There is a sudden shift to professionalism under seventh franchise director (out of seven movies) Steve Miner, and it's not only being anchored by Curtis -- and not only because she was the original star of this franchise, alongside Donald Pleasence. (You may remember Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was Pleasence's last Halloween, since he died before it was released. That movie was in his memory, and so is this one, which may be the first time I've ever seen an actor memorialized in two different movies in the same series. I don't think even Paul Walker got that.)
No, it's because Curtis is an actual competent actress -- more than that, a movie star, at least to some degree. The flotsam and jetsam that joined Pleasence in the other movies didn't do much before or much after (other than Paul Stephen Rudd, from the last movie).
Halloween H20 is further stabilized by a nearly all-star cast, if not maybe at the time they made it, then what they've gone on to do since then. Here we get the likes of Michelle Williams, Josh Hartnett (in his film debut), LL Cool J, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adam Arkin and even Psycho scream queen Janet Leigh in a small role, though I must admit that after seeing her name in the opening credits, I forgot to look out for her in the movie. After the fact, I do remember who she played.
So does this all add up to a good movie?
Almost.
I'm still not quite giving a recommend on Halloween H20, as it is still a little beholden to the standard structure of a Halloween movie. (I'm starting to think there may be no other way to make one of these movies.) But the 2.5 stars I'm giving it are easily the highest number of stars I've given since the original Halloween. Halloween III is also better, but I didn't watch that this time around, having just seen it for the first time back in January.
SPOILERS to follow.
The clear advantages of this particular film:
1) It feels like more of an adult movie, perhaps because the final girl is an adult. There are some good, character-building scenes between Laurie Strode and her love interest, played by Adam Arkin, the kind you realize the other films did not have time for. (Though H20 doesn't add on extra celluloid to accomplish this as it is still only 87 minutes.)
2) There is finally a Black character in a Halloween movie! Welcome, LL Cool J.
3) We finally get out of Haddonfield, Illinois, where all but one of the previous movies (thanks again for being something different, Halloween III) were set. Laurie we now learn faked her death in a car accident in order to throw Michael Myers off her trail, which has worked for two decades now. Somehow she took the wreckage of her early life and turned it into a false identity serving as a headmistress for a private school in California. Just changing up the setting did wonders for this movie.
4) Laurie finally, really, truly, tries to take definitive action against Michael. Not only does she go on the offensive against him, once setting aside an opportunity to escape so she can actively seek him out on the campus of this school, axe in hand, but after "killing" him several times -- knocking him off a balcony, hitting him with a car, and rolling that car down a hill, where it pins him against a tree branch -- she takes that axe and chops his head off. I guess that's why the next film is called Resurrection.
5) I also really liked the straightforward approach to Miner's filmmaking. It seems that only the previous film was mired in 1990s serial killer "slickness," which was anything but slick in the hands of previous director Joe Chappelle.
One big qualm I did have: The lack of mentioning of Laurie's daughter Jamie, who was in each of the past three movies, dying in the last one. There is no attempt to make reference to her, why Laurie took her son (played by Hartnett) to California but not her daughter, or even that she exited. It's almost like the movie -- the first movie in the series that feels sort of like a reboot -- just said "Eh, that was a mistake. Let's just forget it happened." With Jamie Lee's return, the other Jamie -- who is now dead anyway -- had become superfluous. There can be only one.
I'm sure I should say more about the film that gave me a little hope for the second half of this viewing series, but the truth of the matter is, I'm writing this as quickly as I can before I head out the door on vacation and don't take a computer with me. See you when I return early next week, refreshed and ready for the final five movies I haven't seen in the Halloween series.
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