Franchises: Halloween. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

"Halloween... water?" That was my exact first thought when I saw the title in our satellite provider's programming guide, and it's also the response I tend to get when I mention it to those who aren't savvy about the series. They always ask, "Does he spend most of the movie in a lake or something? Does the entire movie take place underwater, like on a submarine?" It may sound silly, but that title is so unusual that it's not hard to get why non-fans would be perplexed by it. As I've said before, this was the third Halloween I saw, after the first two, which is kind of appropriate, given how the three of them together form their own trilogy. Instead of seeing it on TV, it was when I got the VHS for my birthday in 2001, along with the original, and I watched it the day after I revisited that one. Going into it, I knew what the general story was, that it brought back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode for the first time since the second film, and, very significantly, it ended with her chopping Michael Myers' head off. Upon reading that latter bit of information on The Life and Times of Michael Myers website, I thought, "Well, I guess that's the last one. I got into this series just in time." (And make no mistake, this should have been the last one, but we'll get into that.) After watching it, my opinion was, "It's... good." I didn't think it was awesome or anything, as there was little about it I absolutely loved, but I certainly didn't hate it. To this day, I'm a tad conflicted on H20. Despite my initial, most positive, opinion of it, I went through a period where I felt it was vastly overrated, and that made me like it less, as there were other films in the series I enjoyed a lot more (I had heard some say they felt it was better than Halloween II, which I never agreed with and still don't, but that's neither here nor there).

And yet, it's weird that I say that because, from what I can tell, the general opinion on H20 is quite mixed. It has a pretty low rating on IMDB, which surprised me when I looked it up, and from what I've read, the critical reception when it was originally released was fairly mixed. While some critics really liked it, others generally dismissed it, and still others said that, while it was good, it still paled in comparison to the original. I knew before I saw it that John Stanley of Creature Features didn't like it very much, giving it just two stars, as he gave to the majority of the sequels, and really criticized both Jamie Lee Curtis' decision to return to the series and her portrayal of Laurie Strode this time around. But every time I heard fans talk about H20, they typically gave it a lot of praise, saying it was the best of the sequels, with Debra Hill herself saying as much in the documentary, Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest, which led to my feeling it was overrated. But I have to admit, when I got the double feature Blu-Ray of H20 and The Curse of Michael Myers back in 2011 and watched the former again, I rather enjoyed it, and the same goes for when I watched it again to clarify my opinion before I first did this review. Now, at the time I'm doing this update, I haven't watched it in quite a while, and while I remember enjoying it again the last time I did (mainly because it was when I was introducing someone to each film in the series), I can still safely say I prefer quite a few of the other movies. Moreover, H20 has since become something of an oddity, as its story was virtually redone in Halloween 2018 and there's now a debate as to which one did it better. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I'll go more into which I think did what better when I get around to reviewing "2018," but for now, I can say that I enjoy H20 much more these days than I once did.

October 29th, 1998. In Langdon, Illinois, nurse Marion Whittington (Chambers) comes home to find her house has been vandalized. After running into and telling her young neighbor, Jimmy, he calls the police, then searches the house himself. While he finds no sign of the intruder, he does discover that Marion's office has been vandalized. Marion then heads inside, only to find that the lights aren't working, and that the file she and Dr. Loomis had on Laurie Strode is missing. Feeling unsafe, she rushes over to Jimmy's house, only to find both him and his friend, Tony, murdered by the burglar, who's none other than Michael Myers. He kills Marion and escapes with the file, avoiding detection by the police. Laurie, meanwhile, after having faked her death years ago, now lives in Summer Glen, California, under the assumed name of Keri Tate, along with her son, John. Working as the headmistress of Hillcrest Academy, a private boarding school, Laurie is still traumatized by the night of terror she experienced twenty years before. Dependent on medication, she's an alcoholic and overly protective of John, which has been putting a strain on their relationship in recent years. That Halloween, her fear is particularly high, as it is every year, and she forbids John from attending a weekend getaway to Yosemite with the rest of the students, save for three of his friends, including his girlfriend, Molly. Taking advantage of the situation, the four of them decide to have a little intimate Halloween party on campus, while Laurie spends the evening with her own boyfriend, Will Brennan, the school's guidance counselor. However, their fun doesn't last long, as Michael arrives and begins stalking the grounds. After several people fall victim to him, Laurie realizes that her evil brother has finally come for her, and that John could very possibly become his next victim, unless she takes matters into her own hands and finally confronts him.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers did reasonably well at the box-office in 1995, but it still did little to re-energize the franchise's slump following the disappointment of Halloween 5. Regardless, the latter parts of Daniel Farrands' initial treatment for Halloween 6, which he said he made as big as possible in order to really impress Moustapha Akkad, were, at one point, considered for the basis for the seventh film, involving all of Haddonfield being part of the cult of Thorn. But after the ordeal he went through on Curse, Farrands decided not to write the screenplay, as he didn't want to see another brainchild of his get butchered. When Dimension did get around to developing a seventh film, it was initially intended to go direct-to-video. They hired Robert Zappia, who'd previously written for sitcoms like Home Improvement, to pen it. Told to start up with a clean slate, he came up with a scenario of Michael Myers stalking the halls of an all girl boarding school, with a Silence of the Lambs-like addition of an imprisoned serial killer who was aiding the police in catching him. But after he turned in his first draft, he met with Bob Weinstein, who told him they weren't going with that plot for a very simple reason: Jamie Lee Curtis was returning to the series. Zappia was then asked to incorporate Laure Strode into the boarding school setting and, even though it meant he now had a lot more work ahead of him, Zappia was thrilled that the movie was going to theaters. 

Then Scream came out in late 1996 and reinvigorated the slasher genre for the 90's. Not surprisingly, Dimension now wanted Kevin Williamson to be involved with the film, but he was reluctant to do so, as he was incredibly busy, not only with writing other movies but also in creating Dawson's Creek. Weinstein got him onboard by offering to produce his script, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and allow him to direct, in exchange for writing his own treatment for Halloween 7, separate from what Zappia was doing (Zappia has said he didn't even know they were courting Williamson at the time). In the end, while Williamson would not get any writing credits on the finished movie due to Writer's Guild stipulations, he would be significantly involved, working closely with Jamie Lee Curtis and director Steve Miner in developing the treatment, as well as helping with the teenagers' dialogue and acting as a consultant whenever he was on set. The final script would ultimately be Zappia's work, polished by another writer, Matt Greenberg, but you can still see and feel Williamson's influence all over the movie. I know there are quite a few who don't care for that style at all and criticize the film for it, but, while it's not a style I absolutely love, either (I don't hate it, though), I think it was the logical way for the studio to go after Scream had been such a huge hit. Plus, if not for Williamson and, especially, Curtis, Halloween would've suffered the same fate as Hellraiser and been banished to direct-to-video hell for the foreseeable future. So, my personal opinion of it aside, I will always be grateful to H20 for that.

Although the Weinsteins were always quick to take credit for Jamie Lee Curtis' return, and Malek Akkad says in the documentary, Blood Is Thicker Than Water: The Making of Halloween H20, that he credits Bob Weinstein in particular for making the deal, Curtis herself has always said that she was the one who decided to come back to the franchise and the horror genre, as she now felt secure enough in her career to where typecasting was no longer a danger. Plus, she also meant for the movie to be a love-letter to the fans and the franchise that had launched her. Regardless of how she came back into the fold, Curtis had a lot of creative input, and she hoped that, above all else, she could entice Debra Hill and John Carpenter to return as producer and director respectively. As usual, there are conflicting reports as to what happened. Carpenter maintains that he just out and out refused, as he had no interest, telling them, "God bless all of you, but no thanks." Other sources say that both Hill and Carpenter were interested, but when they met with the Weinsteins and Moustapha Akkad, Carpenter demanded $10 million up front, feeling he was owed a lot of unpaid profit participation. He also supposedly wanted final cut and a three-picture deal with Dimension. Needless to say, that wasn't going to happen, and thus, Carpenter bailed and Hill went with him. There may be some truth to this, as when he was interviewed by Fangoria for an article on Vampires, he mentioned that they weren't offering much money and what they were, "Wasn't enough money for me to work that hard. It just didn't feel right." In his book, Assault on the System: The Nonconformist Cinema of John Carpenter, Troy Howarth suggests that he likely asked for such a large fee knowing they would turn him down, as he really didn't want to do it. Carpenter has also said before that he doesn't care for Scream's meta approach and the influence it had on the horror genre, so he very likely wasn't willing to do something that was so heavily influenced by Kevin Williamson. Given what I've mentioned before about Carpenter's other brushes with the franchise, despite his insistence to the contrary, I have a feeling there was indeed more to the situation than he's let on. Again, I love the guy, but I don't find him trustworthy about certain things.

Though Curtis was disappointed by Carpenter and Hill backing out, she decided not to give up on the movie (a decision she would later say she regretted). Steve Miner, who'd directed Curtis in 1992's Forever Young, and who also happened to have shot the pilot for Dawson's Creek, ultimately got the gig. Naturally, like Curtis herself, Miner had quite the horror pedigree, having directed fan favorites like Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3, House, and Warlock. At the time, Miner had just gotten the green light for Lake Placid, but decided to put that movie on hold and do H20 in the meantime, while he waited for weather at that movie's filming location to improve. Overall, I think he did a pretty good job with the movie, despite some issues that would dog the film during shooting and post-production (though nothing as severe as what happened on Curse), and it was definitely one of the most successful films of his career. Unfortunately, his feature film career quickly petered out afterward. Though Lake Placid also did quite well at the box-office (I used to like that movie but it's lost its luster during repeated viewings), he then did Texas Rangers, a massive box-office dud in 2001. His next film was a remake of Day of the Dead, the release of which was pushed back constantly until it was finally dumped on DVD in 2008. His last movie was Private Valentine: Blonde and Dangerous, also from 2008, which starred Jessica Simpson, and went direct-to-DVD in the United States. Miner has had more success in television in recent years but hasn't directed another actual movie since 2008.

