The Halloween Films Ranked: #5 ‘Halloween H20: 20 Years Later’ (1998)

#5 in my ranking of the Halloween franchise.

Bringing in the talent who built the Friday the 13^th franchise, Steve Miner, to direct the seventh installment of the Halloween franchise, a reboot of the franchise ignoring III through The Curse of Michael Myers, Moustapha Akkad found a way to make the best entry in the franchise since the beginning. I mean, it’s not quite good, but it’s practically there. It replicates the kind of tension that dominated the first film and hasn’t been touched since, has some very solid kills, and even an emotional core. The uncredited rewrites by Kevin Williamson probably helped the film, but it could have used another real pass to tighten somethings up, give some meat on the film’s bones, and find something for our cast to do in the final act.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) faked her death shortly after the events of II and went into hiding, ending up as the head mistress of a tony boarding school in Summer Glen, California as Keri Tate. She has a son, John (Josh Hartnett), who is seventeen, her age when Michael Myers first showed up, who is grating against the tight bounds she imposes upon her. There’s a big annual trip to Yosemite coming up that John wants to go on, but his friends Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd), Sarah (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), and his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams), all get themselves exempted from the trip so they can hang out together alone (with minimal supervision) for a few days over Halloween weekend. However, they’re not destined to have a quiet time alone because Myers has reappeared, first killing Nurse Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) in Haddonfield before finding Laurie’s file which, apparently, contained information on where she was living.

What’s interesting about this in contrast to the rest of the franchise since the first is that aside from the opening bit of terror, including a small part by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, there’s no kill for pretty much for the first hour. The film is much more concerned with Laurie’s dealing with PTSD twenty years after the event that shaped her life. It’s not the deepest stuff, showing her being a high-functioning alcoholic as she tries to open up to her secret lover, the guidance counselor Will (Adam Arkin), while the teens do 90s teenager things as they set up for their secret night of food and sex, of which we end up seeing very little. These aren’t great character moments, but they’re solid enough to establish them as more than just meat for a slasher’s knife. They feel a bit arch, but real enough.

And the advantage of actually giving us time with them as we can see the threat growing closer without anyone knowing about it is that they feel significantly less stupid when the killing starts. They have no reason for thinking that they’re anything but safe even while we know that they’re not. They’re not having information withheld about someone who’s been hacked to death a room over because the movie needs to happen. This also refocuses the tension around the kind of delivery that Carpenter (who was attached to direct this for a time before his sense of justice demanded he be paid $10 million for the job) had delivered in the first film. It’s not about the strict thrills through, it’s about building up the sense of suspense over an hour until the killing starts.

And while the killing isn’t great in number, it’s the most visceral killing in the franchise. The stabs hurt, the sound effects are gruesome, and there’s one moment with a dumb waiter and a leg that just made me squirm.

So, the first hour or so was pretty okay with its character-focused efforts at building an actual story. The third act is where all the fireworks reside, and I ended up feeling something like a rollercoaster of emotion about it. The beginning of it was just outright great. This is where the meat hits the knife first and foremost, where the kills are gruesome and impactful, and where things feel like they’re spinning out of control. And then…it just keeps going. The focus goes from the kids to Laurie, and the ending just kind of drags out as this cat and mouse chase develops between Laurie and Michael that often doesn’t make the most sense, like the extended bit with Laurie under some folding tables that Michael (magically) gets on top of. It feels designed to extend the sequence as long as possible without addressing some real concerns about how…the whole thing is kind of stupid and Michael should just jump down and end it all.

I’m also of two minds regarding the finale to the finale where Laurie takes the knowledge that Michael always gets up again one last time and tries to do something about it. Knowingly leaning into that feels like a Williamson addition (it may not be, it’s just a guess), but it goes on for too long, extending this coda of violence just too long, almost like the film wasn’t long enough and they needed to get it over 80 minutes somehow.

So, if the film had better focus in its finale, I think I would have considered this good overall. Instead, the finale just kind of drags out beyond its effectiveness and becomes a drag. The opening hour was pretty decent, the start of the finale was great, and I was ready to really come away from this something of a fan. However, Miner and Akkad just didn’t know when to quit, and we end up with still the second best entry in the franchise so far. I mean…it’s a low bar, but it did clear it.

Originally published here