Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) - Review

After the convoluted mess that was The Curse of Michael Myers, they said "forget it" and went back to basics.  Gone was Jamie Lloyd, Dr. Loomis, and everything that characterized Part 4, 5, and 6.  Enter Halloween H20, a direct sequel to Halloween 2 (even though it seems to ignore some events of Part 2 as well), following Laurie Strode and pretending the sequels never happened.  This was probably the best thing they could have done with the series, and what results is a simple but entertaining flick.

The biggest asset the film has is the simplicity of it.  The film follows Laurie Strode, again portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis, who has changed her name and become the headmistress of a private school which her son attends.  The cast is...well, it's okay.  Jamie Lee Curtis does a great job and everyone else is pretty much alright.  Unfortunately there's no Dr. Loomis, but for the most part, the characters are written decently.  There aren't any annoying characters like most of the films, and that's largely due to the script.

There's definitely a lot of Scream influence and a sense of self-awareness, though it's not played up nearly as much as in the Scream films.  The whole movie has a very similar feel to it though.  The direction as a whole is quite good actually.  The violence is pretty tame, but the film gets around this by upping the tension in place of it.  This leads to a nice buildup of suspense during the more stalk-y scenes of the movie.  It's a nice change of pace from the past few, which have had little to no tension.

Still, the big draw of this movie is the fact that it's the grande finale to Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.  And it caps off the two characters as well as you could hope for.  The end is pretty definitive, after all.  Yet somehow, Hollywood found out a way to get around it and make another (and this time actually final) sequel to keep the franchise going.  In my opinion, this is the perfect ending to the series.  It's just about as good as the original two, albeit in different ways.  All in all, it's certainly a worthy "finale".