Like I said, John Stanley didn't care for the movie as a whole, but he especially didn't have much good to say about Jamie Lee Curtis' portrayal of Laurie Strode this time around. He described her as "shrewish," adding that she, "Curses all the time, drinks too much, and is half crazed with images of unstoppable killer Michael Myers," and concluded, "It is impossible to care about her." Well, the middle part is certainly true, but I think Mr. Stanley completely missed the point of where the character is meant to be at this point. I've always thought Curtis' portrayal of Laurie here is a great and plausible continuation of how we left her at the end of Halloween II, where she was sitting alone in the back of that ambulance, thinking about the horrifying night she'd just survived. Although it's been twenty years, Laurie (or Keri Tate, as she now calls herself) is still, understandably, haunted by Michael, to the point where her life is an unending, tormented nightmare. When we first see her, she's in the midst of an actual nightmare, screaming her head off, and her son, John, comes running in and has to shake her awake. He then goes to get her some medicine and, when he opens the cabinet, we see all of the different medications she has to take in order to deal with the trauma. We also learn that she's been divorced from John's father for a long time, describing him as an, "Abusive, chain-smoking, methadone addict." And she later tells Will Brennan that, no matter what type of therapy she's tried, nothing has worked. As she explains it, Michael sat in an institution for fifteen years, waiting for the right time to come for her, and then one random night, he did just that, so what would another twenty matter to him? Thus, I don't get how you couldn't feel bad for her, as well as understand why she's an alcoholic and protective of John, especially around Halloween, to the point of unintentionally smothering him. On top of that, having witnessed firsthand how hard Michael is to kill, there's a good reason why, each and every year, she worries if this will be the one when he returns for her and claims John as well.

It's not like Laurie's a complete paranoid nut-job 100% of the time, though. When she's at work, mingling with the staff of Hillcrest Academy and teaching her English class, she's very professional, even downright charming. In the scene where she's telling the students the rules of the impending class trip to Yosemite, for instance, she has a very light air about her, making jokes about her "obligatory plea" for them to uphold the school's high standards: "That means, no musical sleeping bags.

No booze. No drugs. No kidding. Undoubtedly someone will ruin it for the rest of them..." Given what I know about Jamie Lee Curtis as a person, and what I've seen in interviews with her, this feels like how she would actually act if she were the headmistress of a private boarding school. I also like the scene where she's talking with her English students about the original novel of Frankenstein and, when she doesn't get any insight from them right away, she jokes, "Guys, it's Fraunkensteen! You could've watched the movie! [I would've

asked, "Which one?"]" Many of the students laugh about it, giving off an air that she's quite popular among them. Honestly, I wish I had some teachers like her (although I did have some really good ones over the years). And I also completely buy Will's attraction to her. Yeah, he can plainly see that she has some issues, but her charm and sense of humor is hard to resist (plus, it doesn't hurt that Jamie Lee Curtis, despite being almost forty at the time, still looks pretty good here).

As it was between him and Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4, there seems to be some sort of connection between Laurie and Michael even before they come face to face with each other during the third act. Here, it's very cleverly portrayed through the progression of her delusions and fear of him. Like in that film, it starts with a nightmare, this one seemingly depicting Michael's POV as he stalks the halls of Hillcrest and enters Laurie's office. Some of these spots are where

Michael does actually stalk her and the others later, as well as where some of their final confrontation takes place, as if Laurie is also having a premonition. Then, throughout the day, she has hallucinations about him, first when she's in her office and looks out the window, only to see his "reflection" in the glass. Now, we actually see him, and while Laurie is able to make this hallucination go away, she's not so fortunate later on in town, when she sees his reflection again. This time, she

turns around and sees that it's actually Will who's behind her, but regardless, the hallucination has now been projected onto a concrete figure. Moreover, it's not long after that when we learn Michael has actually arrived in town. Finally, we get the moment where Laurie sees him walking towards her on the dark school campus. This time, no matter how hard she tries, she can't force it away, and he actually comes up and touches her, only for her to learn it's just Will again after she recoils and yells. Now, it could've again been Will

she was truly seeing, or it might've been really been Michael, who now is on the school grounds but then hid when Will showed up at the last minute, but regardless, her visions and fear of him are becoming more pronounced over time. It gets to the point where, after telling Will her backstory, Laurie, realizing that John is now the same age she was on that Halloween night, feels something is wrong. It's like she can now sense Michael's presence, and her learning that the phones aren't working and there's a strange car parked at the gate

all but confirms it. And, of course, she turns out to be right when they have a little family reunion after she and Will save John and Molly from him. Will's death soon afterward, the danger that John's in, and the realization that Michael will never stop are the final catalysts for Laurie deciding to take matters into her own hands and confront him once and for all.

Overall, as far as the depiction of a Laurie Strode who's still traumatizes decades later goes, I'm going to have to give the point to H20. While I do like aspects of Laurie in Halloween 2018, and some of it is similar to how it is here, I also think they went really overboard with it, especially given the parameters of that particular movie; H20, on the other hand, goes for a much more believable approach. As I've already described, rather than make Laurie into a Sarah Connor-type who's

relentlessly trained her child in survival from the time they were very young, and has been waiting for Michael to eventually come for her so she can confront and kill him, we have her living in abject fear, praying that Michael won't ever find her and John, and finally deciding that she has to face him and end it then and there. And for me personally, that's much more effective.

At this point, the only other movie with Josh Hartnett that I've ever really seen is 30 Days of Night, and if you've read that review, you know that I'm not big on the guy at all. Even in clips I've seen of his other movies, I've never found him to be charismatic or possessive of any personality whatsoever. But ironically, in this, his first film, I think he does quite well as John Strode. He makes John come off as someone who, despite how much he may love his mother, and sympathetic he is towards her issues, is tired of her not letting him have his own life, forbidding him to go on the upcoming class trip to Yosemite or even leave the school grounds. As far as he's concerned, she needs to realize that it's been twenty years, that Michael Myers would have come for her by this point if he was going to, and they should, at least, try to have a happier life. In particular, the scene where the two of them have a very heated argument in the middle of town is well acted by both Jamie Lee Curtis and Hartnett, especially the latter when he tells her, "If you want to stay handcuffed to your dead brother, that's fine, but you're not dragging me along. Not anymore." Even though we know just how wrong John is, you understand where he's coming from. Laurie then decides to make it up to him, as well as possibly get him to safety, by allowing him to go to Yosemite after all, but unbeknownst to her, John and his friends, who also aren't going, have decided to hold their own private Halloween party. That eventually leads to John and his girlfriend, Molly, coming face-to-face with Michael, after finding their friends dead. Though they don't dwell on it, when they both first see Michael, John has this clear expression of, "Oh, my God!", on his face. Obviously, even though he's never seen him before, he knows who he is, and realizes that his mom was right all along. 

On top of everything else, John is just a pretty likable, even funny, guy. There are, unfortunately, a couple of moments where some of Hartnett's wooden acting does rear its ugly head (like in a supposedly romantic scene between him and Molly) but, for the most part, he's able to generate some genuine charisma and energy. For instance, when Ronny, the security guard, won't let him and Charlie off school grounds, John comes up with a possible scenario he could go with: "Okay,

how about this? You 'accidentally' press the gate, and when you have your back turned, we sneak out." Ronny, reluctantly, goes with it, and later regrets it when Laurie drives them back. When she chews Ronny out for letting them loose, John just makes a look of discomfort at him, which only annoys him even more. Also, there's a cute moment where John's making silly faces at Molly during English class. One moment I particularly like happens when the two of them are waiting for Charlie and Sarah to come back so they can start

the Halloween party, then go looking for them after they've been gone a while. As they round a corner, John playfully goes, "Hellooo?", and he and Molly have both figured they're already having sex. It's a small, insignificant moment, but it's a bit of personality I wish I could see from Hartnett more often.

While we're on the subject of Laurie and her son, I think this is a good time to bring up how H20 reboots the series' continuity, acting as a direct sequel to Halloween II and ignoring everything else (the first of several times the series would do that, as it turns out). Originally, there were plans to connect it to Halloween 4, 5, and 6, including in Kevin Williamson's treatment, but those were eventually scrapped, likely because they knew all too well what a complete mess the Jamie Lloyd

story-line had become by the time they got to The Curse of Michael Myers. Trying to follow up on that in a manner that was the least bit cohesive would've been nearly impossible, so they decided to keep it simple by just ignoring them altogether. I'm sure that angered diehard fans of those movies, making them feel as though their years of investment was rendered meaningless, but as much as I do personally enjoy Halloween 4 and The Curse of Michael Myers, I think the filmmakers made the right decision. Also, it wouldn't have

been very good for Laurie's character if we were to learn she did have two children and yet, left one behind while taking the other with her when she faked her death and went into hiding (which, in the early scripts, was originally meant to explain why she was believed to have been dead in the previous movies).

