Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

 H20 has definitely grown on me over the years.  When I first saw it in the theater in 1998 I was just turning twelve years old and though I was already a huge fan of the original Halloween I wasn't expecting something that moved along at the slower pace of the original when I bought my ticket (without parental supervision by the way...ah, the good ol' days).  What I was hoping for was something more along the lines of the last few Halloween flicks that had come out:  a faster pace, a hearty helping of gore, even a dash of nudity possibly (hey, even the original had that).  Basically a Friday the 13th flick with Michael doing the slashing.  What I got was more along the lines of Scream meets the original Halloween.  The movie seems to try to mirror what happened in the original almost beat for beat at times and that's all well and good but it doesn't save it from being just mediocre.

The film was made with the intention of ignoring entries 3-6 in the series and being a sequel to the original two films only (though arguments can be made that the other Michael centric sequels still happened since in both timelines Laurie supposedly dies from a car accident...it would just make her worst mother of the year for abandoning Jamie from 4, 5, and 6).  Ignoring sequels always kinda gets on my nerves, regardless of how terrible they are, so that's a small strike against it right out of the gate.  Other things that don't really set well with me are the facts that:

1.  Loomis isn't around (Donald Pleasence was dead so that's a decent excuse but it still doesn't feel right without him).  They do show a picture of him and even include a voice-over during the opening credits that is supposed to be him but they used a different voice actor even though he is saying lines from previous films which is a bit of slap in the face.  The Dracula/Van Helsing dynamic of Loomis and Myers is part of what makes the series so good so it's sorely missed.

 2.  The characters aren't very good or likeable.  Laurie is an alcoholic, paranoid, overbearing mother and while that might be understandable after what she went through in the past but it's a far cry from the nice girl from the first two that we came to know.  Her son is whiny and...that's about it really.  Assuming you want to believe all the movies happen I don't know why she would abandon cute little Jamie and keep this douche around.  The rest are your typical late '90s "slasher" victims and they barely have any screen time.  It's bad when the most likeable character in the movie is L.L. Cool J.

3.  The mask/masks are pretty rough looking.  According to the people behind the scenes there were no less than 3 different masks used in the making of the film and none of them look good.  I'm not really a huge fan of any of the series' masks aside from the original and part 6 but a freakin' CGI mask takes things to a new low.

4.  Last but not least is the music.  The Halloween series has one of the best scores of any horror film series thanks to the iconic foundation John Carpenter laid in the first film.  You would think that this film would utilize that trump card but instead the movie features way more music from Scream than anything else.  Yep, Scream.  The heads at Dimension films thought the movie needed a bit more kick so out went the eerie Carpenter themes to be replaced by music from another film series that had just started two years prior.  This still blows my mind.  If you are at all familiar with the Scream films it is really noticeable too.  I wonder if anyone has ever re-edited the movie with Halloween themes...that would be interesting to see.

All these things said, it's still not the worst movie ever made or anything.  It's a Halloween movie made in the wake of Screams popularity and it really shows but there is enough influence of the original here to make it enjoyable.  Seeing Laurie's character arc from someone living in terror to someone confronting what is haunting them is decent and the movie ends on what could have been a definitive end for the series had part 8 not come along and retconned it with one of the more ridiculous ideas of any of the big series.  It's also worth noting that Steve Miner, who directed Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3, directed this movie so it's cool to see his take on Halloween.  Give it watch if you're bored, marathoning the series, or tired of the other entries. - TG