Halloween H20 and the Scream-ification of the Franchise
Wes Craven’s massive hit changed everything
Last week I covered the polarizing “Thorn Trilogy” of the Halloween franchise that spanned the late-1980s into the mid-1990s. It was essentially the culmination of the slasher subgenre that had dominated horror for nearly twenty years due to the massive success of the original Halloween in 1978. While there were plenty of good slashers to emerge during that period, the vast majority were uninspired knockoffs attempting to cash in on the success of Halloween. The subgenre had gotten very stale by the time Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers hit cinemas in 1995, and it was in dire need of a shakeup. Enter: Scream.
Scream was the perfect antidote to the stagnation permeating the slasher subgenre. Kevin Williamson’s sharp script and Wes Craven’s brilliant direction made Scream an instant success. It featured protagonists who were aware of slasher tropes and used that knowledge (along with the knowledge of the audience) to subvert expectations and have fun poking at the slasher formula while still being incredibly scary. It made a ridiculous $173 million at the box office on a $15 million budget, so that inevitably led to studios and filmmakers doing everything in their power to try and duplicate that success. Movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Urban Legend (1998), and (most importantly for our purposes) Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) being some of the most well known examples.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later does something that’s commonplace now, but it was pretty rare for the time. It ignores the continuity of the previous three films and acts as a sequel to Halloween II (1981). No Jamie, no Man in Black, and no Cult of Thorn. All of that continuity has been washed away. Most importantly, it means that Laurie Strode is still alive. And this is the real hook for the movie: it features the return of Jamie Lee Curtis in the role that launched her illustrious career. This Laurie is a high school teacher at a private school in Southern California. She is still dealing with the trauma from twenty years ago while her son (played by Josh Hartnett) is fulfilling the classic rebellious teenager trope and pushing back against her strict rules born out of that trauma.
Despite that connection to the original film, Steve Milner’s movie has much more in common with Scream than any of the films in the Halloween franchise. Gone is the Midwestern suburban aesthetic. Instead we get beautiful sun drenched California and a litany of self-aware teenagers firing off a nonstop barrage of quips. The score is also much more similar to the one from Scream than it is to Carpenter’s iconic score. That is in no small part due to Marco Beltrami (the composer responsible for the Scream score) being one of two composers responsible for this film’s score. There is even a scene in which Scream 2 is playing on the television.
So we’ve established that the film weds the modern style of Scream to the return of the star from the original, but is it an effective film? I would say that overall the film is…fine. Jamie Lee Curtis and the rest of the cast do an admirable job with the material they’re given, but the film never comes close to reaching the heights of either the original Halloween or Scream. Most of the kills are pretty lackluster, and Milner goes to the well of fake out jump scares far too often for my taste. Another issue is the mask for Michael Myers. I guess I should actually say “masks” because there are at least four different versions that show up over the course of the film. Continuity be damned!
The opening sequence of the film (arguably the best of the entire movie) features Michael Myers (this time played by Chris Durand) wearing a mask made by John Carl Buechler that looks almost identical to the mask in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. I mentioned in last week’s post that this is one of my favorite masks of the series, so I would have been thrilled to see it used for the duration of the movie. Unfortunately, it is never used again. A new mask was made by KNB for use in the film, and multiple scenes were shot with Durand wearing it. It was ultimately scrapped four weeks into production after screening footage for the producers who were apparently unhappy with how it looked. I personally think it looks fine, but it is often criticized as looking too much like the stereotype of the “grey aliens” with its oversized eyes. The final version of the mask that is used for the majority of the film was made by Stan Winston. I honestly think it’s the worst of the three. That’s mostly because you can clearly see Durand’s eyes behind the mask whenever he is on screen. Something about seeing Michael’s eyes just makes them less scary. Maybe I would feel differently had they been the blackest eyes. The Devil’s eyes. Oh well. There is technically one more mask used in the film, and it is easily the worst of the entire movie. For one brief scene in which Durand was wearing the KNB mask, it was decided to just use CGI to replace it with the Stan Winston mask as opposed to reshooting it with the actual physical mask. It looks ridiculous. I can’t believe it was left in the final cut of the film.
I’ve talked plenty about what doesn’t work in the film, but there is still a lot to like. As I mentioned previously, the opening sequence is fantastic. It features the nurse who was driving Dr. Loomis at the beginning of the original film (once again played by Nancy Stephens) being stalked by Michael Myers in her home in suburban Illinois. It also features an appearance by a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It’s very clearly trying to recreate the opening scene from Scream, and it mostly succeeds in setting the tone.
The other thing that really works in this film is the reunion between Laurie and Michael. Jamie Lee Curtis nails every scene she shares with Michael, and it makes the whole movie worth it. The final showdown between Laurie and Michael genuinely lives up to the hype. It’s the perfect ending to their story.
Unfortunately, that story continues in Halloween: Resurrection (2002), but the less said about that the better.