Adam Arkin is another actor whom I'm not a big fan of, as I don't care for that nonchalant, kind of awkward humor he does, but I think he does well enough here as Laurie's boyfriend, Will Brennan. That said, though, while Will does come across as likable, sometimes I'm not sure if he really wants to help Laurie deal with whatever issues he knows she has or if he says he does just so he can get into her pants. When he's listening to her allude at her past trauma while they're having lunch, he comes across as sincere, telling her that he's a good listener. But later on, when they're making out at her house and she begins to tell him, saying her brother stabbed her sister to death, he says, "That's terrible. Take off your clothes." Maybe I should cut him some slack, as he was probably caught up in the moment of making out with someone as attractive as Jamie Lee Curtis and that would be a buzzkill, for sure, but she has to remind him that he promised to listen to her, and he just sighs and says, "Okay." And he doesn't even believe her at first. While he knows about Michael Myers, he thinks she's fooling around with him by pretending to be Laurie Strode. Why would a person as troubled as her joke about that, even as a Halloween prank? That said, once he realizes that she is telling the truth, and gets over his initial shock, Will becomes sincerely invested and tries to comfort her about it. Granted, he does thinks she's overreacting when, upon learning that the phones aren't working, she pulls a gun out from underneath her pillow and goes to look for John. But he becomes determined to help her when he learns Michael is on the grounds and refuses to leave her, even when she tells him to. Unfortunately, his last act is to accidentally shoot Ronny, wasting all of Laurie's bullets and then get stabbed in the gut and lifted up by Michael.

One of H20's biggest faults is that the supporting cast isn't the most interesting, especially the other teenagers. John's friend, Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd), I think is meant to be the comic relief, but he's not all that funny, and the only noteworthy thing he does is suggest that they all get out of the trip to Yosemite to have their own private Halloween party. Otherwise, all I can say about him is that he desperately wants to bang his girlfriend, finds obesity sexy, and shoplifts some

booze for the party. I have even less to say about said girlfriend, Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). Like Charlie, she badly wants to bang her boyfriend, and her supposed goal in life is to get really fat (I'm not making that up either); thus, she calls Charlie a renaissance man for thinking that obesity is sexy. She also doesn't want to go to Yosemite simply because it's lame and "repugnant" (a word she takes a long time to come up with), and is a suck-up to Will when he comes in to check on her and Molly. Also in that scene, she tells him that the two

of them are planning to pick up some guys and, "You know, drop some roofies in their drinks. Have a whole date-rape evening." (Her words, not mine. And Will adds to the awkwardness by saying he can't join them because he's having his nipples pierced.) All that said, she does have the most gruesome death in the film. And finally, there's Michelle Williams as John's girlfriend, Molly, who probably has the most baggage of the supporting cast but, even then, all it comes down to is that she's unable to go to Yosemite because her dad didn't send her any financial aid. Her most significant scene is in the English class, where she says that, in Frankenstein, it took Victor Frankenstein's losing everyone he loved to the Monster to make him decide to confront him, adding that it was his fate to do so. It clearly has an effect on Laurie already, making her think, and plants the seed of her decision to finally confront Michael at the end.

It's cool to see Janet Leigh as Norma (ugh), Laurie's old but fairly energetic and enthusiastic secretary... but she's only in two scenes and it seems the only reasons she's here at all is so they can make as many references to Psycho as possible, as well as because she's Jamie Lee Curtis' mother (which she not so subtly hints at with the line, "If I could be maternal for a moment,"). That said, her latter scene does have some nice acting on her part, as she knows something's bothering Laurie, telling her that she's seen her like this before and, "We've all had bad things happen to us. The trick is to concentrate on today." She then sweetly tells her to take care of herself, as well as, "Happy Halloween." Though Laurie doesn't take too well to that, she still smiles at Norma, who then drives off. Honestly, I don't mind hearing Janet Leigh say that, as well as Sheriff Brackett's classic line, "Everyone's entitled to one good scare," line, which she did earlier.

As Ronny, the security guard, LL Cool J is really meant to be another form of comic relief, and while they don't give him that much to do, I think he's a lot funnier than Charlie. I do smirk at the scenes where he's talking to his wife on the phone about his desire to write romance novels and her disparaging comments when he reads what he's come up with lately (which I totally agree with, as it sounds like a bunch of overly sexual dribble). And I'd be lying if I said I didn't genuinely laugh at moments like when John comes up behind him, accidentally scaring him and causing him to yell, "Whoa, fuck me! Shit!", which his wife thinks he's yelling at her. I also like the little moment between him and John when Ronny refuses to let him into town, telling him that Laurie said he'd be fired if he let him out again, but he eventually does, telling him to comb his hair as he leaves (a real comment LL Cool J made about Josh Hartnett's messy hair). When Laurie arrives back at the school and chews Ronny out, the face he makes at John is priceless. And I also laughed at how Laurie points a gun right at him when he suddenly shows up at her doorstep, scaring the crap out of him again, and even after she puts it down, he continues to stare at it (Jamie Lee Curtis' reaction to that moment on the audio commentary is just as funny). Finally, despite the cliche that black people get killed off first in horror films, Ronny doesn't die at all. You initially think he does when Will accidentally shoots him, but you later learn the bullet just grazed him ("bullet," even though Will shot him a number of times), and that he's not only perfectly fine but has been inspired to write a romantic thriller. When he pops back up, he stupidly stops Laurie from definitively finishing Michael off near the end, so if you hate Halloween: Resurrection, you can blame him for it.

I thought it was very cool that they brought back Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers (or Wittington, as her surname is here) for another link to the first two movies. She doesn't have much to do other than get killed in the opening prologue (the first of two times Michael has killed her across the franchise), but it's still nice to see her again and she doesn't go down without a fight. She's not completely insignificant, either, as you later learn that she cared for Dr. Loomis during the latter

years of his life and kept his confidential file on Laurie Strode. And has one of my favorite quotes ever when asked, "Hasn't anyone told ya? Second-hand smoke kills,": "Yeah, but they're all dead." Speaking of which, while there's nothing at all to say about Tony (Branden Williams), other than he's a total coward who refuses to help his friend, Jimmy, in checking out Marion's house, I do have to give special mention to Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jimmy. It's really interesting to see him here, as this was that time after Third Rock from the Sun where he was in a kind of limbo before he became a much more sought after adult actor. Like Marion and Tony, he might not have much to do here, and he dies offscreen, but he has his natural likability going for him, particularly when he's acting all tough while investigating Marion's house, yelling, "Alright, let's not anyone mess with me here! Jimmy been suspended five times this year already for gettin' a little crazy with the stick, alright?!" I also like how, after he smashes up a bit of her kitchen when something startles him, he blames it on the burglar. And yeah, he's the type of person who takes advantage of the situation and steals some beer from her refrigerator, but he still doesn't deserve the very painful-looking death he receives.

Although Dr. Loomis, sadly, isn't a part of this story, he is here in spirit, as during the awesome opening credits sequence, we hear his iconic speech from the original about Michael being pure evil. Many don't like how it's not the original audio of Donald Pleasence (they couldn't find any version of that speech which wasn't mixed with the score), but I've always thought Tom Kane, the veteran voice actor who did it instead, pulled it off quite well. While I can tell it's not Pleasence, the way Kane spoke it was very appropriate for what they were trying to get across, that Loomis never forgot that first meeting and it forever haunted him after Michael's killing spree in 1978. It's sad to think that, in this timeline, he spent the remainder of his life obsessed with the idea that Michael was likely still out there and spent every waking moment trying to find him.

From a visual standpoint, H20 is the first movie since Halloween III to be shot in 2.35:1 (albeit on Super 35mm rather than actual anamorphic lenses), as Steve Miner and his cinematographer, Daryn Okada, felt compelled to try to replicate Dean Cundey's work in those first three films. While I don't think what they did was quite on that level, it is a very well-made movie, with an overall slick, modern look, with plenty of gliding camera pans and movements that bring to mind Cundey's use of the Steadicam, most notably during Laurie's

nightmare following the credits, as well as some very impressive crane and overhead shots. There are also some shots that are downright Hitchcockian, like when the police arriving at Marion's house are oblivious to Michael attacking her through the window to Jimmy's house behind them, and the shot looking up through the garbage disposal after Charlie accidentally knocks the corkscrew down it. And as John Carpenter and Cundey did in the original, Miner and Okada use the screen's width to often have Michael Myers

appear in the background, unseen by the characters. One of the most effective ways in which he's photographed is during the scene at the rest area, where the mother looks through the small crack between the stall's door and the wall and sees him pass by, followed by an obscured shot of him reflected in the mirror. And while not to the extent as in the original, we don't get a really good look at Michael until the third act; otherwise, he's kept mostly offscreen or in the shadows, like in the

scene where he stalks and kills Marion Chambers in Jimmy's house. Speaking of which, I think the movie is most effectively creepy, particularly in a visual manner, during that prologue, with the gray overcast sky, the dim lighting that transitions from dusk to nightfall as the sequence goes on, and how utterly dark it is in both Marion and Jimmy's houses. That's not say the movie isn't atmospheric at Hillcrest Academy on Halloween night, as there is some very memorable imagery, shadow-play, and use of darkness there to be sure, but it just doesn't do it for me the way that opening does.

