Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is a 1998 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner. It is the seventh installment in the Halloween film series. The screenplay by Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg was from a story by Zappia. Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode, with additional roles played by Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, Josh Hartnett, LL Cool J and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film was released on August 5, 1998, two and a half months before the 20th anniversary of John Carpenter's original Halloween (1978).
Set twenty years after the events of the first two movies, H20 centers on a post-traumatic Laurie Strode living in fear of her brother Michael Myers, who attempted to kill her all those years ago. When Michael eventually appears, Laurie must face evil one last time, while the life of her teenage son hangs in the balance.
The film is dedicated to Donald Pleasence who portrayed Samuel Loomis in the franchise. Pleasence died in 1995.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, praising the script, direction of Steve Miner and the performances of Jamie Lee Curtis and Josh Hartnett, but received criticism for certain plot points (such as ignoring some of the previous films).
A sequel, Halloween: Resurrection, was released in 2002, with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode.
Video Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
Plot
On October 29, 1998, twenty years after the massacre in Haddonfield, Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Dr. Sam Loomis' former colleague, returns home in Langdon, Illinois, to find that her house had been burgled. Her teenage neighbor Jimmy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his friend Tony call the police. Marion discovers that the file on Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Michael Myers' sister, is missing. She immediately rushes back over to Jimmy's house, where she finds him and Tony dead. Michael Myers (Chris Durand) suddenly appears and attacks Marion before slitting her throat, killing her. The police arrive just as Michael leaves the house with Laurie's file.
Meanwhile, Laurie is living in California with a seemingly perfect life with her teenage son John (Josh Hartnett) and her boyfriend Will (Adam Arkin), and has a career as the headmistress of Hillcrest Academy, a private boarding school where John attends. However, Laurie is far from happy, as the tragic events from 1978 still haunt her and lives in fear that her brother may return. She has tried to get her life together with the hope that her psychotic older brother would never come after her again. Laurie ultimately faked her death in a car accident, and then relocated to California under an assumed name, Keri Tate.
While a woman and her daughter are at a rest stop, the two narrowly avoid Michael, who steals the woman's car. At the academy campus, the students leave for an overnight field trip at the Yosemite National Park. Later that evening, John and his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams) are having a Halloween party in the basement with their friends, Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and his girlfriend Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). Charlie goes off into the kitchen and is killed by Michael. Sarah finds Charlie's body and tries to escape via the dumbwaiter, but Michael savagely disfigures her leg before stabbing her to death. John and Molly go looking for their friends and are chased by Michael through the school grounds. Laurie opens the door for them and finally comes face-to-face with Michael for the first time in twenty years.
When Will sees the school's security guard, Ronny (LL Cool J), approaching, he mistakes him for Michael and shoots him. Michael then appears and stabs Will in the back, killing him. Laurie helps John and Molly escape before heading back to kill Michael herself. She stabs Michael multiple times and finally incapacitates him, but when she tries to finish him, Ronny, who survived the shooting, stops her, telling her that Michael is dead. The police and paramedics arrive and put Michael in a body bag, loading it into a coroner's van. Laurie, knowing that Michael is not really dead and is extremely difficult to kill, grabs the fire axe and an officer's gun and steals the van. When Michael awakens and escapes the body bag, Laurie slams on the brakes, throwing him through the windshield. She then hits him at full speed and the vehicle tumbles down a cliff with her falling out and pinning Michael between the van and a tree. Laurie recovers the axe and decapitates Michael, finally killing him. Police sirens are heard off in the distance as Laurie exhales.
Maps Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
Cast
Production
John Carpenter was originally in the running to be the director for this particular follow-up since Curtis wanted to reunite the cast and for the crew of the original to have active involvement in it. It was believed that Carpenter opted out because he wanted no active part in the sequel; however, this is not the case. Carpenter agreed to direct the film, but his starting fee as director was $10 million. Carpenter rationalized this by believing the hefty fee was compensation for revenue he never received from the original Halloween, a matter that was still a point of contention between Carpenter and Akkad even after twenty years had passed. When Akkad balked at Carpenter's fee, Carpenter left the project, though supposedly served as an uncredited producer.
