Written by Robert Zappia & Matt Greenberg
Directed by Steve Miner
Norma Watson: "Oh. Miss Tate. I didn't mean to make you jump. It's Halloween. I guess everyone's entitled to one good scare."
Laurie Strode: "I've had my share."
With an absence of four movies, having Jamie Lee Curtis reprise her iconic role of Laurie Strode for the seventh edition of the franchise along with the celebration of it being twenty years since the original always felt right. This movie has not exactly aged as brilliantly as it could've done but as a sequel, it's a step up from the misguided previous two we've had.
In the two decades since her terrifying first encounter with Michael Myers (Chris Durand), Laurie has left Haddonfield, faked her death and now has become a headmistress at a posh school in California under the name of Keri Tate, while also having a fractured relationship with her son, John (Josh Hartnett). Forget about Jamie because this movie effectively decides to ignore everything from movies 3-6 as Laurie stresses over her brother coming back to haunt her on a certain day.
It's interesting to see that Laurie has struggled to cope with her encounter with Michael to the point where even her son begins to rebel against her hold while boyfriend Will Brennan (Adam Arkin) is drawn to her "bullshit", so it doesn't serve as much of a shocker when he's one of a few people in this movie to end up a casualty of Michael's latest reign of terror.
We've moved on from creepy cults to Michael simply tracking down nurse Marion (Nancy Stephens) and killing her along with two teenage lads in his pursuit of his sister while John, his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams) and their friends Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) find themselves under threat by the knife wielding, heavy breathing maniac along with LL Cool J's affable, erotica writing security guard, Ronnie.
The kills in this movie aren't quite spectacular as we've had even in the most divisive of sequels and the main highlight of course is the reunion between Michael and Laurie, which we do have to wait nearly towards the end of the movie to properly see but it's certainly worth seeing the two of them square off each other again. As for the ending, well, given what happens in the next movie, Laurie really should learn to take a proper look before swinging the axe.
As for the cast - they're a solid bunch, with both Hartnett and Williams making sure that John and Molly are rootable as characters while LL Cool J's Ronnie is a delight in the movie. I even like the use of Marion at the start of the movie to further tie things back to the first movie as she serves as a proxy for the deceased Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Will is probably the weakest character of the bunch but is also relatively inoffensive.
- Loved the use of Jamie Lee Curtis's real life mother, Janet Leigh as secretary Norma Watson. The use of music from Psycho was also a nice little touch.
- Both Molly and Sarah are watching Scream 2. Kevin Williamson contributed to this movie, though he's not credited for it.
- Nice use of Mr Sandman in this movie. Just one more movie will tap into that song for it's potential.
- This was the first of four movies not released during the month of October. Luckily the new movie bucks that particular trend.
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is one of the stronger sequels we've had in the franchise. It's not perfect and a part of me wishes that things had been put on hold here, so we would've been spared the next three movies but for a return of Laurie Strode, it's pretty solid nonetheless and feels rather stripped back compared to what will come after it.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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