My love for that opening is two-fold: it's the true feeling of a Midwest autumn that you get in the exteriors, as well as how genuinely eerie the interiors of Marion's house are, mostly due to how dark it is, with the lights off. It's already kind of spooky on the outside, due to the fading light and the sporadic Halloween decorations, as well as that relatable fear of your home being broken into, but when Jimmy investigates it and Marion later goes in, the power being off, the dark hallways, her trashed office, and the only illumination being the

very low light outside and, later, her flashlight, combined with the sounds of Michael wandering around elsewhere, make it quite creepy. In fact, the interiors of Jimmy's house are kind of the same way during Michael and Marion's confrontation, as it's quite dark, with the only lighting coming from the TV and the flashing police lights outside. But my favorite spot in this opening is definitely Dr. Loomis' old office, where you see the extent of his obsession with Michael, as the walls are decorated with numerous photographs, newspaper clippings, a map, and, most notably, a drawing of Michael's mask, all of which you get to see in great detail during the opening credits.

While the prologue takes place in Langdon, Illinois, the rest of the film is set in Summer Glen, California, making this the only Michael Myers movie to not have a single scene set in Haddonfield. While it does make H20 unique, and the change of location is refreshing, I think it also undermines that ever-important Halloween feeling. Mind you, the prologue does have this extensively, with the opening shot of the woman carving the jack-o-lantern (the movie literally beginning with the knife suddenly rising in the air got me the first

time I saw it), kids running amid the wet road and sidewalks, all of the Halloween decorations, and the way that scene looks, followed by the downpour the following day. But once we shift to Summer Glen, the film loses that feeling and never quite gets it back, due to all of the bright sunshine and still green leaves making it feel more like springtime than October. I'm not going to be as critical about it here than I was before, including on the original, as this actually is meant to be

California, rather than California doubling for Illinois, but I still can't help it: it doesn't feel like a Halloween movie to me without that Midwest flavor. Now, Halloween III proved you can set one of these movies in California and make it work, but Miner doesn't manage to create the spooky atmosphere and feeling of dread that Tommy Lee Wallace did. And while you do still see Halloween decorations and kids in costume when Laurie goes into town, the isolated setting of the school sometimes makes it hard to remember that it is Halloween, save for the kids' private party and the pumpkin Will brings Laurie.

A place that's as secluded as Hillcrest Academy, with the campus being fenced in and an electronic gate being the only way in or out, is an ideal setting for a horror film, with great potential for suspense coming from the notion of the characters being trapped with the threat. However, I don't think H20 really takes advantage of its setting. There are some great scenes and setpieces here, for sure, and the various dorms and other sections of the school, like the assembly hall where Laurie and Michael fight it out and the campus grounds, are shot and

used very well, but I never get the feeling that the characters are truly trapped within the school's walls. On a psychological level, I get how isolated and smothered John feels from his mother never letting him off the campus, especially given how small their little bungalow looks, but during the third act, once Laurie, John, and Molly escape the main building and run to Laurie's van, they very easily get to the gate and open it with the controls. It's only after the kids escape and Laurie smashes

the controls that we now feel there's no way out of this place, and even then, it's not used all that well, as following her battle with Michael, the police and EMTs seemed to have gotten in pretty easily. If Michael himself had smashed those controls once he got on the grounds, it would've worked much better, as you could've had a scene where they get to the gate and realize that they're trapped, forcing Laurie to either find somewhere else to hide John and Molly or find them an alternate escape route so she can confront Michael without their being in danger.

Not that I think they should've set the whole film here, but the little rest area, where the mother and her little girl encounter Michael, is much more effectively isolated than Hillcrest. It really looks and feels like it's out in the middle of nowhere, and we don't see any other cars on the road when they drive up to it, giving a sense that the two of them are utterly alone. It also doesn't help that the restroom is not only rundown but so utterly creepy-looking, given how the light doesn't work and the mother has to keep the door propped open with a big rock so they can kind of see what they're doing. But then, Michael takes care of that by shutting the door, before taking the mother's purse.

Since Kevin Williamson was fairly involved, it's not surprising that there are a lot of references to other horror films in H20, and while it's never quite as meta as Scream, it is borderline at points. As Daniel Farrands did when writing the previous film, there are callbacks to the previous Halloween movies, including a recreation of Laurie looking out a classroom window and seeing Michael watching her, only for him to disappear when she's distracted by the teacher; here, it's done with Molly, with Laurie as the teacher. When they're

talking about Frankenstein there, Molly also brings up fate, which is what Laurie's teacher asked her about in the original. Not too long after that, we have Laurie bump into Norma, startling her, as she did with Sheriff Brackett, and Norma apologizes, adding, "Well, it's Halloween. I guess everybody's entitled to one good scare." Will's death is very similar to Nurse Jill's in Halloween II, and Michael falling over the balcony definitely brings mind the ending of the original. And Michael getting flung through the coroner van's windshield, standing up

in front of it, and being driven into makes me think of when Rachel did the same to him in Halloween 4. While these callbacks are nice and all, the references to Psycho, on the other hand, are so on the nose that it's a bit obnoxious. Besides Janet Leigh playing Norma, in her first scene, she tells Laurie that the drains in the girls' shower are clogged. Before that, Charlie tells John, regarding his relationship with his mother, "You're becoming an Oedipal enabler, you know that?... Twenty years from now, you're still going to be living with her.

Probably running some weird motel out in the middle of nowhere." When Laurie brings John and Charlie back to the campus, Ronny, after getting chewed out, calls Laurie a "psycho." And when Norma walks to her car, it's the exact same make and model that Marion Crane drove in Psycho, and you even hear a bit of Bernard Herrmann's music! Plus, let's not forget how, when Marion first runs into Jimmy at the beginning, he's wearing a hockey mask (in his audio commentary with Jamie Lee Curtis and Sean Clark, Steve Miner, as always, is reluctant to comment on how he started his career with Friday the 13th, merely saying that the hockey mask is a reference to some horror movies he made years before).

The reference that I feel goes way too far is when you see Molly and Sarah watching Scream 2 on the TV in their dorm. Think about that for a second: they're watching a sequel to a movie that takes place in a reality where the Halloween movies are just movies, and had clips from the original Halloween in it. You'd expect to see that kind of fourth wall breaking in something like Scary Movie, not a legitimate sequel to one of the movies that series often parodies. Originally, they were going to have them watching So I Married an Axe Murderer (Mike Meyers outright said no to both that and an offered cameo), which would've been corny enough, but using one of the Scream movies was really going overboard, not just because of the massive paradox it creates but also because it's in a movie that was already heavily influenced by that series' major success.

In addition to the references, you can also see Williamson's fingerprints on H20 in its very identity: a glossy, late 90's/early 2000's slasher movie, where the characters are a group of hip, good-looking teenagers and/or college students, and the script is attempting to be very clever and witty. It's very much in the same vein as stuff like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, and such, and whether or not that works for you is going to depend on your personal taste, as well as if you have some nostalgia for that era, like me.

Being a child of the 90's, I remember when Scream and all those movies it influenced came out and, while I was still far too young to see any of them (and was too scared to, regardless), I remember how, among my friends, they made horror cool to talk about. Again, this style may not be my personal favorite, and H20 isn't one of my favorites of this series (though I would much rather watch it than any of the I Know What You Did Last Summers and some of the Screams), but I can't help but be filled with nostalgia whenever I go back to these types of flicks.

Going back to the subject of this being a reboot, while some fans were okay with this initial rewriting of the Halloween story, others weren't too happy that nearly a decade's worth of continuity was simply thrown out the window, and they tried to come up with their own head-canon to tie all of the movies together. Some of these theories are quite elaborate and interesting, such as Haddonfield and the state of Illinois covering up the events of 4-6 to avoid an economic collapse, or Jamie being taken away from Laurie because of

some legal entanglement, after which she faked her death and made sure the same thing didn't happen with John. As creative as some of these theories are, though, you can always poke holes in them. For instance, when you remember that the very reason Jamie was put up for adoption in Halloween 4 was due to Laurie's death, it wouldn't make sense for the same thing to not happen to John. And how would Laurie have been able to take John with her and make everyone else, including Jamie, think she was still alive? Did she have Jamie with her when

she faked the supposedly fatal car crash? If that's the case, why not take her, too? It makes even less sense given how, by all intents and purposes, John and Jamie would've been born at the same time, meaning Jamie would've been old enough to understand the truth. I really like that the fans are so passionate about the series that they try desperately to make it all work out, but sometimes you have to accept the mechanics of storytelling for what they are. If I had a problem with reboots,

it would be impossible for me to love the Godzilla franchise, which has been re-imagined, rebooted, and redone so many times that even hardcore fans can sometimes need a Rosetta stone to keep it all straight. Plus, there are now so many different timelines within the Halloween series that you can follow whichever ones you want, with some going as far as to discount Resurrection from this one because of how badly it bungles this movie's ending, and others only recognizing either the first two movies or just the original Halloween itself.