Scream writer/producer Kevin Williamson was involved in various areas of production. Although not directly credited, he provided rewrites in character dialogue and helped make alterations and sketches of the script. The original working title for the film was Halloween 7: The Revenge of Laurie Strode.
Music
The original music score was composed by John Ottman, but some music from Scream was added to the chase scenes later on during post-production. Ottman expressed some displeasure about this action in an interview featured on the Halloween: 25 Years of Terror DVD released in 2006. Ottman's score was supplemented with Marco Beltrami's scores from Scream, Scream 2, and Mimic by a team of music editors as well as new cues written by Beltrami during the final days of sound mixing on the film. Dimension Films chief Bob Weinstein demanded the musical changes after being dissatisfied with Ottman's score.
The song "What's This Life For" by the music group Creed was featured in the film during a party sequence and is also heard during the credits of the film.
No official soundtrack was ever released for the film, but a compilation album by John Ottman was released in the United States and Germany under the Varese Sarabande label and includes the original score by Ottman and numerous other cuts.
Alternate television version
In February 2003, the FX network premiered an alternate version of the film, adding and extending footage not seen in the original release. It has yet to be released anywhere else, and the deleted scenes can be found on YouTube.
Reception
Box office
In terms of total gross, Halloween H20 is the highest-grossing film in the Halloween franchise. It was released on August 5, 1998 in the US and later in many other countries. H20 cost $17 million to produce and returned over $85 million in domestic box office sales with an opening weekend of $26,187,724. As for video/DVD rentals, the film grossed over $21 million.
Critical reception
Halloween H20 received an approval rating of 51% on the internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 57 reviews; the site's general consensus is "Halloween: H20 is the best of the many sequels, yet still pales in comparison to the original Halloween." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film two out of four stars, while Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote that "the throwaway jokes are few and far between, and after a pre-title sequence reintroduces Michael and shows just how far up suspense and thrills can be ratcheted, Halloween H20 declines into the routine," adding: "Nobody is going to be surprised by who lives and who dies." Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the film's referentiality, as well as Curtis's performance, writing: "Slasher films often seem merely a joke, and with good reason, but in this case that's too bad. Curtis, with her plain, unglamorous appearance, rises to the occasion and delivers as compelling a performance as any this summer." Writing for the Austin Chronicle, Marc Savlov said of the film: "Miner strives to imbue the film with the requisite autumnal haze of the original but then gives up midway through and instead resorts to the standard stalk 'n' slash formulas. It's heartening to see a beloved character revived like this (at one point during the screening I attended, audience members actually stood up and cheered), but H20--for all its good, gory intentions--is barely a shadow of the original."
Home media
In the United States, Halloween H20 was released on VHS and laserdisc by Buena Vista Home Video. In the United Kingdom, the film was released on VHS in 1998, a re-release was made on September 1, 2000.
On DVD, the film was first released by Dimension Films on October 19, 1999 as part of the "Dimension Collector's Series" on DVD. It was released in the UK on October 22, 2001 and re-released on April 25, 2011. It was also released exclusively in the UK in 2004, as part of the complete collection, consisting of the first eight films, a set that is now out of print. It was re-released in the US by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment on April 26, 2011, although, it does not contain its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, it now features a new 1.66:1 widescreen transfer. Echo Bridge later re-released the film in a triple feature set with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection.
Halloween H20 was released in Canada for the first time ever on Blu-ray by Alliance released along with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection on January 12, 2010. On May 3, 2011 it was released by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment in the US but with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (not cropped from the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but rather open-matte due to the film being shot in Super 35). It was also released along with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers in one Blu-ray collection.
It was again released on Sep 23rd, 2014 (in its original theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio) in the "Halloween: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Box Set" featuring a new commentary with Jamie Lee Curtis and Steve Miner, plus a ton of new extras including behind the scenes footage and archival interviews not seen on any release.
References
External links
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later on IMDb
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later at AllMovie
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later at Rotten Tomatoes
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later at Box Office Mojo
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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