| Halloween: H20 Released: 1998 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: Twenty years after the first Halloween, Michael Myers has finally found his sister Laurie Strode. Tracking her to a prestigious private school in California, Michael plans on finishing a mission started twenty years ago. It’s brother versus sister for a final showdown. One shall stand. One shall fall. Summary: Supernatural serial killer Michael Myers is trying to find information concerning his last living blood relative Stephen Lloyd. Through the late Doctor Sam Loomis’ contacts he discovers the address of Loomis’ aid Marion Chambers Whittington. Michael goes to Whittington’s house in Haddonfield Illinois and slaughters her as well as two teenage neighbors. While there, Michael rummages through some of Loomis’ old notes and discovers that his sister Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) had never actually died (as had been believed) but instead was living in California under the name of Keri Tate. Michael steals a car and heads to Cali. Meanwhile, Keri (Laurie) Tate is the headmistress of Hillcrest academy, a prestigious private school in Summer Glen California. Although it has been twenty years since she last saw her psychotic brother Michael, she still suffers from intense nightmares, which have even driven her to drink. On top of that, she has to deal with a precocious teen-age son, John (Josh Hartnett) who has just turned seventeen. We discover here that shortly after her first encounter with the murderous Michael, Laurie faked her own death and went into hiding. She married a man named Tate who gave her a son, John. Presumably, she did all this in order to hide from her brother in case he ever decided to come after her again. Most of the students of Hillcrest embark upon a summer camping trip, but four of the students elect to remain behind. John Tate along with his girlfriend Molly and their friends Sarah and Charlie decide to have their own private Halloween party on the grounds of the school. Keri believes that everyone has gone on the camping trip and doesn’t realize that John is still at home. She eventually decides to spend the evening at home with her boyfriend and colleague Will Brennan (Adam Arkin). As the two enjoy drinks by candlelight, Keri finally reveals to him that she is in fact Laurie Strode, the younger sister to the infamous Michael Myers. Before long problems start occurring within the halls of the campus. Michael Myers has apparently worked his way past the security guard Ronny (L. L. Cool J) and is now stalking the academic halls of Hillcrest. John and his friends begin to have their party but they barely even get started when Michael gets his first victim, Charlie Deveraux. Sarah comes to Charlie’s side only to find his bloody body as well as Michael Myers. She makes a valiant escape attempt via a dumbwaiter, but ultimately Michael cuts the running line before she can exit on the lower floor. The dumbwaiter comes crashing down savaging Sarah’s leg. Michael methodically goes downstairs to finish her off. John and Molly eventually investigate to see what happened to Charlie and Sarah. They too meet up with Michael Myers and the chase is on! They eventually catch up with Keri and Will, who are both surprised that the students aren’t on the camping trip. As the group hurriedly shuffles behind a steel door, Michael appears. Michael and Keri’s eyes meet for the first time in twenty years. Michael eventually breaks through the door and kills Will Brennan from behind. Keri shoves John and Molly into her sport-U and sends them away from the school. She locks the front gates and readies herself for a final showdown with Michael Myers. The two end up in a battle of the blades, but eventually Keri comes out on top. After defeating her brother, Ronny the security guard radios for the cops. Keri…awww fuck it. Let’s just call her Laurie. You KNOW that’s her real name anyway. LAURIE is not one to sit idly by and simply let her brother get carted away in an ambulance. She knows that Michael will likely rise again. So instead, she steals a policeman’s revolver and hijacks the ambulance! Miles away from the school, Michael begins to stir. He rips through the body bag and comes to realize that he is in the back of an ambulance. Laurie and he begin to struggle and the van crashes off the side of a ravine. Both Laurie and Michael are thrown from the vehicle. Laurie lands without injury, but Michael’s body becomes pinned between the van and a fallen tree trunk. Laurie walks over to him, picks up his machete and lops his head off. Acting/Dialogue: Everyone did a real fine job in this. I love seeing how the terrors of her past changed Laurie’s personality. When she was a teen-ager, she was a shy soft-spoken girl. Now she’s