Speaking of Halloween II, I've heard arguments from some, one of them being James Rolfe, that H20 actually does what Halloween 2018 would later do and ignore that film as well. Their evidence is how one of detectives at the beginning mentions how Michael Myers' body was never found twenty years before (which does sound like they're talking about the original's ending) and that Michael, unlike in Halloween 4, doesn't have any burn scars. However, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. Most notably, the brother-sister

relationship between Laurie and Michael, which wasn't established until Halloween II, is very much a part of this story. Also, when Laurie and John have their heated argument in town, John says, "You told me yourself you watched him burn," a clear reference to the second film's ending. Of course, then how do we account for his body having never been found? Well, knowing how resourceful and nigh invulnerable Michael is, I don't think it's that far-fetched to assume, just like how he disappeared after being shot off the

balcony, he slipped away before the police were able to reach the corridor to the operating room. As for Michael not being burned... I don't have an answer there. While it's still incredible to think that both he and Dr. Loomis survived that explosion, in both continuities, no less, at least Halloween 4-6 showed some burn damage on both of them, even if it really should've been far worse. But here, Michael's perfectly fine, with no explanation whatsoever (he is in California, so maybe he

dropped in for some quick plastic surgery). Regardless, even if you don't like Halloween II and feel H20 is the superior sequel, there's plenty of evidence that they're still counting it in this continuity. (Funnily enough, in his interview for Taking Shape, Kevin Williamson mentions that they did consider discounting Halloween II as well but, because of its very close tie to the original, they felt it was significant enough to keep as part of the story-line... something I think they should've done with the Blumhouse trilogy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

In many ways, H20 marks a return to form for Michael Myers himself. First, the reboot, mercifully, removes all of that curse of Thorn crap, with his only motivation here being to kill Laurie, for whatever reason. Some may still say even that's too much motivation but I'd rather it be just that than some exterior force making him kill his bloodline. Second, for the first time since Halloween II, he actually feels like Michael Myers, instead of a Jason Voorhees clone, as he's played by Chris Durand, a man with a tall, slim build, instead of someone big and bulky, like George P. Wilbur or Don Shanks. Also, as in the original Halloween, his main weapon of choice is a classic butcher knife (with a huge blade, I might add), and while he does use a few other methods, the kills aren't as over the top as they have been in the past three films. They may be bloodier than anything in the original, mind you, but he's not crushing people's skulls with his bare hands or shoving objects all the way through their bodies. Third, Michael does a lot more stalking here than we've seen lately. He may be out in the open more here than in the original but, like there, we see him standing around and observing people, waiting for an opportunity to strike, instead of just waltzing in and killing someone or charging in like a pit bull. He really shows some intelligence as well, like in how he simply takes that lady's purse with her car keys at the rest area, instead of needlessly murdering both her and her daughter, or when he's trying to get at John and Molly when they're stuck between a small gate and a door, notices the keys on the ground, picks them up, and attempts to find the right one for the gate. 

That said, I do still have some qualms with the character. One of them has to do with Durand's physical performance, though I can't put my finger on exactly why. While he definitely has that Nick Castle glide to him, rather than coming off as lumbering like in some of the previous movies, and I like when he makes it to where you can see the wheels turning in Michael's head, overall, Durand has always come off as kind of bland to me and doesn't bring anything new to the table. Maybe if he'd gotten to play Michael a second time, he

could've done a little more with it. Also, while Dwight Little thought he was making Michael more of a realistic lunatic back in Halloween 4, this film truly does treat him like an actual serial killer. Part of that is because we no longer have Dr. Loomis around to remind us that Michael is less a man than evil personified in the shape of one, but another part is because, even though this is a direct sequel to the first two movies, his being unnaturally strong and virtually unkillable before is not directly touched upon, even by Laurie. The

closest we get is the start of the climax, where Laurie, knowing that Michael isn't dead, despite his being zipped up in a body bag, hijacks the coroner's van in order to ensure his death. Other than that, nobody mentions how he took numerous gunshots over the course of that first Halloween night, survived being set ablaze, and that he's not scarred at all; instead, he's portrayed as just Laurie's homicidal brother, whom she's been hiding from. And while he does take a licking, up until the

climax and ending, he doesn't receive any damage that would definitively kill a normal man. Yet, the movie still tries to go for that mysterious, undefinable supernatural quality we got in the original, creating a contradictory portrayal of Michael that would become a common trend in the following movies. Michael will sometimes appear and disappear before you know what happened, like when John and Molly run far away after first seeing him, only for him to suddenly ambush them,

or when he seems to walk away when Laurie is hiding underneath the tables in the assembly hall, only to suddenly appear atop the very one she's beneath. He also walks directly behind Ronny in one scene, not making a single sound, and later lowers himself from the ceiling right behind Laurie, which he could not have done without her seeing him beforehand or hearing him. Let's not forget how he lifts Will up with just his knife-blade after stabbing him. And like in Halloween 4, Michael is completely silent and never breathes heavily, which has always been something of a sign that he is, at least, somewhat human.

Strangely, the film seems to be trying to imply that Michael specifically targets members of his family who are currently seventeen, as Laurie notes that Judith was seventeen when he murdered, she herself was that age in 1978, and now John is, the latter of which makes Laurie worry for John's safety when she still thinks he's at Yosemite. By extension, they also kind of suggest that Michael is after John rather than Laurie, and it was just a happy coincidence that she happens to be at the school as well. However, that makes no sense, as Michael obviously stole Laurie's file to learn her whereabouts and would obviously have no reason to know John even exists. And even if he did, possibly thanks to that file, I have a feeling that Laurie would be his first priority, i.e. the whole point of this movie. Until Ernie Magnotta mentioned it in his book, Halloween: The Changing Shape of an Iconic Series, I never thought that much about this whole seventeen angle, as it's so glossed over and never expounded upon, and even now, I don't why that put it in there to begin with.

While not as troubled as the previous film, H20 did still have a few production issues, and like with Halloween 4, one of them involved Michael's mask. However, this one was much more complicated. When shooting began, they were working with a mask designed by KNB, which had been approved by Steve Miner, who's said to have wanted it to look almost totally featureless. According to Greg Nicotero in Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, however, the higher-ups told them to make it, "A close approximation that won't get us into any legal problems," as they didn't want to deal with rights issues to the original mask (I don't know why there would be rights issues since this is an official Halloween movie and not some fan film, but we know how much producers can be cheapskates). They shot a good chunk of the movie with this mask, when the decision was made to change it, either because the Weinsteins and Moustapha Akkad suddenly decided they didn't like it or because, again, according to Nicotero, during a screening of dailies, someone said, "That's not Michael Myers' mask," and they all panicked. While all close-ups of Michael would be re-shot with a different mask, the KNB mask is still visible in the final film in wide shots and quick cuts. A close-up of it would also end up in the trailer, and it's even been mistakenly used in some home media covers, like on that double-feature Blu-Ray for H20 and The Curse of Michael Myers. Looking at it in close-up, it's not hard to see why they decided to change it: it's far too round, especially with the nose, and the face is much plainer than Michael's mask has ever looked. The only good thing I can say about the mask is that the eye-holes hide the eyes a lot more than the mask they replaced it with. 

John Carl Buechler was contacted to create a new mask, which turned out to be an altered version of the one in the previous film, and can be seen in the opening where Michael stalks and kills Marion. While that sequence is very darkly lit and you don't get a clear close-up of the mask, if you look closely, you can tell it's not the same one that Michael wears for the majority of the film afterward. Miner, however, did not give approval for this mask (Buechler himself said the producers went behind his back and he didn't even know that

the initial mask wasn't liked) and so, was not happy when he saw Buechler and his team on the set with it. He then went to Stan Winston and his group for another mask, meant as an amalgamation of what he liked about the KNB mask and what the studio liked about the Buechler mask. This is the mask you see throughout the majority of the finished film and... eh, I'm very mixed on it. When it's lit well and shot from certain angles, it looks fine, but there are plenty of times where something about it feels off. I don't like the hair, as it sometimes looks

like Michael has a damn Mohawk; the face looks downright goofy in some shots, like in the close-up when Laurie knees Michael in the crotch during their fight; and, as I said before, you see his eyes too much. I didn't mind it when you saw them in Halloween II, as they were still darkly lit, whereas they're a tad too vivid here. Finally, when Charlie turns around to see Michael standing in front of him, the mask in that shot is digital because they didn't have time to re-shoot it. I remember always

thinking the mask looked funky there but I just figured it was due to my VHS, so it was interesting to learn years later that it was computer generated. While it can be fun to watch H20 and try to spot where each mask shows up, it also kind of hurts Michael's effectiveness when it's obvious that his mask keeps changing, and it makes this reasonably-budgeted studio movie come off as just sloppy. 

H20 is probably just behind the original Halloween as the least bloody film in the series. It certainly has a higher body count and more of the red stuff than the original, but it's not a gory massacre like Halloween II and the kills aren't as over the top as the four films in-between. The first couple of deaths, that of Jimmy and Tony, both happen offscreen, and you only see the aftermaths: Jimmy has a skate smashed into his face and Tony got stabbed in the back with a weapon like a poker. Michael then eventually catches Marion and

slashes her throat, a brief and slightly bloody effect, but still enough to make you wince. There isn't another death until Charlie gets it while looking for a corkscrew for the champagne bottle, akin to when Crispin Glover bought the farm in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. After Charlie gets the corkscrew and then encounters Michael, Sarah later finds his body in the dumbwaiter, with a big gaping wound in his neck. I used to think Michael slashed his throat with his knife but

everyone seems to think he put the corkscrew in his neck. In any case, while Charlie also died offscreen, Sarah isn't so lucky, as she gets the most painful, prolonged death in the film. First, Michael stabs her in the leg while she's trying to get in the dumbwaiter and then, when she gets to the top and tries to crawl out, her leg gets caught underneath Charlie's, just as Michael cuts the rope. The top of the dumbwaiter slams down onto Sarah's leg as she crawls out and, after she pulls it free, you get a

gruesome close-up of a really nasty fracture that still makes me go, "Ooh! God!" Before she can crawl away, Michael pins her down with his foot and stabs her numerous times. But even after she's dead, he's not done with her, as John and Molly find a pool of blood leading to a room where Sarah's body is hanging, still dripping blood, and it looks as if the light bulb is actually inside her hollowed out chest, which is absolutely sick! Finally, Will gets killed when, after he accidentally

shoots and seemingly kills Ronny, Michael comes up behind him, stabs him in the gut, and raises his body up. Just to make it all the more disturbing, his body convulses, blood oozes out of his mouth, and he moans a bit before finally dying (technically, there is one more kill, but we'll touch on that later).

