This is Halloween… No this is Halloween
Jake’s take on Halloween: H20
The end of spooky season is near, with Halloween fast approaching. Last week, the long-awaited reboot of the subtle and suspenseful horror movie Halloween (1979) hit theaters. All previous films are being ignored, in hopes of Halloween (2018) being a fresh start for the series. The first movie defined the slasher film genre with its antagonist Michael Myers as he terrorizes Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. It also spawned five sequels, the infamous remake directed by Rob Zombie, and the first attempt at a sequel reboot called Halloween: H20.
Taking place 20 years after the first movie, Halloween: H20 ignores the events of each previous movie, except for the first two. Myers has been comatose since the last movie and Strode has made a life for herself while still being haunted by the events of Halloween (1979). When Myers returns to finish off Strode, she must protect her and her son as the police attempt to put an end to his reign.
The idea of this movie was good on paper, but in practice it doesn’t quite work as well. That’s not to say this can’t be done well, just not here. This movie came out in 1998; around the same time Scream came out and almost every slasher film at the time attempted to repeat it’s success. It was also an attempt to make money off what had been a dying franchise. There are a lot of great moments in this movie, but that’s about all that can be said. Essentially, it’s just a handful of great moments shoehorned into an otherwise forgettable film. However, this film did make a profit and a sequel was later made called Halloween: Resurrection, a film most people don’t remember or don’t even believe exists.
By no means is Halloween: H20 necessarily a bad movie, it’s just not memorable by any means. The actors don’t seem to take the film seriously and most characters introduced are forgotten completely by the end of the movie. Halloween (2018) is essentially this same idea, except cleans up some of the issues made by the sequels by ignoring them completely and is coming out at a time where new slasher films aren’t in sight. However, it is coming out at a time in which reboots are being made everywhere so only time will tell if this is a success. My rating for Halloween: H20 is four jack-o-lanterns out of 10.
Here is a short podcast about Halloween (2018):