In 1998, we got H2O, the seventh film in the Halloween franchise, and the biggest box office hit since the first one 20 years earlier. Logically, an eighth Halloween would’ve rushed to screens to capitalize on this success.

Nope. For reasons unknown, the franchise went cold for another four years until it returned with 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection.

Because Resurrection went with a low budget, it probably made a small profit. However, its $30 million US offered a steep decline from H2O’s $55 million.

That probably explains why Resurrection offered the last of the sequels to the 1978 film – until 2018, that is. That year’s Halloween acted as a continuation of the characters/situations from the 1978 movie, albeit one that chose to pretend none of the sequels existed.

Resurrection doesn’t go that path, as it continues the story from H2O. At the end of that film, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) confronted her serial killer brother Michael Myers (Brad Loree) and chopped off his head.

Though that would seem to finally end Michael’s threat, it doesn’t. It turns out that Laurie beheaded some sad-sack paramedic and not her brother.

As a result, Laurie ends up in a psychiatric hospital. Three years later, Michael comes after her and appears to kill her.

A year after that, a reality studio called “Dangertainment” challenges young contestants to spend a night at the old Myers house. They expect some fabricated thrills but inevitably find themselves the target of Michael’s murderous ways.

In 1999, Kolobos attempted to meld horror with the then-novel reality program concept. It didn’t work, but the movie gets credit for something new.

That would be hard to do with Resurrection, mainly because it acts as the eighth film in a long franchise. The fact that it relies on reality TV tropes just damages it more.

We don’t get to the “Dangertainment” conceit for a while, though, as the movie’s opening concentrates on Laurie. It feels utterly unconnected to the rest of the movie and feels like it exists just to throw a bone to fans who want a little Curtis in the film.

After that, Resurrection goes down a dull path that pursues little more than the usual post-Scream irony and slaughter. This means too much exposition, as the flick bores us with pointless introductions to characters we don’t care about who we also know will die before too long.

Really, the plot set-up exists just as another excuse for Michael to murder underwritten young people. The reality TV twist offers a theoretical clever spin, but Resurrection does nothing clever with it.

Don’t expect anything interesting from the mayhem, either. We find no tension or drama, and the gore feels uninspired.

It becomes difficult to choose a worst Halloween movie because so many stink. Resurrection belongs in the discussion, however.

Halloween: Resurrection appears in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Like H2O, Resurrection ran 2.35:1 theatrically.

Also like H2O, the Blu-ray cropped it to 1.78:1. In this case, the altered ratio seemed more perplexing, as unlike H2O, the original Blu-ray of Resurrection came with the original 2.35:1 ratio.

That means someone had to go back to the source to crop the framing for this subsequent Blu-ray. I assumed this disc would recycle the earlier one, so I remain befuddled that it brought a different transfer with the non-theatrical ratio.

Even if we ignore the incorrect dimensions, the quality became an issue. Like the last two sequels, Resurrection suffered from too much processing, and that meant persistent edge haloes as well as digital noise reduction.

Both of those impacted definition. The movie often seemed hyper-sharp, as those haloes jacked up edges and gave the film an artificial, unnatural feel.

Some shimmering and jagged edges resulted as well. In terms of print flaws, I saw occasional specks and marks.

These didn’t dominate but they seemed more prevalent than they should. In addition, grain looked more like artifacts and never seemed natural.

Like sharpness, colors felt overdone. The movie tended toward a blue-oriented palette with hues that seemed oddly accelerated and heavy.

Blacks were crushed and too dense, while shadows felt murky and stiff. From the incorrect aspect ratio on down, this became a problematic image, one that felt like a holdover from the DVD days.

Given that someone screwed the proverbial pooch with H2O and gave it a monaural soundtrack, I felt pleased that Resurrection came with its appropriate DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. It went with an active soundscape – maybe too active, as the track felt hyper much of the time.

This meant that we got lots of information from all five channels, and these elements seemed fairly well-placed. They also tended to seem too aggressive and not especially natural.

Still, I couldn’t criticize the track’s ambition, as it attempted to pack a punch. After the mono of the H2O Blu-ray, an actual multi-channel mix came as a relief.

Audio quality worked fine, with speech that appeared fairly natural. Lines could seem a little edgy at times but they usually came across as distinctive and appropriate.

Music was bold and bright, while visuals seemed accurate and dynamic. This wasn’t the most realistic soundscape I’ve heard, but the audio usually seemed positive.

No extras appear on this set.

Despite attempts to reinvigorate the franchise, Halloween: Resurrection offers nothing more than cheap stabs at horror. None of these elements succeed, and this becomes a tedious, fright-free effort. The Blu-ray comes with problematic picture and no supplements, but audio seems pretty good. Only Halloween diehards should bother with this stinker.

Note that this version of Resurrection appears as part of a “Halloween Triple Feature” along with 1995’s Curse of Michael Myers and 1998’s H2O.

As mentioned earlier, an individual version of Resurrection exists as well, one that appears to use an alternate transfer. Unlike the extras-free single-movie BDs of Curse and H2O, the solo Resurrection also includes a mix of supplements, none of which pop up here.