Halloween H20

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Runtime: 86 minutes

Directed by: Steve Miner

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, Alan Arkin, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe

From: Dimension Films

Somehow, I had never seen this before last night. Turns out, my life wasn't ruined by not seeing it at the time. I explain why in my Letterboxd review:

Would you believe that I had never seen this movie before last night? Tis true. That is despite being a teenager in high school when it came out and I had already watched the first two flicks by the time it came out, which is all you needed for the continuity of this film. Here's another old story from my past: back when it came out in '98, I remember hearing some people I know talk about the movie and one noted that he wasn't a fan. I am sure everyone knows by now the killcount of this wasn't high, and they didn't like that. I did not argue but I thought, “Hey, that's just like the first Halloween.” Still, I never felt like checking it out, as I had heard many negative opinions of it since '98. Well, I thought those people were right.

I am sure everyone knows that Laurie Strode returns and only the first two Halloween movies are canon in this universe. That's all well and good... except that this movie is dull. The original is slowly paced, but it's always interesting as there are memorable and characters you can relate to. Here, there's plenty of dialogue that just made me shake my head and sigh. The Kevin Williamson effect was obvious and even if I hadn't heard he did uncredited rewrites I would have figured it out. In the future I'll do longer reviews of the Scream movies but as a whole they are fine. I would have preferred it if this movie wouldn't have come off as wanting to be a Scream sequel. Heck, you see part of Scream 2 on a television, and instead of using John Ottman's score, much of it is replaced, some of it by music from Scream and Scream 2. This SO seems like a product of the late 90's, and that is even if you exclude the CREED song you hear in the end credits.

I thought some of the dialogue was really bad & made me cringe in how it failed to be “hip” for “the kids”, and that's not even taking into account the obvious references present. Jamie Lee's mom Janet Leigh appearing is fine and all, and her name being “Norma” is cute. However, they hammer in the references to Psycho and that got old. The thing is, the cast was decent, there were some creepy moments and the final showdown between Laurie and her brother had some cool moments. Then, it got over the top... of course, there being no John Carpenter or Donald Pleasence definitely hurts. You couldn't do anything about either; Carpenter always felt like he got ripped off by the Akkad family.

The long wait for me to see this, it made me realize I did not miss much by not watching this bland, flatly directed mostly forgettable flick. I can say that two moments made me laugh real loud: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his friend saying that they'll get “wasted” after Levitt pilfered one beer for the each of them (as it does sound like something that teenage boys would do) and then there's the subplot of LL Cool J and him writing what's supposed to be serious novel but instead it's pretty much smut and had he been in 2016 he would have quite the library of stories on either AO3 or Fanfiction.net! It's so strange and doesn't fit with the movie, I just had to guffaw.