a strong willed, tough as nails, opinionated woman with a mouth that would make Eddie Murphy green with envy. There’s a scene where the hunter becomes the hunted and Jamie Lee is almost as frightening as Michael. L.L. Cool J played an interesting character. He was a security guard who really wanted to be a romance novelist. L.L. also deserves special mention as being one of the first to break the stereotype of brothers getting killed in Horror films. Go L.L.! This film also features the cinematic debut of Josh Hartnett (Of Pearl Harbor fame). Josh does a bang up job in this and his talent really shines in the scene where he is shown expressing the raw terror he feels as he realizes that his mother is staying behind at the academy. Good acting all around. Gore: I kind of regard this film as being more like Halloween-Light. All told, there are only six victims and there is little about their deaths that are really that exceptional. (Well, seven victims if you count Michael, but we all know damn well that he’s coming back.) Gore hounds will probably regard this film as being extremely weak. Although the kid who gets a hockey skate buried in his face made me smile. Guilty Pleasures: The only guilty pleasure in this is seeing Jamie Lee Curtis reprising the role of Laurie Strode. Beyond that, there’s no T&A and even the gore is kind of lacking. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out why this film was rated R. The Good: At its most basic, there’s a good story going on here. I like the dynamic set up between Keri Tate and her son. It’s interesting to see how he has to deal with a mother who is not only his school-marm, but is in serious need of therapy as well. The most telling scene is when John opens up her medicine cabinet at which point we see a virtual cornucopia of pharmaceuticals. This is one fucked up bitch. L.L. Cool J brought a nice bit of levity to the film. It was just enough to make you chuckle but he wasn’t so prominent as to distract from the rest of the movie. I got a kick out of seeing L.L. reciting his love story to his girlfriend and referencing a woman’s breasts as melons. But the best part of the film is the showdown between Laurie and Michael. Laurie is one badass bitch and the two actually get into a knife fight with one another. I love the part where she’s walking through the school grounds screaming Michael’s name just as the Carpenter Halloween score cues up. I don’t know about you guys, but I wouldn’t fuck with Jamie Lee Curtis. The Bad: Unfortunately, despite its good points, this film is really not all that strong. The worst part of it is the issue of continuity. At no point does the film acknowledge the existence of Jamie Lloyd (Laurie’s daughter from a previous marriage) who had been a key figure in the last three films. The most aggravating detail is that producer Moustappha Akkad’s official stance is that the four films prior to H20 never took place! Now while there is nothing in H20 that directly contradicts the previous films, it is infuriating nonetheless that we are meant to ignore a major chunk of the Michael Myers story. The official continuity as it stands is: Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween H20. Ignore Halloween III-VI. Some more bad: I really wish they had gotten George P Wilbur to reprise his roll as Michael Myers (also known as the Shape). Chris Durand is a shrimp of a man and does not make a very good Michael Myers at all. Also, they made some slight design changes to the Shape mask and it looks rather crappy. Michael just doesn’t look like the type of guy that can kick any sort of ass in this flick. The body count is exceptionally low in this movie. There are only six deaths and three of them occur in the first ten minutes of the film. Then of course there’s Michael’s beheading. The one thing that I liked about the Halloween franchise is that it had never gotten to the point of total cheesiness the way the Friday and Nightmare films had. It was still a strong viable and compelling property. But after the beheading of Michael Myers, I have great reservation as to where the next project may take us. Low body count, unimpressive gore, weak looking villain and an unforgivable lack of boobies really drops this one down a few notches on the ole cool-o-meter. I fear for the future of this franchise. Great Lines: “Michael!” –Keri Tate stalking the academy looking for her brother. “What the FUCK do you think you’re doing.” –Keri bitch-slapping Josh Hartnett. Come on. Don’t we ALL wish we could bitch-slap Josh Hartnett? “My brother killed my sister.” “How did he do that?” “With a really big, sharp kitchen knife.” --Keri telling Brennan about her background. Overall Rating: 4 out of 10 shrunken heads. |
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