Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson have a lot to answer for. The resurrection of this shaggy old John Carpenter horror can be laid solely at the feet of the oh-so-clever and postmodernist Scream.
In this sequel, to the original Halloween (we're meant, Pam Ewing-style, to conveniently forget all the appalling sequels), Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode. She's changed her name to Keri Tate (an allusion to Sharon no doubt) and has become a Headmistress of an exclusive school, which her teenage son, John (Josh Hartnett), attends. She is still loony tunes owing to laughing boy Myers, so has become overprotective of poor John and has a moderate drink problem - two glasses of Chardonnay at lunchtime is meant to be a tell-tale sign. Her only confidante is weedy Will Brennan (Adam Arkin), the school guidance counsellor.
Set almost exclusively in a school that resembles a Mexican cowboy town, with a statutory creepy wood attached, Halloween:H20 is obviously predictable. However, no more so than a lot of dross around these days.
The rollercoaster ride begins with the gruesome slaughter of Donald Pleasance's (star of the original) nurse and a couple of obnoxious teenagers (including the young alien from Third Rock From The Sun), before targeting the main meat: John and Molly (Michelle Williams) and their friends Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd, who was superb in The Ice Storm) and Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). These naughty students have bypassed the school camping trip to Yosemite in favour of a sexy Halloween to themselves on campus. Do you think they made the wrong decision? Does a bear sh*t in [Yosemite's] woods.
Cue, the ultimate avatar of evil, Mr Myers (no, not the one from Wayne's World) and that washing powder face. Now, apparently that uniquely disturbing visage of violence concealing his face was literally a Star Trek mask of William Shatner, spray-painted white and stripped of its hair. A very scary thought - Captain Kirk without hairpiece.
The Enterprise captain's visage isn't the only fun to be had. There's also an amusing sequence between mother and child, Jamie Lee and Janet Leigh. The original scream queen, Janet, mutters something about maternal instincts to a shaky Jamie, before the Psycho theme music kicks-in and the old dame presumably enters the same car that was used in Hitchcock's masterpiece.
Ultimately, Halloween: H20 fulfils its basic function. To quicken the pulse and ultimately to frighten the bejeezes out of the viewer. This is purely and simply bloodcurdling entertainment and thankfully, in Jamie Lee Curtis, it has an excellent lead.
--Ben Walsh
In this sequel, to the original Halloween (we're meant, Pam Ewing-style, to conveniently forget all the appalling sequels), Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode. She's changed her name to Keri Tate (an allusion to Sharon no doubt) and has become a Headmistress of an exclusive school, which her teenage son, John (Josh Hartnett), attends. She is still loony tunes owing to laughing boy Myers, so has become overprotective of poor John and has a moderate drink problem - two glasses of Chardonnay at lunchtime is meant to be a tell-tale sign. Her only confidante is weedy Will Brennan (Adam Arkin), the school guidance counsellor.
Set almost exclusively in a school that resembles a Mexican cowboy town, with a statutory creepy wood attached, Halloween:H20 is obviously predictable. However, no more so than a lot of dross around these days.
The rollercoaster ride begins with the gruesome slaughter of Donald Pleasance's (star of the original) nurse and a couple of obnoxious teenagers (including the young alien from Third Rock From The Sun), before targeting the main meat: John and Molly (Michelle Williams) and their friends Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd, who was superb in The Ice Storm) and Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). These naughty students have bypassed the school camping trip to Yosemite in favour of a sexy Halloween to themselves on campus. Do you think they made the wrong decision? Does a bear sh*t in [Yosemite's] woods.
Cue, the ultimate avatar of evil, Mr Myers (no, not the one from Wayne's World) and that washing powder face. Now, apparently that uniquely disturbing visage of violence concealing his face was literally a Star Trek mask of William Shatner, spray-painted white and stripped of its hair. A very scary thought - Captain Kirk without hairpiece.
The Enterprise captain's visage isn't the only fun to be had. There's also an amusing sequence between mother and child, Jamie Lee and Janet Leigh. The original scream queen, Janet, mutters something about maternal instincts to a shaky Jamie, before the Psycho theme music kicks-in and the old dame presumably enters the same car that was used in Hitchcock's masterpiece.
Ultimately, Halloween: H20 fulfils its basic function. To quicken the pulse and ultimately to frighten the bejeezes out of the viewer. This is purely and simply bloodcurdling entertainment and thankfully, in Jamie Lee Curtis, it has an excellent lead.
--Ben Walsh