Something I agree with John Stanley about is, while H20 does have some nicely suspenseful sequences, it gets really egregious with the false jump scares. In order, they are Marion running into Jimmy when he's wearing a hockey mask; an ironing board inexplicably coming down behind Jimmy and causing him to panic when he's searching Marion's house; the moment at the rest area where the little girl screams right after her mother sees Michael through the crack in the stall

door, though it turns out to just be because of some spiders; John accidentally scaring the crap out of Ronny by coming up behind him; Laurie getting startled when some excited kids run at her in town, then seeing Michael reflected in a store window, only to turn around and see it's Will; Laurie getting startled again by some kids when one suddenly bangs against the restaurant window while she's waiting on Will; John coming behind Molly and grabbing her in the dark; Laurie turning around and

running into Norma; Laurie thinking she sees Michael approaching her, and jumps when he reaches for her, only for her to then see it's Will again; Laurie opening the door to her bungalow, only for her and Ronny to scare each other when he's revealed standing there; and a moment where Charlie surprises Sarah from behind (that one doesn't even work because you can see him all too well). I remember getting really tired of all of these jump scares the first time I watched the movie, and it's still a major qualm I have against it.

I love the basic premise of H20, but I don't quite like the way in which it's executed. I think the build-up to Laurie's climactic confrontation and battle with Michael is well-done, giving us enough of a sense of what's at stake and also that it's Laurie finally purging those inner demons. The problem is that the movie feels too rushed for it to live up to its full potential. This is the shortest film in the entire series, at just 86 minutes, and after the leisurely-paced middle section, the whole third act hits the ground running and barely pauses to take a

breath. As a result, that final battle (not counting the actual ending), although definitely epic and cheer-worthy, is very short, not even taking up four full minutes, and I really wish it was longer, maybe with more instances of cat-and-mouse, with Laurie attacking Michael from a hiding spot and perhaps an instance of Michael truly going from the hunter to the hunted, rather than it being thematically implied. I think that would've made the actual ending even more satisfying, all things considered.

The prologue has our first suspense/chase sequence, beginning when Marion returns home on the evening of October 29th, only to find that the light on her front porch has been smashed. Slowly opening the door, she hears the sound of an intruder in the back of the house, and quickly runs next door. She rings the doorbell, then knocks, only to hear a noise around the side of the house. Walking down that way, she runs into Jimmy and Tony, tells them what's going on, and Jimmy calls

the police. He then opts to go check out the house and, once inside, creeps around, intending to use his hockey stick as a weapon. After seeing the disheveled state of Marion's office, taking some beers from her refrigerator, and getting the crap scared out of him when the ironing board suddenly falls down behind him, he goes back outside and tells Marion he didn't find anything. He and Tony head back to his house, while Marion goes inside, only to find the lights aren't working. After trying

to get the power back on with the circuit breaker, to no avail, she grabs a flashlight and inspects the state of her office and sees that her file on Laurie Strode has been taken. Hearing a noise out in the hall, she goes to see that the front door is open, even though she closed and locked it a minute ago. She runs up and closes it, and that's when Michael Myers first appears behind her, in front of the backdoor at the opposite end of the hallway. Turning around, she sees that door slowly open, and upon approaching it, sees a shadow outside.

Having enough sense to know she doesn't want to mess with whoever that is, she runs out the front door and back over to Jimmy's house. Inside, she finds his body in the living room (Plan 9 from Outer Space is playing on the TV, making this the first time I ever saw or heard some of it), and then runs through the kitchen to another door, only for Tony's body to fall on top of her when she opens it. Michael appears in the doorway and Marion quickly scrambles out from under Tony and into the living room. Michael follows, grabbing a large butcher knife off of the kitchen counter as he goes (he doesn't even have to look at it; he just automatically knows which one is the biggest and sharpest). 

Michael enters the living room, when he hears the police arrive next door and turns to look out the window. While he's distracted, Marion rises up from her hiding place and whacks him from behind with a fire poker, knocking him to the floor. She runs for the window but he swings around and grabs her foot, causing her to fall. She just barely manages to dodge his knife, with him stabbing it into the floor. She runs for the window, yelling at the officers at her house for help, but because it's

closed, they can't hear her. Michael grabs her from behind and she promptly hits him in the gut with the poker's handle, then in the shoulder, knocking him down again. During this struggle, the film cuts back and forth to some very Hitchcockian exterior shots of the police entering Marion's house on the right side of the screen, oblivious to her struggling and yelling behind the window on the left (because of the VHS aspect ratio, I never noticed this until I first saw the movie on Blu-Ray). Marion manages to smash the window, just as the police have

walked through her front door and it slowly closes behind them. She calls for help one last time, but Michael grabs her hair, yanks her head back, and slits her throat. He drops her to the floor and silently slips out of the house, as the police come back out and finally notice the smashed window next door. As they begin investigating there, Michael escapes, driving down the street in a dark-green car.

The opening credits for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers may have been really lackluster, but H20 more than makes up for it. After the two detectives leave Dr. Loomis' old office (said detectives, one of whom is played by Matt Winston, the son of Stan Winston, are all that's left of a major subplot in early drafts of the script), we hear a thunderclap as the camera pans back across the room, towards the mass of evidence Loomis compiled over the years. As the credits roll, we get

a montage of close-ups and cross-fades of newspaper clippings on Michael's evil deeds, maps of Illinois and Haddonfield, several photos of Laurie, evidence photos (including a picture of a bloody pair of scissors, which could possibly be a reference to Rachel's death in Halloween 5 that they forget to edit out), and a drawing of Michael, whose black eye the camera zooms into as the sequence ends. And the whole time, we hear Loomis' eerie speech about Michael, as well as John Ottman's orchestral version of the Halloween theme, making this one of the series' best opening credits sequences for sure.

Following the credits is an eerie tracking shot through the deserted halls of what's later revealed to be Hillcrest Academy. It goes through a pair of double-doors and into a classroom, circling to the back of the desk, revealing a nameplate that reads, "HEAD MISTRESS KERI TATE," as well as a photo of John Strode. The camera peeks around a globe, focusing on a clock on a mantel, which strikes midnight, marking the beginning of Halloween. It then quickly heads through the class

room, to a paneled closet door in the back, which opens to reveal nothing but some clothes. However, its significance becomes clear when we see flashes of the scene from the original Halloween where Laurie is cowering in terror as Michael breaks his way through the door. The camera pulls back from the closet and returns to the desk, where John's picture now has a knife stabbed through it. It then pans to the chalkboard, which has "LAURIE STRODE" written on it. The film immediately cuts to Laurie, screaming in abject terror at this nightmare, with John running in and waking her up, then getting her some medication.

Although it ends on a false scare, and could actually have been removed from the movie altogether, the scene where the mother and her young daughter encounter Michael at the rest area is quite well done and genuinely suspenseful. Since the ladies' bathroom is locked from the inside, they have no choice but to use the men's, with the woman having to prop the door open with a rock to compensate for the light not working. They both proceed to do their business (or at least the girl

does; the mother says she has to as well, but all she does is sit on the toilet with its lid closed), the mother giving her daughter some tissues since the place is also out of toilet paper. That's when they hear the door suddenly shut with a loud bang, momentarily startling them. As the mother sits there, Michael reaches in from underneath the door to the stall and takes her purse. Terrified, she peaks out through the cracks of the door and catches a glimpse of him as he walks past, then briefly sees his masked face reflected in the mirror, scaring her

even more. She cautiously turns the lock on the door to look after he moves out of sight. After a few tense seconds, she hears her daughter scream and quickly runs to her stall and throws the door open, only to discover she's screaming because of spiders. The mother briefs a sigh of relief and hears a car pull away, not yet realizing that Michael just took theirs. Again, I don't like that this scene ends on a false scare like that. I would've had her cautiously walk out of the stall and to the door, peek outside, and see that their car is gone, but be relieved that Michael is gone too, before slipping back in to check on her daughter.

Following the heated argument between Laurie and John in town, we see that the car Michael stole is parked nearby when she drives John and Charlie back to Hillcrest. He follows them, watches as John gets out and calls for Ronny to open the gate, and then drives on. However, we later see that he's still stalking outside the campus when Molly sees him watching her during English class. And once all the other students leave for Yosemite, he returns to the school, arriving at the gate after nightfall.

