Okay, here's the deal. I'm one of those regrettable souls that grew up without an "era" to fall into. I was around during Vietnam, but I don't remember a lot about it, other than it was on TV every night. The whole disco craze detoured around Carver Point, due to a 1977 Prom Night fire in the Carver High gym caused by frayed wires in a cheap strobe light. Never has so much polyester died in vain when the football team tried to beat out the flames with their rented powder-blue tuxedo jackets. The whole "urban cowboy" thing kinda passed us by too. We already had the shirts with the mother-of-pearl snaps and big belt buckles. Wasn't too much to revolutionize there.
I am, however, proud to say that I was one of the founding members of the slasher movie era. I caught my first one, and was hooked like a bigmouth bass on a spinner bait. Opening night, all anybody knew was that the movie was called Halloween, and it was s'posed to be scary. Not Jaws scary. A whole new kind of scary. I mean, wet-your-pants, throw-your-popcorn scary. I saw the movie four times that first weekend, and before it left Carver Point, I'd seen it twelve times. Jumped every time... betcha know exactly where.
I saw 'em all after that. Friday the 13th, every part. Elm Street, every part. Terror Train, The Funhouse, Prom Night, if there were teenage girls fleeing bloody knives, I saw it. Good ones, bad ones, didn't matter. I loved them. But like most good things, they started petering out. There was no fear left in them, it was all shock, all effects. Who could make the biggest mess in the shortest amount of time. The whole genre fell into a major yawn, and it faded. Finally, Kevin Williamson took us all back to the Golden Era of Slash with Scream, a movie I still can't get enough of, because it manages to make fun of the whole genre, and still remain faithful to the rules of slash. Unstoppable killer, usually with some funky mask or facial feature, sets in on a group of teenagers, all of them horny. The most virginal one will last until the end, and will have at least one chance to run to the highest point in a house and go out a window instead of trying to get out the front door. The bad guy will be stopped once and for all...or...will he?
Ah. Just like going home, ain't it?
So, I was kind of giddy when I heard that the Halloween folks were going to bring it all back one last time, and set up a face-off with The Mask, Michael Myers, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the original virginal babe in the woods, or the house, as it were. And, I tore out to see Halloween: H20 because I wanted a taste of what it was like some 20 years ago. And, while it works just like all those years ago, I had to see the thing twice to figure out exactly what was missing. It took me a while to write this thing, because it nagged at me and nagged at me, but I finally found the missing puzzle piece.
The movie finally brings back the love of my slasher life, Laurie Strode (Curtis). She's been living a new life, free from stalkers and publicity under the name of Keri Tate, and has become the headmistress of a private school, far away from dear old Haddonfield. She's also managed to become a single mom (Naughty, naughty, Laurie) to a 17-year-old son named John (Josh Hartnett). John is a restless kid though, and he wants to escape his mother's overprotective, overbearing ways. Granted, her long-lost brother is a world-famous psycho killer that can't be killed, but I guess it could get to be a bit much.
Well, John and some of his buddies decide to have a super-secret party on campus. (Mistake One....). And, you want to guess which holiday it happens to be (Mistake Two....)? And John just happens to be the same age as his sweet mamma was some twenty years ago, when Uncle Michael came home for a reunion (....and that would be Strike Three.... guess who's out...).
There's a lot to like here, especially if you're a fan of Uncle Mike. It's pretty easy to see that Scream master Kevin Williamson had a hand in the original screenplay. There are some of his trademark slick jokes sprinkled here and there, ones you have to be hip to the genre to understand. There are some very important lines from the original that are employed too, put in a new context that's also interesting. All this is fun to pick up on, but it makes for some strangely calm film time. There are some not-too scary scares here and there for the first hour, mostly along the lines of people popping into view and the like, but nothing that builds a solid sense of foreboding, like the one that permeated the original. Predictability is almost a virtue in these things, as Williamson himself pointed out in Scream, but that being so known, you'd think somebody would've changed the rules a tad. If anyone could change the rules, you'd think Williamson could, right? But, no, dear friends....
The casting here is right on the money, for the most part. Jamie looks better than ever, and it's a breath of fresh air to hear her scream like the old days. I also liked the cameo by her mother, Janet Leigh, playing off her own bit of screen screams by saying, "...we've all had bad things happen to us." LL Cool J is surprisingly fun to watch, as he was in Toys, and it only shows that he's a bonafide talent wasting himself on that predictable TV sitcom. Adam Arkin is Laurie/Keri's boyfriend, and he's as Wonder Bread as he is on TV's Chicago Hope, but then again, isn't the boyfriend of the heroine always supposed to be?
H20's last reel finally offers up a new twist, as Laurie/Keri goes "Ripley" on us, and turns the tables on Uncle Mike, like Sigourney Weaver did in Aliens, and goes into "hunter" mode instead off being he hunted. We get some nice heart-thumper scares, a few popcorn spills and one nice tension-induced knee-bounce (when your legs come off the floor.)
All this aside, there's a missing element here no one really counted on. Steve Miner is a competent director, and knows how to stage a scene. Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg do an honest job with the screenplay, thanks to Williamson's treatment and a few notches of their own. But, bottom line, there's no true Halloween without a Carpenter building it. John Carpenter has a way about filmmaking, a certain odd streak that powers his better efforts. He likes his villains, he understands them, and allows them to steer the story. Snake Plissken (Escape From New York) is just pure-d bad, but Carpenter revels in that, and lets him be as bad as he wants to. In the original Halloween, Carpenter built the entire atmosphere around the mystery of Michael Myers. We saw things from his eyes, we stalked the prey through the slits of his mask, we heard his breathing in the shadows as young girls stripped and brushed their hair for no other reason other than to save the undertaker a step or two. Dr. Loomis, Michael's keeper, told us story after story about his early evil, and then let us see the evil mature into sheer cold-blooded malevolence. Carpenter is a genius at building suspense and ripping the scare off the laugh. Here, minus Carpenter, it all seems a touch bland. It's like plain vanilla ice cream...no hot fudge.
If you were a fan of Halloween when it meant more than expensive costumes and safety-wrapped candy, go see this movie. It's likeable enough, but it just proves that time is kinder to some things than it is to others. Halloween: H20 is like "Slasher Film Lite," same great taste, but half the scares, three-quarters of the fun, and none of the flair that original Carpenter flair. It was like a homecoming reunion, seeing Laurie and Uncle Mike, and meeting the newest members of the family, but, like most family reunions, it turns tedious when all is said and done.
Image copyright Dimension Films.
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under the knife