Halloween: H20

"Halloween H20:20 Years Later" made by Steve Miner("House",the second and the third part of "Friday the 13th" series)is quite good,especially if you liked John Carpenter's classic "Halloween".The film disregards Parts 4-6,which is not necessarily a bad thing.Luckily it has plenty of suspense,and a good amount of scares-especially the prologue is quite terrifying.There is only a little bit of gore,so gorehounds will be disappointed.Jamie Lee Curtis is pretty good as a Laurie Strode,but the other characters played by the supporting cast are shallow and empty.The score by Marco Beltrami sounds exactly like the one from "Scream" and this is surely big mistake.All in all I enjoyed this one and you should too if you are a fan of "Halloween" series.7 out of 10-a solid horror flick!

H20 was the twentieth anniversary that features the return or I like to call it revenge of Laurie Strode.

Jamie had realized during lunch that twenty years had pass since the original film and wanted to do a follow up film. She wanted to get the whole crew back and John Carpenter to direct. He refused after divorcing himself after his anthology idea was ruined. I consider Halloween, the fog, season of the witch, Prince of darkness and the thing his true series.

Williamson wrote a script that was quite different from the finished project yet Jamie didn't want her character to be seen as a bad mother.I don't blame her. Who wants to look bad?

The supporting castes were all fresh faced and did fine. The Halloween theme and scream score mix well together.

The only problem is Donald Pleasence passed away before It was even dreamed of.

It truly was the final Halloween in my opinion.

After so many poor follow ups, H20 serves up thrills and spills, with the franchise managing to go bigger, and yet get back to basics.

It's well acted, very well paced, and entertaining from start to finish. It's also nice to see the hunted become the hunter, great to see Laurie get revenge on her sadistic brother.

Curtis is great, Hartnett is cool also, although why's he wearing a shirt six sizes too big for him?

Some great moments, it's very suspenseful, kind of builds on the success of the Scream franchise, it very much has that vibe as opposed to it's predecessors.

One of the best. 8/10

Back before Lions Gate (now Lionsgate) held the monopoly on mainstream genre pics, Dimension Films was the go-to place for horror and suspense of the 'indie' sort. In 1998, with Wes Craven's 2 "Scream" films maintaining the public interest to great financial success, Dimension decided to put their acquisition of the "Halloween" franchise to good use (especially after the atrocious "Curse of Michael Myers") by making a sequel to end all sequels (at least until the atrocious "Halloween: Resurrection" turded up multiplexes).

In addition to being one of the most instantly-recognizable titles in all of horror, "Halloween: H20" came to screens with an added incentive: it marked the series return of original protagonist/victim Laurie Strode (played with cat-like veracity by Jamie Lee Curtis). Curtis' presence, in addition to the reliable skill of director Steve Miner (who cut his teeth on two "Friday the 13th" sequels), plus a story that wisely disregarded the incidents of all the sequels past "II," set "H20" up as the series payoff I was so eagerly awaiting. After leaving the theater, I was more than satisfied with the end result.

Years go by. Dimension becomes a notorious den of re-cuts, re-shoots, and re-castings (just ask Wes "Cursed" Craven) still trying to mine the 'Fresh-Faced-Teen' demographic that doesn't seem to exist anymore. Upon re-examination of "H20"'s box/poster art, I noticed a recurrent motif (from "Scream" to "Phantoms" to "Nightwatch" to "Rounders") in design: the proliferation of airbrushed faces looking Deeply Concerned about something, in addition to an over-reliance on bold, exclamatory blurbs from dubious sources (WWOR-TV, anyone?).

But I'm not reviewing the marketing tactics of a company whose former glories (namely Tarantino and Rodriguez) are now its only source of revenue.

"Sin City" notwithstanding, "H20" might have been the last good movie to come out of Dimension. At its core, it is a surprisingly compact (86 minutes, including credits) horror-thriller that moves so briskly we are never able to get too cozy with the characters. Miner goes for the subtle compositions that marked John Carpenter's original, and is fairly successful: the film refrains from the obligatory sex and self-referential attitude that would have been profitable at the time. From frame one, "H20" feels like a continuous, flowing set-piece...but the way it sidelines its characters leaves a hollow echo when it's all finished. Also unfortunate is that the suspense is so heavy-handed it seldom creates tension; this might be attributable to Chris Durand's overly self-conscious portrayal of the menacing Michael Myers. The relationship between Curtis, her son John (Josh Hartnett), and Myers is the film's intriguing familial triangle, but is disappointingly underdeveloped (though for the sake of the series, it wraps things up well enough).

In the end, "H20" is Curtis' show. She imbues her character with as much straight-faced commitment as she did in '78, in addition to a toughened exterior bent on preserving family values at any cost. The denouement, which contains a moment as touching as it is creepy, gives new meaning to the phrase, "tough love."

Some may be turned off by this film because it is the 7th installment of the Halloween series. However, the filmmakers of this feature seem to treat it as the third since they totally disregard 3-6. Too bad 4 had to be in that group of forgotten movies because it was actually quite good and better than this sequel in my opinion. The main highlight is that it takes place 20 years after the original and it brings back one of the greatest horror heroines to ever grace the screen, The original scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. Essentially this is a project made for her and in that aspect it totally works, however as a Halloween film it feels out of place. It seems to have picked up on the new millenium horror trend of adding hot teen actors into the mix and is basically shot like an episode of Dawson's Creek. Kevin Williamson even did some polishing on the script. In this aspect it doesn't work too well, but for the 7th installment in the series i guess it could've been worse.

As i said this is a showcase of Jamie Lee Curtis. It's very interesting to see how her character has changed in 20 years. Her performance is very good and is much more assertive than she was in the first 2 installments of the series. The problem is she is one oft he few characters worth any interest. Josh Hartnet as her son, and Michelle Williams as his love interest are the only 2 teen actors in the film worth mentioning. Josh Hartnet and Jamie Lee Curits share a very good mother/son chemistry that is vry effective in the film. Michelle Williams is more believeable than most potential teen slasher movie victims in her role. The rest of the cast is DOA. The supporting characters are vastly under-written. LL Cool J is funny in his scenes but they are too far and in between for him to become very interesting character. The other teen actors are just there to be slaughtered. The only oher interesting cast choice is Janet Leigh(shower victim from Psycho) in a Cameo. very cool to see mother and daughter together on screen. Michael Myers just isn't scary in this film. No because his presence is wearing thin because this is the 7th installment but because he isn't portrayed well by the actor/stuntman.

There are good things though that raise it above most of the sequels. The second half comes at you with full force. After a rather long set-up things move into high gear once Michael begins to wreck havoc. His showdown with Laurie is good but i wish it could've been longer. Another interesting thing this sequel does is gives us some closure. you'll see once you view the film. It's very rare that a series does this and it's very effective in this film.

I recommend this film based on the performance of Jamie Lee Curtis. If you want to see how she has been in the last 20 years than this is a film for you. Fans of the series should see this. I just worry that Halloween Ressurrection will ruin the semi-good note this film ended on, when it's released this summer. I hope to god they have a reason to bring Michael back for THE 8TH TIME. Evil never dies apparently and neither does this series even when it does have a fairly good finale.