Ronny, who's talking on the phone with his wife, sees him pull up. He walks out of his booth, but is puzzled when the car just sits there and his calls get no response. Opening the gate, he walks to the side of the car and finds that the engine is running and the keys are in the ignition, but no one's in the driver's seat. He opens the door and turns the engine off, not seeing or hearing Michael walk through the gate behind him. Ronny then closes the gate and goes back to his booth, but just when he's

about to start talking to his wife again, he notices the car's lights go off. Unbeknownst to him, Michael is watching through the window, and after Ronny closes his door and turns the lock, the phone-line goes dead. He then starts searching the grounds for any sign of an intruder. After that is when Laurie, while locking up for the night and heading back to her bungalow, sees Michael approaching her, and is then startled by Will. The two of them then decide to spend the evening together, but when Laurie goes on ahead, Will

glimpses Michael disappearing into the darkness. After he checks on Molly and Sarah, the two of them join John and Charlie in sneaking into the building where they intend to have their Halloween party. While climbing through a window, John hears a rustle in the bushes behind him, which gives him momentary pause. But when he doesn't see anything, he climbs on in with his friends.

The lead-ups to Charlie and Sarah's deaths are among the best sequences of tension in the movie. While looking for a corkscrew, and after accidentally dumping the one he finds down into a garbage disposal, Charlie, after testing the switch that activates it, sticks his hand down into it. That's when Michael appears in the doorway behind him, and as Charlie's fingers scrape against the blades, and he glances at the switch, you're just waiting for his hand to get shredded. He manages to retrieve

the corkscrew without incident, but then turns around to see Michael. Following a really freaky close-up of his image reflected in Michael's rage-filled eye, Sarah, who's waiting for him downstairs, sees Michael's shadow outside a door. Thinking it's Charlie, she tries to follow him, but finds the door locked. She goes back into the kitchen, only to find the door there locked as well. That's when the dumbwaiter, which Charlie took up, comes down, and she finds his body inside. Panicked, she tries to

flee, but Michael appears in the doorway, forcing her to use the dumbwaiter to escape. Michael lunges forward and manages to slash her in the leg before the dumbwaiter's lid shuts and she manages to temporarily escape. When she reaches the top, she tries to climb out but her leg gets caught underneath Charlie's literal dead weight. Michael cuts the rope to the dumbwaiter, causing the top of it to smash down onto Sarah's leg. Screaming in pain, she pulls it out and does what she can to crawl away with that bad fracture, but she's not

able to get anywhere before Michael finds her. The moment when she sees his approaching shadow in the adjoining hallway is quite terrifying, as you know she's screwed now and so does she, as she hopelessly yells, "Oh, fuck!" She futilely begs for her life as she tries to crawl away but Michael proceeds to put his foot on her and hack into her repeatedly with his knife.

After John and Molly follow a trail of blood and find Sarah's hanging body, they back away in horror and then see Michael standing in the dark across from them, tiling his head at them. They run for it, climbing out of the window they used to get in the building, and get as far down the campus as they can. Feeling they've gotten far enough away, they decide to go call the cops, when Michael suddenly appears and grabs Molly by the hair. John punches him repeatedly in the face but Michael, completely unfazed, flings Molly aside, slams John

down onto the ground, and stabs him right in the leg. Before he can finish him off, Molly clobbers him in the head with a rock, knocking him back, and she and John run. Michael chases them, as they reach a door with a small gate in front of it. Molly frantically fumbles for the keys, as Michael rounds the bend behind them and approaches them. She manages to unlock the gate and close it, but drops the keys on the outside. Michael gets to the gate before she can reach the keys, slashing at her hand,

and then tries to tear the gate down. When that doesn't work, he sticks his hand through the bars and slashes at them. John frantically screams for somebody to open the door from the inside and then, Michael looks down and notices the keys on the ground. John and Molly panic even more, as Michael tries to find the right key. Just when he does, Laurie and Will reach the door from inside and let them in. Right when Laurie closes the door, you have that iconic shot where she and Michael come face to face with each other for the first time in twenty years through the window. Laurie take out her pistol, but Michael disappears within the short amount of time it takes for her to look down.

Laurie and Will quickly hide John and Molly in a closet, Laurie telling them to barricade the door, while they go looking for Michael. Walking down the hall and rounding a corner, her gun pointed ahead of her, Laurie tries to get Will to jump out of the open window and escape, but he refuses to leave her. That's when he sees a shadow approaching from around a corner down the hall, grabs Laurie's gun, and shoots when a dark figure steps into the corridor. He promptly downs the figure with three shots, but when he and Laurie

approach, they realize he made a horrible mistake and just shot Ronny. Just as they're grappling with this, Laurie putting her hand behind Ronny's head and finding it covered with blood when she pulls it back, Michael appears behind Will and stabs him in the gut. As he lifts Will's convulsing body up with the knife, Laurie quickly takes off down the hallway and attempts to get John and Molly, only to open an empty closet instead (I'm not sure if they hid somewhere else or if she chose the wrong one in her haste). Michael quickly follows and

finds a bloody hand-print on the door. He pulls on the doorknob, but when it won't open, he uses his knife to stab through and then smash his way completely through, only to find no one inside. While he's distracted, Laurie comes up behind him and bashes him on the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, flooring him. She runs down to the next closet, finds John and Molly, and the three get out of there as Michael, after doing the classic head turn in their direction, gets to his feet and pursues

them down the hall and out of the building. They make it to Laurie's van and, as she fumbles with her keys and then tries to start the stubborn engine, Michael rounds the bend and starts walking towards them. John repeatedly warns her to hurry, while Michael reaches the door on the driver's side, just as Laurie gets the engine to turn over and peels away from him.

After making Molly and John drive off to call the police, Laurie smashes the controls to the gate, grabs a fire axe, and goes looking for Michael, calling for him. She heads back to the building they just escaped from and marches down its empty hallways, again yelling for him. She stops at one point, and Michael suddenly descends from the ceiling, holding onto a pipe, and stomps down behind her. She promptly swings around and puts the axe in his shoulder, while he slashes across her left arm, giving her a new scar along with her old

one and knocking her to the floor. She runs into the  next room, the assembly hall, as Michael pulls the axe out of his shoulder, throws it to the floor, and pursues her. He walks into the middle of the large room but initially seems to have lost track of her, while she hides beneath one of the tables. He walks away and Laurie quickly rolls and crawls underneath several other tables, then stops. She hears some creaking sounds around her, but is unable to tell where Michael is. As she looks around, the camera pans up to reveal him standing

atop the very table she's under. She goes to crawl out, only for him to slash at her. She quickly rolls back under the table, avoiding another slash on the opposite side, and then kicks a chair to distract him, as she tries to crawl to the end of the row. Michael isn't fooled, though, and walks across the tops of the tables, then jumps down in front of her as she reaches the last one and slashes at her again. Laurie quickly crawls to the other row and shimmies underneath them, as Michael walks 

down between both rows, flipping the tables over to expose her. When she reaches the end of the tables, she gets to her feet, grabs a small flagpole from the wall, and stabs Michael in the gut with its sharp end. The pole snaps in half when he falls to the floor and he pulls the one half out of him, while Laurie flings her half at him, before running upstairs. It's quite frantic as she runs up to the kitchen, throws something onto the floor, and pulls out the drawer of knives and meat cleavers, as he 

enters. Laurie throws every knife and cleaver she can get her hands on at Michael but he manages to dodge them and, just as he gets to her, she uses a small table as a shield, which the blade of his knife goes right through. This is when she knees him right in the crotch and he, in turn, smacks her to the floor, while trying to pull his knife out of the table. She takes several of the knives she threw at him before running off again, while he manages to remove his knife.

Michael follows Laurie out into the hall, where she charges out from behind a window curtain. He swings but misses, while she furiously stabs him with both of her knives, leaving one in his chest, as he falls over a balcony and crashes down onto one of the tables in the assembly hall. Looking down at him and panting, Laurie drops the one knife she still had (old habits die hard) and walks down to the room, clutching her left arm. Knowing full well that Michael isn't dead, she walks over to him, pulls out the knife still stuck in him, and goes to

finish him off... when a grazed but still living Ronny shows up and stops her, assuring her that Michael is dead. Laurie, of course, still knows better and later on, as Michael's body is being taken away, she grabs the fire axe from earlier, as well as a cop's gun, and hijacks the coroner's van. She drives off the campus and down the twisting road, watching the backseat, as she waits for Michael to inevitably revive. It takes a bit, but he does begin to move inside the body-bag and, eventually, manages to get out of it. Seeing Laurie

in the driver's seat, he lunges at her but she slams on the brakes, causing him to go right through the windshield and tumble across the road. As he lays there, she waits for him to get to his feet, even telling him to do so, and he promptly rolls onto his back, does his trademark sit-up and head turn, and gets to his feet. She then drives at him full force and he ends up on the front of the vehicle. Though she smiles triumphantly, his blocking her view causes her to swerve off the hill-

side and the van goes tumbling down into a ravine. Laurie gets thrown clear out of the vehicle, while Michael is pinned between it and a fallen tree. Despite being rather banged up herself, Laurie gets to her feet, grabs the discarded axe, and walks over to Michael. Saying his name, she rouses him to consciousness and, when he sees her standing there, actually reaches out to her, silently asking for help. Laurie actually feels some compassion for her brother and reaches out and touches the tips of his

fingers... but then, she remembers all the pain and torment he's caused her, how he tried to kill both her and her son, and likely figures he's probably trying to win her sympathy to make her lower her guard. With that, she swings the axe and cuts his fucking head clean off! Even though I knew that was coming when I went into the movie, it was still shocking to see it happen, and I can only imagine what the reaction in the theater was. I've heard that people went absolutely nuts and cheered like they

were at a sporting event, a reaction it certainly earns. With Laurie turning away and then standing there, breathing heavily, as the original Halloween theme plays and you hear the sound of approaching sirens, it makes for a perfect end to the franchise...

