BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

rickypop_uk This is my maiden voyage into reviewing for IMDB and after watching it just last night, 'Halloween H20: 20 Years Later' feels like a very odd place to start.My inexperience prompts me to open with something of a classic cliché by asking; "Is this a film that needed to be made?" Some have argued that very same question could be asked of any of the sequels after 1981's 'Halloween II', though it's true to say that many of those said sequels have come to be held dear to many a horror lover's heart. After the original Halloween, watching the rest of this film series (with the exception of Halloween III: Season Of The Witch) is like looking at a developing structure while holding the blueprints in your hand. You already have the general layout of all foundations (masked killer Michael Myers/screaming, frantic victims), pillars (false scares/red herrings) and joists (inventive/graphic deaths) but don't yet know exactly how the finished product will look. I held that same blueprint going into this film. After viewing, I read that this has been the most profitable film of the Halloween series so far, but I can't help but wonder how much of that box office score was made up of sheer curiosity. The return of Jamie Lee Curtis and Friday the 13th (parts 2 and 3) director Steve Miner at the helm, are two things that would understandably rouse a fans interest. It certainly did for me. What struck me before I even pressed play was the incredibly short eighty minute running time. Given that the decent and familiarly Autumnal opening set at the home of Dr Loomis - and its neighbouring house - in Langdon, Illinois took up a good ten minutes (the opening credits taking up another five), I was curious to see how the rest of the film would pan out over the finite sixty-five minutes. The film moves to sunny California where Laurie Strode (now going by the name Keri Tate after faking her death to escape Michael's rampage) is living a life of both mother and respected school headmistress. From here, the rest of the films characters are very quickly introduced while horror fans go about our usual business of predicting which of them will die first. This is all intercut with various scenes of Michael Myers gradually making his way from Illinois to California, which he manages to do in a remarkable (if even possible) two days. Still scarred by the past, Laurie/Keri spends most of the film in a jittery state thinking every shadow, reflection and person approaching her is Michael, until at just over the one hour mark, she actually does see him up close through a door window providing - for me personally - the best shot in the film. That leaves the last twenty minutes for the confrontation between Laurie and Michael, in which all the narrow escapes and 'Is he FINALLY dead?' moments are quickly crammed in, making it all seem a little rushed. This film almost seems like it should have been nothing more than an interesting bonus feature on a special edition of the original, rather than a film in its own right. Jamie Lee Curtis is very welcome back and does well, pretty much holding the film together. But aside from that first ten minutes and the final twenty minutes with its "Woh! I need to see that again" ending, the rest of the film seems to have spread itself incredibly thin. So after thinking back on it, it seems as if this was something of a missed opportunity. We had Jamie Lee Curtis. We had Steve Miner. We had a very decent supporting cast including Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, LL Cool J and even a cheeky cameo from Janet Leigh. We had in Michael Myers, one of the greatest characters in the realm of horror and not to mention John Carpenter's classic musical motif permeating throughout. The aforementioned foundations were most certainly there, but what covered them didn't seem to be made of the sturdiest material. As a big fan of the original, I tried hard to appreciate this film simply for what it is, but still ultimately came out of it feeling a little short changed. As my first review has been a little downhearted, I almost feel like I should finish writing, collect myself, watch the film again (while trying to forget that it exists because of a piece of classic horror made in 1978) and re-review it. Either that, or move straight on to Halloween: Resurrection? Hmm... maybe not...

mathewdv Unique, elegant, a true inspiration to the art of film.

Realrockerhalloween 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.

Leofwine_draca Yet another HALLOWEEN sequel, this one directed by Steve Miner, the guy responsible for Friday the 13th Part 2 and HOUSE. As to be expected, it's not much cop, following the modern horror conventions too closely and therefore failing to generate any surprise or thrills by the fact that we already know what's coming. The plot is terrible, with events which occur not being explained or explainable, and details being passed by or glossed over in favour of dumping the cast and the killer in a deserted school.Watching this film, you will spot many take-offs of other movies (Michelle Williams looking out of the window and seeing Michael just like Curtis did in HALLOWEEN). The director would call these "homages", I myself call them "lack of ideas". Also, surprisingly, there are many continuity errors and mistakes. I wish they could have taken a little more time to polish things instead of rushing this out and leaving all the errors in, it really makes the editors look incompetent.While no actor is particularly bad, nobody really shines in this film. Adam Arkin (in some medical television series I believe) is pretty bland as Curtis' grey-haired lover who wears jumpers just like my old grandad. LL Cool J lends some comic relief as he recites erotic stories to his wife on the phone, but this humour is out of place in a HALLOWEEN film and just doesn't fit. Can someone explain to me how he was shot seven or eight times (twitching as the bullets entered his body) and yet manages to survive? The last we see of him is his corpse, laying in a pool of blood and riddled with bullets, then he returns at the end to tell us that the bullets only 'grazed' him. Yeah, right.The young cast are all pretty bad and sort of merge into one, nobody is memorable. Michelle Williams is in fact awful as a female token love interest, but to be fair she is given literally nothing to do in the story apart from run around. The only one who's at least partially adequate is Josh Hartnett who plays Laurie's tough son, he manages to be both believable and likable. Unfortunately he is in it too little, as Jamie Lee Curtis dominates the film. Much has been made of how Curtis puts in a brilliant portrayal of an alcoholic woman plagued by nightmares, but to be honest she wasn't that brilliant. Good, perhaps, but not brilliant, and her performance was definitely not enough to make this film into a classic.Which leaves us with Michael himself. Once again he's played by a different actor and he's even more absurd this time around, with his spiky hair bushing around the sides of his mask. Excuse me? Not the Michael I know, get yourself a haircut man. Unfortunately the camera dwells on his eyes far too often, making him not in the least bit scary, for as they say, the eyes are the windows to the soul. The murders are all clichéd and generic, the only good bit being where a girl has her leg broken and nearly ripped off. Otherwise it's the typical slashings and stabbings which we've seen millions of in these past few years.Leave it to Kevin Williamson to pepper the film with unwanted in-jokes. Janet Leigh has the PSYCHO music playing, while characters watch SCREAM and SCREAM 2 on televisions. These I could have done without; this is meant to be a horror film, not a comedy horror like SCREAM was. What an arrogant fellow that Williamson seems to be. There are other elements which are pretty nauseating too, like a poor actor doing an impression of Donald Pleasence (they dedicated the film to him, but managed to spell his name wrong in the process!). HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER is better than the previous sequel (thanks to a refreshingly short running time), but even so it's only average at best, marred by one too many false jumps and a lack of real scares.