To celebrate the season, I recently posted a review on YouTube of the 1978 slasher classic "Halloween". I briefly mentioned the number of sequels this movie spawned, and how critics and fans loathe each one more and more. I'm going to start this review by admitting I have not seen "Halloween II" through "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers". But after seeing James Rolfe's (Cinemassacre.com) reviews of the films, I think that may be for the best. However, I did take his advice and skip straight to the seventh film, 1998's "Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later".
Now, I'm going to start with the obvious. The title. "Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later". With all seriousness, I think this is the most unnecessarily long title I have seen on a movie. I mean, it's kind of clever (very corny, but kind of clever), but is their any reason why it couldn't be called "Halloween 7"? But moving on.
The movie takes place in 1998, obviously twenty years after the horrible Halloween murders in Haddonfield, Illinois. Jamie Lee Curtis makes a return (her last appearance being in "Halloween II") as Laurie Strode. As it turns out, Laurie has now changed her name to Keri Tate and is the headmistress of Hillcrest Academy, a private boarding school in northern California. She now has a son, John (played by Josh Hartnett) and is leading a seemingly normal life. However, she is still haunted by that night twenty years ago and fears the return of her psychopathic brother, Michael Myers. Well as it turns out, her fears are legit, as Myers kills the nurse of his recently deceased psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis. Now Myers has the information to find Keri, and on Halloween night pays her, her son, and his friends a visit...
*THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*
This movie is the first to have a solid connection to the original since "Halloween II". Jamie Lee Curtis shines through in this film, and immediately has you rooting for the character again. She does a great job as portraying someone psychologically traumatized, and you can tell she is anxious everytime October 31 comes around.
As mentioned before, Josh Hartnett plays Keri's son John. Hartnett does a poor job. Plain and simple. He just seems to bratty and delivers little to no emotion most the time. His friends are no better, though. Adam Hann-Byrd plays Charlie, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe plays Sarah, and Michelle Williams plays John's girlfriend Molly. All of them deliver the same levels of no emotion. At least they're not as ditsy as Laurie's old girl pals in Haddonfield.
Chris Durand plays Michael Myers. He does a good job. Moves slow and remains silent, so well done. You can play a slow moving silent psychopath. Something about the traditional Michael Myers mask seemed off to me however. If it was really twenty years, shouldn't it be showing some age? Also the hair looks all wild and...almost styled. I don't know it's hard to explain. At least it didn't look as dopey as the mask in "Halloween 4".
Adam Arkin plays the guidance counselor at Hillcrest and Keri's boyfriend, Will Brennan. He does a pretty good job for a small role. There wasn't anything really fascinating about him though. I wasn't terribly uspet when Myers shoved his butcher knife through him. LL Cool J plays Ronny Jones, a securtiy guard at Hillcrest. He's a pretty cool character. The only weird thing is that he's trying to quit the job by starting a career writing dirty books. Also, Jamie Lee Curtis's mother, Janet Leigh, plays Norma Watson, Keri's secretary. The only real thing about her character I have to say is the "Psycho" reference (Janet Leigh was the girl that got killed in the shower "Psycho")
Mainly the whole film takes place on Hillcrest campus. I think they were trying to reestablish that isolated feeling of the first film, where the movie took place in mainly two houses. It doesn't work as well, I don't know why though. Maybe it's because it seems like none of the lightbulbs work when they should and a lot of the places John and his friends hang out in just seem run down and old. It's like they were trying to make it creepy, which can't be accomplished when trying.
This movie is not really frightening at all. A few parts made me jump, but for one big, lame, reason. Cheap shocks. It seems that everyone is sneaking up on each other. It's like, why don't you announce yourself like normal humans? Accompany that with a shrieking music cue, and you most likely will jump. But not for the right reasons. In fact, I didn't feel near as threatend when Michael Myers was apart of the action. And he's the main antagonist! How'd they screw that up?
Being the sixth sequel, you can imagine they recycle some of the old cliches and techniques the original invented. And well, you're right. Michael Myers appears and disappears. He moves just as slow as ever in pursuit. And it seems that every obstacle that could prolong our heroes is thrown. Dropped keys, stalling car, etc. Originality is not this movie's strong suit. It's kind of a shame that "Halloween" invented the cliches of slasher films, and with the sequels it actually became a cliche.
So this movie is not original, and the acting is bad, but the plot seems like it could have been something quite clever. The connections to the original are unique and quite solid, and the death of Laurie Strode that was established in "Halloween 4" is given a somewhat logical explenation. If more effort went in to this flick, it could have been pretty slick.
By far the best feature of this movie is the finale. The last thirty minutes or so makes the mediocre plot and bad acting tolerable. Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers. Brother against sister. Hunted against hunter. And by God, Laurie packs a punch. I for some reason laughed hysterically when Laurie beams Myers over the head with a fire extingusher. This is a slasher flick not "Home Alone"! I swear there's also a part where she knees Myers right in the groin. Since he doesn't talk, he can't yelp in pain. But the look in his eyes just say "Oh, hell no, you didn't!" After Laurie finally stabs Myers repeatedly and pushes him off a balcony onto a table, the paramedics come to take his body away (without removing his mask for some reason). Laurie is too smart though, and she commandeers the ambulance, driving away with Myers's body. She's going to finish it. Sure enough, Myers rips out of his body bag and lunges at her. But she slams on sending him shooting through the windshield. Then she pins him to a tree, crusing him with the ambulance! However there is a moving moment when Myers reaches out to Laurie for help. Then she hacks his head off with an axe. Bam. Michael Myers is finally dead (in my mind at least).
Well, even though it was pretty much set in stone that Michael Myers was dead, they made up another ridiculous twist to bring him back for the eighth and final film in the original series, "Halloween: Resurrection". But whatever, I don't care. "H20" finishes the story for me.
To conclude, "Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later" was a pretty lame film compared to the masterpiece "Halloween" was. I will give the film some credit though. It's at least enjoyably bad. Like if there was nothing else decent on TV except for this, I'd watch it. It's not like "2012" where I want to shoot whoever wrote the script and produced it. But, that's another story. So, like James Rolfe has said, if you want to skip through the crappy sequels and want a solid conclusion, you can go watch "H20". It's nothing great, but...yeah, it's nothing great.
For those of you that don't know (or don't care), Sony bought the rights to Michael's music. Last year, with Epic Records, they released an album compiled of music Michael had worked on before he passed on in July 2009. The album was entitled "Michael" (guess they couldn't think of anything better...) and sold millions upon millions of copies, as you would expect. The album however was incredibly controversial, as there was much debate over whether or not the tracks were Michael's legit voice. I'm no expert, but hey, I know MJ's voice. And I can say that everything sounds legit. I also really liked this album. 
