Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

I'm not a huge fan of the Halloween franchise.  It's not that I dislike the premise or anything, I just never got around to seeing most of the sequels.  The original film is still one of the best horror movies ever made, and Halloween II was an entertaining, but mediocre, slasher flick.  From what I've heard from fans of the series, the fourth, fifth and sixth entries are pretty ridiculous, which might explain Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.  The seventh movie in the series is a direct sequel to Halloween II, and completely ignores the existence of any films that occurred between II and this one.  I was considering watching Halloween III and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers this month, but a direct sequel to movies I enjoyed seems like a much better idea.

Pictured: pages 3-42 of the script

It is almost Halloween in 1998, twenty years after Michael Myers returned to his Haddenfield, Illinois home and killed a bunch of people for no particular reason.  One of the survivors was his sister, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis); while she managed to avoid being killed on that Halloween night, she knows that Michael's body was never found.  In the intervening years, it seems that Laurie has faked her own death and moved on with her life.  She now lives in sunny California as a teacher in an expensive prep school.  Not surprisingly, she is not well-adjusted and self-medicates with pills and alcohol to cope with the fear of Michael tracking her down again.  But she's just being silly, isn't she?  It's been twenty years!  What kind of person would wait twenty years, staying under the radar all that time, before making a second attempt?  Maybe the kind of person who waited fifteen years after his first killing to strike a second time.  Hey...Michael Myers is that kind of person!  Laurie starts to calm down a bit, but she realizes that she was seventeen when Michael first attacked her.  So what?  Well, her son, John (Josh Hartnett, in his film debut) just turned seventeen!  OMG!  That means Michael must be on his way to kill them both right now!!!

***knock, knock***    "Um, somebody order a pizza?"

Wait...what?  Is that the actual logic behind this film?  Is is?!?  Good lord.  The film opens with Michael breaking into the home of the late Dr. Loomis's nurse (Nancy Stephens, resuming her role from the first two films) and ransacking her confidential patient records, which she inexplicably keeps in her home office.  There, Michael presumably discovers a) that Laurie is alive b) her new name and location and c) that she has a son, who just turned seventeen.  So, if you put any thought into it at all, the whole "my son is seventeen, and so was I when Michael attacked me" bit is more of a coincidence than anything else.  And exactly what has Michael Myers been up to for the last twenty years?  Since nobody has heard from him in two decades, I'll assume that he hasn't been killing his way across America.  No, I think we have to presume that Michael Myers has settled down, found a creepy woman who bore him some creepy kids.  This just seems like an older man, trying to reclaim his youthful glory; Michael is forty-one in this, after all.  Maybe he was listening to his favorite band, Pulp (that's a little-known and completely made-up Myers fact), in 1998 and this song really clicked with him.

So Michael went into his closet, dug out his old mask and jumpsuit and found that they still fit.  It was finally the day where he took the time to accomplish the one thing in life that he has never gotten around to: murdering his little sister.

First reactions to this script

Okay, maybe the premise this time around is a little weaker than usual.  While that is disgraceful (especially comparatively), at least they came up with a (poor) reason for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back into the fold.  While never what I would call a fantastic actress, she is quite good here.  Her scream queen lungs still work quite well, and age makes her determination seem more plausible and mature when she decides to face Michael head-on.  As for the rest of the cast, Adam Arkin seemed fairly reasonable as Laurie's boyfriend, which is quite an accomplishment in a film like this.  LL Cool J was pretty awful as the world's least effective security guard/romance novelist; it's not that his character was annoying, he was just a truly awful security guard.

You're so fired

Josh Hartnett was decent enough as a high school kid who apparently cuts his own hair and wears a school uniform that is two sizes too big for him, but he was definitely the best part of the young cast.  Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were all just movie stereotypes: the nice girl, the horny guy, the alternative rock chick, and the stupid skater, respectively.

"I could be so much more, if you only gave me a chance!"  I know.  I'm sorry.

There could have been dozens more underdeveloped characters in this film, but the story --- which features Michael Myers infiltrating a prep school and killing everyone he finds --- opts to send most of the students off on a field trip for Halloween.  Reducing the possible number of victims is always a bewildering choice in a slasher movie, just like having Janet Leigh make a cameo and not scream.

How do you not want to kill her in your movie?  It's not like a shower scene is mandatory!

Director Steve Miner was responsible for a lot of stupidity in Halloween H20, but there were some good moments, too.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt's death was one of the more entertaining I have seen in this franchise, and I really liked that the nurse, who shouldn't be expecting any Michael Myers trouble, was totally on her A-game and didn't fall for the typical slasher movie cliches.  Sure, she died anyway, but her character seemed a hell of a lot smarter than most of the victims I have seen in this series.  While the body count was small (just six dead) and the nudity was non-existent, I thought Miner crafted a respectable slasher pic with the tools he had available.  Some scenes, like Michael trying to kill Harnett and Williams through a gate, even looked pretty cool.  But for every cool idea, something lame popped up to counter it.  I disagree with the choice to bring back and prominently use the "Mr. Sandman" song (first used in Halloween II).  I also thought the fate of LL Cool J's character undermined a super-cool scene.  More than anything else, though, I tired of the recuperation skills of Michael Myers.  The man takes an axe wound, six stab wounds, falls from a balcony, gets his by a car, crashes through a windshield, and is crushed between a tree and an automobile --- and it still able to attack, without any hint of taking damage.  I know that this is kind of Michael's "thing," but if there was ever a time to update a character, it is in the film that ignores most of the character's history.

