Halloween: H20: Review By slysnide

As the story goes, in 1997 someone mentioned to Jamie Lee Curtis that the following year would mark the twentieth anniversary of Jamie being in the movie business, and Jamie interpreted this as being a good time to return to the Halloween franchise. She commissioned Kevin Williamson to write it after the monumental success of his filmed script "Scream" (1996) by Wes Craven the previous year. He got Robert Zapia and Matt Greenberg to write the screenplay, and for whatever reason, he left himself uncredited for his own contributions to the story.

After the screenplay was in motion, Jamie contacted any of the original crew members whom were still in the business and willing to return to the franchise for one more movie under the pitch of it being the first true sequel to "Halloween" (1978) as "Halloween II" (1981) was a continuation of the first film rather than a complete rehash. This intrigued some of the crew members enough to return to the franchise, and even Nancy Stephens agreed to reprise her role of nurse Marion Chambers-Wittington from the first two movies. With Debra Hill (RIP) tagged to produce it for $17,000,000 everything seemed to be going as planned...except for the true capitalist & visionary John Carpenter who refused to return, despite the amount of the original crew and his statements over the years that the original "Halloween" was his best filming experience. So his refusal was a bit odd, but he gave his full blessing to go on with the movie. In lieu of his absence in the director's chair, Steve Miner of the first two 'Friday' sequels was tagged to direct it, and he accepted.

The primary thing to nail down here was nostalgia, and setting. Rather than returning to Haddonfield, Illinois which would be contradictory to Laurie's story, my home turf of Northern California was selected...except it filmed in SoCal at Canfield-Moreno Estate at 1923 Micheltorena Street in Los Angeles which also substituted for a posh private school where Laurie, now Keri Tate was the Dean. Though it had the perfect look at night which made for many innocent scares and genuine ones. For throughout the film, scares from the original like the Shape being outside the school at one moment and gone the next were reused here, and it worked.

In the Bob & Lynda like roles were Adam Hann-Byrd & Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Charlie Deveraux & Sarah Wainthrope respectively. The Shape's 'decorations' of them were pretty good and reminiscent of the original, which is an automatic plus. However Sarah isn't prominently featured as Lynda was, despite being the '90s equivalent of her. Charlie on the other hand had more screen time and lines than Bob who was only used for a few hours back in 1978.

Since Laurie Strode was still very much the main character this time around, two new ones were invented for the film, being Laurie's son John Tate (Josh Hartnett) and his girlfriend Molly Cartwell (Michelle Williams) whom are the two potential victims you really care about in the film, and deliver some good acting to boot. Given that newcomer Josh Hartnett doubted that 'Halloween 7' would be even heard of, then he exceeded expectations from his statement: "Halloween. I'm flipping through the pages. Seven?! Is this gonna go straight to video or straight to hell?" Well, it made an extra $21,000,000 in DVD/VHS sales, so it did pretty good.

As for Laurie, she's got a boyfriend, the school counselor Will Brennan (Adam Arkin) who's got a sarcastic sense of humor among students, but is oblivious to the fact that Laurie is constantly haunted by the memory of Michael Myers...but not the "Psycho" (1960) car which makes it's first ever color cameo, with shower girl Janet Leigh driving it. Janet playing a school employee Norma Watson. Being Jamie's real life mother adds to the icing on the cake that is this movie.

Chris Durand dons the mask this time around, and he was the best since Nick Castle, though not as good. The mask was also up to par, but had a couple digital replacements to make it work. His entire game with the security guard Ronny Jones (LL Cool J) at the gate was creepy, and comical at the same time as Ronny's busy trying to recite his own romance novel pitches to his wife or girlfriend whom he's constantly chatting with rather than paying attention to his surroundings. Hmmm. Those guys got the boot for that very reason the first time around. Does he? [On a side note you could make an entire movie with just Ronny sitting in his security kiosk chatting with his girl. Great humor and telephonic chemistry-lolz]

One of the problems was the blood. It looked like liquid ketchup. Seriously, it was the worst movie blood I've ever seen. And the predictability of some scenes was also a bit annoying rather than coming up with the '90s equivalent to an unexpected surprise in a horror film. For this was creepy for its setting, famous music, and nostalgia, but no true scares. And the tweaking of the music for some scenes was bad too. But recycling unused ideas from the predecessors like the Shape flipping the tables was good rather than coming up with something haphazardly at the last second.

So overall, this was the best sequel of them all, and better than the two RZ installments for me. And John Carpenter critiqued it as being good for providing a resolution to the conflict between Laurie and the Shape rather than being just another slasher film utilizing a franchise banner for ticket sales. The usage of original themes was also a great choice, and ultimately, the $55,041,738 revenue speaks for itself.

So if you haven't already, then literally take that walk down memory lane on Mission Street in Pasadena & the North Orange Grove in West Hollywood...twenty years later.