on their face w\ this grade school play of acting shittiness.
Halloween 9 : Retribution is not store & it sounds like it'll focus around Dr. Loomis son, whose also a psych. Hopefully they can get the psycho game going between him. But, in order to do that, they'd need to acknowledge IV-VI cos Dr. Loomis was involved in those, which contradicts what VII said. I wish they'd pick an angle & fucking take a shot. What do they have to lose?
Edited By Malcolm on 1138983484
There are parts of the film that border upon absurd; a couple death scenes which were painfully unrealistic & unspectacular, but the worst scenes are the ones where Busta & Michael Myers are duking it out. Earlier in the film, Sean Patrick Thomas gets into a knife fight w\ Michael to decent effect. Why? Cos it didn't look over the top or just put in for the "bad-ass" effect. Busta actually breaks out some martial arts out Michael's ass & it looks about as good as the scene in "Resident Evil 2" where Milla Jovovich has to fight a dude in a rubber suit that's supposed to be twice her size.
What we have here is a decent setting, (at first, at least) interesting plot, good cinematography, good set design, adequate directing, crap character development, crap character interaction, crap dialogue, & crap writing. So much potential is wasted. & now that Jamie Lee isn't doing anymore of these, the producers could've used all the momentum that had a chance to instead of falling flat on their face w\ this grade school play of acting shittiness.
Halloween 9 : Retribution is not store & it sounds like it'll focus around Dr. Loomis son, whose also a psych. Hopefully they can get the psycho game going between him. But, in order to do that, they'd need to acknowledge IV-VI cos Dr. Loomis was involved in those, which contradicts what VII said. I wish they'd pick an angle & fucking take a shot. What do they have to lose?
Edited By Malcolm on 1138983484