...or at least it would have, had a certain someone, namely Moustapha Akkad, intervened. Granted, this is nothing new. How many times have we been told it was going to be the end of a franchise and then it turned out to not be the case (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Alien 3, and so on)? Despite the apparently definitive end with Michael's head being chopped off, we should have known there would be more. But still, despite knowing what

went on behind the scenes, and the fact that I do get some cheap entertainment out of Halloween: Resurrection, it still sucks how they handled this. This was meant to be the triumphant return of Laurie Strode, a story about her finally deciding to stop running, face Michael, and fight him to the death. That was definitely something that Jamie Lee Curtis not only wanted but so did Steve Miner, Bob Weinstein, and just about everyone else. And not only is that a great idea but the execution of it here is so satisfying that it begs the question, "Why

would you want to mess that up?" Of course, I know the answer: the franchise was Akkad's golden goose and he was going to keep it laying eggs as long as possible. He even had it stated in his contract that Michael Myers could not be killed off, which so incensed Curtis that she threatened to leave the movie right before shooting. Kevin Williamson himself came up with the explanation of how Michael was still alive, and they shot some of that reveal the day after principal photography.

However, Curtis wanted H20's ending to feel very final, so that footage wasn't used and instead, was later put into Resurrection. If you're reading this, you likely know what the twist is and how badly handled it was in that movie, so unless you're someone who discounts Resurrection, it can make H20's ending almost impossible to enjoy.

The third big controversy with H20 was the music score, originally composed by John Ottman. According to Ottman, he and Steve Miner decided they wanted to go for a very orchestral, Bernard Herrmann-like approach. But while Miner liked what Ottman came up with, the Weinsteins, as well as editor Patrick Lussier, hated it, with the latter saying it felt like a score for a completely different movie. Deciding that they preferred the temp track they used while editing, they replaced much of Ottman's music with cues and themes that Marco Beltrami had composed for the first two Scream movies and Mimic, mostly for the suspense and chase scenes; they also brought Beltrami himself in to write some totally original music. Lussier has said that, if they had more time, they would've had Beltrami redo the entire score, but with only five days left until the release date, they instead had to use what sections of Ottman's work they felt they could. As a result, the film's score is a major clash of styles, going back and forth from big and grand, with Ottman's orchestrations of John Carpenter's original themes, to more traditional fast-paced, slasher music. As I didn't see the Scream movies and Mimic until many years later, I didn't realize some of their music was in here, but I always felt there was something kind of funky about the score's structure. Then years later, I finally saw those movies and realized, "That music is in Halloween H20 as well!" Ottman has made it clear that he's not happy with how he was treated, not only with the rejection of most of his work, but also with how the themes that were retained were rearranged and placed in spots he didn't intend for them to be, as well as the general nature of Beltrami's music.

The Blood Is Thicker Than Water documentary was the first time I'd ever heard the music that was removed and, I must say, I agree with the decision to do so, as it sounded just plain weird and inappropriate for this kind of movie. Beltrami's music may have, indeed, been more typical of the genre, but it helps make those particular moments more exciting and tense, chief among them when Michael is chasing John and Molly across the campus and then traps them (Ottman came up with a version of the Shape Stalks theme for that scene but I don't like how it sounds at all). I do like the bits of Ottman's score they left in, although it took me a while to accept his big orchestral version of the Halloween theme. Being a stickler for the original, I wanted the version I was most familiar with up to that point, something else that probably turned me off the movie to begin with. But like the movie itself, this theme has grown on me in repeated viewings. I like how it starts off nice and quiet, then becomes loud and all-enveloping, and, as we watch the opening credits, it gets across just how much Michael Myers haunted Dr. Loomis for the last fifteen or so years of his life, before we then get into how badly Laurie has been for the last twenty. Similarly, it fits well with the moment where Laurie locks herself inside the school and prepares to face Michael. I also like the other versions of the main theme that Ottman came up with, especially the subtle, instrumental ones you sometimes hear in the background, like when Laurie tells Will the truth and during the spiraling, overhead shot of Michael's body lying on the table after he falls over the balcony. In addition, Ottman also creates some nice new versions of Laurie's original theme, which we hear when we see Loomis' photograph in Marion's office, and a brief but nice hint of the Myers House theme during Laurie's first vision of Michael and when he's being zipped up in the body-bag. Original music-wise, I like the gentle, almost vocalizing, bit when Laurie sits down in her office and looks at John's picture on her table, and the brief but menacing theme, accompanied by a tinkling piano, which you first hear when Michael drives away after killing Marion. And I also like the eerie string piece you hear during some of the more atmospheric scenes, which I have a feeling was Beltrami's work.

One thing I have to say about the music that I've always hated is how the ending credits are scored. The moment Laurie chops Michael's head off, the original Halloween theme starts playing (taken from the latest CD release of that soundtrack, which I happened to get for Christmas in 2001) and it's absolutely perfect... except, it isn't played in its entirety. Instead, it quickly fades out and is replaced by What's This Life For? by Creed, a decision that has "Weinstein" written all over it (like And Fools Shine On in the previous movie, you can hear it playing in an earlier scene). That sucks so much. You're on an emotional high with Laurie finally killing Michael and the classic version of the theme hitting, then you completely ruin it by switching to a song that's not only inappropriate but which I don't like at all. And back when I didn't like the orchestral version, it didn't sit well with me that, after the song ends, we get that version instead of the original, alienating me even more. Finally, like in Halloween II, Mr. Sandman opens the movie and is also heard playing on the radio in Laurie's van at one point.

I didn't realize this until recently but, like the first two movies, there's an alternate TV version of H20, which aired on FX in 2003. In fact, it's a lot like the television cut of Halloween II, as it removes all of the bloodshed and re-edits a number of scenes to get around it, while using unused footage and alternate takes to pad out the running time. However, neither this version nor the deleted footage that make up much of it have been released on home media, although some of it was used in Blood Is Thicker Than Water. You can, however, watch all of the additional material on YouTube. For the most part, it's just a bunch of needless padding of scenes, such as new camera angles

when Jimmy is searching Marion's house, additional shots of Michael walking up behind Charlie, more of both Laurie and Michael stalking each other during the third act, and additional footage of Laurie driving down the road during the ending. The only significant additions are a moment where you see Michael peek out at the mother and her little girl from the men's room at the rest area, before ducking back in (that makes you wonder where he was hiding when they went in); a scene in town between John and Charlie where the latter asks John if he's going to go all the way with Molly that night, followed by a shot of Michael driving down the street; and a scene between Laurie and Will, where the latter carves the pumpkin he brings her and tells her how his father blamed him for an affair his mother had when he was a kid, leading him to tell Laurie, "Everybody's got somethin' in their past."

Also like Halloween II's TV cut, the way they re-edit the movie to get around the violence and blood is often awkward and unintentionally funny. Unlike in the theatrical version, Marion never finds Jimmy and Tony's bodies; instead, while she's wandering around Jimmy's house, looking for him, Michael randomly wanders through the kitchen's exterior door and she panics when she walks in and sees him take him the knife. She tries to run back out the front door but, for some reason, can't open it, and there are then additional shots of Michael stalking her through the house, while the order of events in the theatrical version is redone. As for her death, instead of Michael cutting her throat, this

version, through awkward editing, seems to imply that, after she breaks the window, she trips and impales herself on the broken glass (at least, that's what I think happens)! Similarly, John and Molly don't find Charlie and Sarah's bodies, or the trail of blood left behind by Sarah's bloody corpse. Instead, when they open the door to where they find the latter, it cuts to the shot of Michael standing in the darkness and that sends them running. You also don't see Michael stab John in the leg, although it is implied, and when Will is killed, it cuts to a long, obscured shot from down the hall and then to Laurie running (you do still here him moaning). Speaking of which, in this version, Ronny, for all intents and purposes, does

die. After Laurie sends Michael over the balcony (they remove the stabs, so it looks as though she just shoved him), they do a dissolve from her looking at him to him being zipped up in the body-bag, and you don't see the bandaged Ronny talking on the phone with his wife here, either. They can't even show Michael getting pinned between the van and the fallen tree here, as they quickly cut from it about to happen to the aftermath. And if you think they, at the very least, would show the beheading, you're dead wrong about that, too. They just suddenly cut from her swinging the axe to the ending credits. Finally, there's some hilarious dubbing for the profanity, with my favorite being when John scares Ronny: "Aah, flip me! Shoot!... You scared the snot out of me!"

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is a prime example of a movie that has grown on me over time, because when I first started doing these reviews, I was sure this one would be much more disparaging than it turned out. But, I must say, it really has a lot going for it. Granted, it does have its fair share of flaws, like an unremarkable supporting cast, far too many false scares, unnecessary references to other horror films, a setting that I don't think lends itself that well to the Halloween franchise in terms of atmosphere, a depiction of Michael Myers that I'm a bit mixed on, and the climax feeling too short, but the good definitely outweighs the bad. Jamie Lee Curtis makes a triumphant return as Laurie Strode, the continuity reboot dispels all of the stupid stuff involving Michael that had cluttered up the last couple of films, Michael himself does feel more in line with how he was in the first two films, there are a lot of good suspense and chase sequences, the score, despite being a patchwork, is pretty memorable and effective, and the ending is awesome, to say the least. While I do still enjoy the original Halloween, as well as II, III, and 4 more, H20 is definitely one of the better entries, regardless.