Trick-or-Treat: That Time Busta Rhymes Beat Up Michael Myers
It’s no secret that I have some serious problems with the mythos of Michael Myers and the Halloween franchise writ large. The studio and filmmakers, desperate to franchise John Carpenter’s original bogeyman, added an almost nauseating amount of lore, canon-defying beats, and timelines, all in an effort to bring the Shape home again and again… and again. Yet, there’s something to be said, at least in theory, for the brazen indifference toward what came before. My problems are no secret, though neither is my love. I love the Halloween movies, even the not-so-great ones. There isn’t a single entry I don’t re-watch in October, or March, or, well, any other month of the year. If Michael’s on, I’m watching. Evil never dies tonight, and in some cases, it’s resurrected entirely. Case in point? Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween: Resurrection.
The first four Friday the 13th movies all principally amount to the same thing. So much so, minus a shift in final girls and deaths, they’re the same movie. Campers or counselors or hedonistic teens arrive, party, and are systemically picked off during the climax until only one remains, inciting a protracted chase with Jason Voorhees (or, in the case of the first, his mother). The same might be said for later A Nightmare on Elm Street entries. Unlike Halloween, familiarity or sheer boredom preclude them from the Halloween franchise’s inimitable watchability. Director Rick Rosenthal, responsible for both the best and worst sequels in the franchise, at least had the decency to add a dollop of Busta Rhymes to Halloween: Resurrection, the only entry that—had it not been for Rhymes—could have ruined the franchise’s winning streak.
Busta Rhymes plays Freddie Harris, a co-director for the web series Dangertainment. Alongside Tyra Banks’ Nora Winston, they invite a group of horny coeds (and one quasi-predator whose digital pen pal is an underage boy) to the Myers house with the intent of filming their night, hopeful they might uncover some clues behind Myers’ motives. Why the Dangertainment crew thinks this group of students could conceivably accomplish that is never addressed; for as much pop psychology as they spout, they’re still just horny kids looking to get some. But they’re packed up and dropped off, ready for a quiet night in a murder house. Or not.
Of course, Michael—having just killed his sister Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) in ridiculous, infuriating fashion—is on his way home, something neither the coeds nor Freddie anticipate. Luckily, Freddie knows kung-fu. No, seriously. With just Freddie and the derivative final girl, Sara (Bianca Kajlich) remaining, Freddie reaches his boiling point. He busts through a door, shouts, “Hey Michael… Trick or treat, motherfucker,” and proceeds to beat the ever-living hell out of him. He jumps in the air, brandishes his fists in quasi-karate stances, and even emits a high-pitched “Hi-Ya” as he leaps in the air to deliver a final kick.
It’s ridiculous, but it works. Absent Rhymes’ producer, Halloween: Resurrection never gets off the ground. The characters are indistinct, the kills tame, and the tension nonexistent. Like later Friday the 13th sequels, it doesn’t even manage to be so-bad-it’s-good; it’s simply bad. Halloween: Resurrection commits horror’s cardinal sin: it’s boring. Luckily, Busta Rhymes imbues it with enough cartoonish energy to give it a pulse. He accosts Michael at one point, presuming he’s a crew member screwing around. And Michael, a little punk, just takes it and even takes jabs at his “baggy-ass overalls”. It’s… incredible? There’s self-aware verve to Rhymes’ performance, so perfectly calibrated, it’s never anything less than clear he’s in on the joke himself.
Additionally, there’s an argument to be made that Sara isn’t even the final girl; Freddie is. Sara is more than useless in the final fight, a fisticuff in a burning garage. She’s quickly immobilized and were it not for Freddie’s ex-machina arrival, Sara would have bit the dust. Freddie, a Black man, saves the day, a rarity in the horror genre, and a beat practically nonexistent in Halloween’s world, a franchise whiter than Myers’ own Captain Kirk mask.
Not content to just let bygones be bygones, though, Freddie remarks to Michael’s charred corpse at the end. “Looking a little crispy over there, Mikey, like a fried chicken motherf****er. May he never, ever rest in peace,” he says, totally nonplussed by what just happened. It was just another night for Freddie, the Dangertainment media superstar. Yet, for the Halloween franchise, it was a high note. The last entry in Halloween’s second timeline, what followed would just be remakes and reboots. At the end of an era, there was no better way for the franchise to bow out than with Busta Rhymes beating the life out of Michael like a Marvel superhero. Pass the Courvoisier, indeed.
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