Halloween H20: 20 Years Later also known as
Halloween: H20 is the 7th film in the
Halloween film series. Initially released in the
United States on Wednesday,
August 5,
1998, it was released in several European countries as well as
Singapore,
Australia, and
Mexico in the months that followed.
This is the first film about the
Michael Myers character to not feature
Donald Pleasence. Pleasence had died shortly before the release of
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers thus off-setting one of the key components of the series. This chapter is meant to be a direct sequel to
Halloween II. The "H20" in the title refers to the film taking place in continuity (as well as the sequel and having been made) twenty years after the original.
The original working title for the film was
Halloween 7: The Revenge Of Laurie Strode. Due to this being a sequel to
Halloween II, the title was, however, changed to
Halloween: H20.
Plot
The movie begins on the 29th of October 1998. Marion Chambers, Dr Loomis' collegue, returns to her house to find it has been ransacked. With her two teenage neighbors, they search the house, but find nothing and Marion decides to wait for the police in her house alone. While in her house Marion discovers her file on Laurie Strode missing and finds someone is still in her house and she rushes over to her neighbours house. When she arrives she finds both teenagers murdered, then the killer, Michael Myers, attacks her, and after a confrontation with him he manages to kill her. Just then the police arrive as Michael leaves the house with the file on Laurie.
In Northern California,
Laurie Strode, is now revealed to be living under the assumed name "Keri Tate". As Tate, Laurie has a seemingly perfect life with an intelligent son and a boyfriend, a great career (as a head mistress at a private boarding school) however, Laurie is far from happy. The tragic events from 20 years previous still haunt her and adversely affect her parental capabilities. To everyone, this is "just another Halloween"; however Laurie still lives in constant fear.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the happenings of 1978, her brother,
serial killer Michael Myers, manages to find her using the file, and starts killing off her co-workers and students one by one. For the first time in two decades, they meet again. Laurie escapes but chooses to go back to the school to challenge Michael in a fight to the death. She finds him and attempts to kill him several times. She finally pushes him off a balcony, causing him to apparently fall to his death, similar to the first film. To make sure he is dead she raises a knife in order to kill Michael for sure, but she is interrupted by the school security guard, who takes her to safety.
The police come and clean the mess and put Michael's corpse in a body bag and in an ambulance. Laurie steals the ambulance with Michael's body in the back, but Michael is still alive and escapes the body bag, and again tries to kill her. She slams on the brakes, throwing him through the wind shield. She then tries unsuccessfully to run him over. The vehicle tumbles down a cliff but she escapes, while Michael is trapped between it and a tree. He reaches out to her. She reaches for his hand,and remembers the loved ones that he killed. She then chops his head off with an axe, finally killing him. Michael's head, still concealed by the mask, rolls down the hill as sirens are then heard approaching.
Cast
Production
John Carpenter was originally in the running to be the director for this particular follow-up since Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to reunite the cast and crew of the original to have active involvement in it. While it was believed that Carpenter, himself, opted out because he wanted no active part in the sequel this is not the case. Carpenter agreed to direct the movie, but his starting fee as director was 10 million dollars. 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 bit of contention between Carpenter and Akkad even after twenty years had passed. When Akkad balked at Carpenter's fee Carpenter walked away from the project.
Writer/Producer
Kevin Williamson was involved in various areas of production on this particular sequel including coming up with the treatment that the film was based on. Although not directly credited, he provided rewrites in character dialogue, which is seen heavily throughout the teen moments. Miramax/Dimension Films felt his involvement as a co-executive producer merited being credited.
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.
John 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.
[Halloween: H20 score at Filmtracks]
The song "
What's This Life For" by hard rock band
Creed was featured in the movie during a party sequence and is also heard during the credits of the film.
Masks
As said on
Halloween: 25 Years of Terror,
Halloween H20 had scenes re-shot due to complaints of the Myers mask used in the film. Scenes that could not be re-shot had a CGI mask replace them frame by frame. Four masks were made for the film.
Reception
The critical reception for
H20 was mixed, with a rating of 50% on
Rotten Tomatoes; the site's general consensus is that it is the finest of the sequels.
[Rotten Tomatoes' Critical Reception Synopsis w/Pull Quotes] In terms of total gross,
Halloween: H20 is the second highest grossing film in the
Halloween series, behind the 2007 Halloween
remake directed by
Rob Zombie. 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 $55 million in domestic box office sales.
[Halloween: H20 at Box Office Mojo] As for DVD/Video rentals, the film grossed over $21 million.
Continuity
As originally conceived, the plot device in which Laurie had faked her death was written explicitly to account for her reported "death" in
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and the original story treatment for
H20 acknowledged the events depicted in the fourth through sixth films in the series, including the existence and death of Laurie's daughter,
Jamie Lloyd. However, the filmmakers ultimately chose to ignore the continuity of the previous three sequels. Although Laurie's faked death remained in the script, the scenes mentioning Jamie were removed from the story, and the film's dialogue was adjusted to indicate that Michael Myers had not been heard from in the twenty years since the night depicted in the first two films.
Michael's 20 missing years are explained in the comic book series Halloween: Sam, which also explains what happened to Dr. Loomis in the new continuity and further goes on to explain that Loomis and Laurie both knew he would return and she was placed in a witness protection program. The new continuity explains that Michael's body was never recovered from the hospital.
Halloween H20 also features the return of Nurse Marion Chambers-Wittington, who appeared in the first two films as an associate of Dr. Loomis. In
Halloween, she was the nurse who drove with Loomis to the asylum when Myers made his escape, and she resumed her role in
Halloween II.
The
Halloween comic book series, published by
Chaos Comics in 2001, attempted to bridge the continuity between
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and
Halloween H20, but in doing so made the plot of
Halloween: Resurrection (unreleased at the time) impossible.
Some scenes that were dropped from the other three movies were placed in H20. For example, the scene where Laurie is hiding beneath a table in the dining hall, Michael starts flipping the tables over. This was originally going to be placed in
Halloween 4; where Michael chases Jamie Lloyd through the elementary school. It was written that she would hide under a desk and Michael was going to flip the desks over. This was dropped due to time constraints, however Moustapha Akkad remembered and filmed it as part of H20.
