Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Last Watch Date - October 28, 2022
Total Times Watched - Three or four
Comments
It's been decades since I last watched H20. What I remembered of it was not good. The concept itself was weird to me. Add on Josh Hartnet, Michelle Williams, and .. LL COOL J? and you have yourself a SKEPTIC.
In the interest of being a completionist, this had to be rewatched. There was a lot of it that I forgot, but one main thing I remembered was that this was a boring one for most of the movie. My memory is quite good there because outside of the first 10 or so minutes, NOTHING happens until nearly an hour in. Lots of "Michael is watching" moments and even some "Michael is actively not killing you" which makes no sense given his character.
One of my biggest gripes about this movie is that it's not even set in Haddonfield. It STARTS there, but after a few minutes, they bail and go to California where Laurie is living as someone else who absolutely LOVES chardonnay. And vodka. And listerine. Something I learned from this movie was chardonodka. You should give it a try! Make sure you chase it with Listerine for the full Laurie Strode effect.
Another big issue with this is Michael's mask. Why are the eye holes so big? He always looks shocked or scared. The guy who played him was much smaller and scrawnier than others, too. It looked like Clay Aiken in a Clay Aiken mask trying to cut everyone up. On the plus side, he was SUPER aggressive in this one and wasted no time poking around once the murdering got started.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in this one like.. how did Michael survive the fire at the end of Halloween 2? How did he get a NEW mask that looked almost identical to his old one? How did he escape? How did he drive to California with no one looking for him? You can try to answer any of these but you'll assuredly be wrong. This movie is goofy.
That's precisely why I enjoyed it more than I did last time. YES, it is boring for long chunks, but it's so stupid and over-the-top in others that it kind of makes up for it. It's missing some of the charm of the older ones, but it does an ok job at powering through as a late 90s slasher that knows what it wants to do. Don't get me started on the ending of this vs the beginning of Resurrection, though. Ugh.
Recommended?
Not really, but it was fine.