Despite all the stupidity, I managed to enjoy Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.  It is certainly not groundbreaking, or even good, but I was entertained.  I laughed at the story logic, I enjoyed the kills, and I felt that the adult acting in the movie was some of the best of its type in this subgenre.  In fact, I would rate this the best Halloween sequel to date.  Of course, I have only seen one other Halloween sequel...

30 Days of Night

I've never been  a huge fan of vampire movies; the Anne Rice vamps are too mopey, the Twilight ones are too teen-friendly.  Even when Hollywood went back to basics with Bram Stoker's Dracula and got the incredible Gary Oldman to play the title role, it was underwhelming and bizarrely oversexed.  Even the Blade movies, which succeed as action flicks, fail by making vampires stupid rave kids.  Don't even get me started on the Underworld trilogy.  The vampire, as a cinema monster, has lost its effect.  It is no longer the stuff of horror, but a metaphor for undying love.

And that's a steaming pile of crap.  Vampires should be scary.  They drink blood to live, ferchrissakes!  They are unnatural abominations that take joy in the pain they cause.  In 30 Days of Night, Hollywood finally got the vampire right.

Based on the comic book miniseries of the same name, this story takes place in Barrow, Alaska.  Barrow is so close to the Arctic Circle that the town has one month out of the year where the sun does not rise at all.  Hence the movie title.  Not surprisingly, many of the townsfolk leave for the month, because missing daylight can make people go a little crazy sometimes.  In fact, the town does not sell alcohol during that month to keep the troubles to a minimum.  A relative few remain behind, including the sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), the surly town snowplow driver, Beau (Mark Boone Junior), and assorted townsfolk.  This year, Eben's estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George), also happens to get stuck in town after the annual exodus; a storm is heading toward Barrow, and she manages to wreck her car on the way to the last flight out of the area.  She's not the only visitor, either.  A strange, hoarse, dirty man (Ben Foster) appears on the first night, coincidentally the same night when all the town's cell phones have been stolen and burned,  and all the town's dogs have been killed.  This stranger is soon taken into custody by Eben and Stella for acting crazy in the town diner, but he just laughs at them, claiming that death is coming to Barrow.  The power goes out, so Eben and Stella investigate, only to find that the telecommunications/power center for the town has been sabotaged and the operator killed.

So far, the vampires haven't really been seen yet.  They are fast blurs in the shadows, and they are messy; you can tell where they have been because there's usually a headless corpse and a circle of blood-stained snow.  Then they attack, and you get your first look at them.  They speak a guttural foreign language, possibly an ancient one, so their dialogue has subtitles.  Their eyes are wide and entirely black.  They are pale, yes, but they are monstrous; their fingernails are claw-like, their noses elongated, and their teeth are all sharp.  These aren't the type of vampires that feed on you by leaving two fang marks behind, they tear out your whole throat.  There is no mistaking that these are vampires, and they have come to kill the residents of Barrow. 

Predictably, the human population in Barrow takes a swift nose dive after the vampires move in.  While there are two or three visually distinctive vamps, there is a clear leader, played by Danny Huston, that is commanding the rest.  Under his leadership, all communications have been lost, and all transportation has been disabled.  Still, a few survivors remain, including Eben and Stella.  They manage to sneak into a house that has a hidden attic, where they wait until they come up with a plan: the people of Barrow deliberately live there, so they know the cold like no others, and they can use that to their advantage and fight back.

As far as the acting goes, it's decent, with a couple of particularly awesome performances.  I found it noteworthy that I didn't dislike Josh Hartnett for a change.  Melissa George is okay, but not extraordinary.  This is probably the most heroic role I have seen Mark Boone Junior play; he usually is cast as a corrupt cop or a sleazeball.  Ben Foster once again takes a bit part and makes it memorable; you can argue that he overacts, but I love seeing him take boring roles and making them distinct characters.  Most of the vampires do little in the acting department, save tilt their heads and hiss.  Danny Huston, though, is terrifying.  He's basically the only vampire that speaks, and his makeup, combined with his inhuman mannerisms and his croaking voice, combine to make him the best vampire I can remember. 

I really liked the creative choices that director David Slade made with this film.  The first draft of the script was written by the comic's writer, Steve Niles; Slade made the choice to have his screenwriter from Hard Candy, Brian Nelson, do the rewrite.  Basically, they chose to make the script less over-the-top and more scary, and yet still remain basically true to the comic.  That is so smart, I wish they did this with all comic book movies: have a comic guy write the script that captures the feeling of the source comic books and have a screenwriter make changes so it works better on film.  It's a very simple concept that comic movies rarely follow.  And the vampire language?  That was totally a Slade/Nelson idea.  Visually, the film is surprisingly detail-oriented.  Beards grow with appropriate speed, chapped lips get worse over time, and the survivors look hungrier and dirtier as the film progresses.  The direction isn't flawless; the acting is only decent and the scenes where the survivors hide should have been claustrophobic.  Luckily, the sheer scariness of the vampires makes up for those not-quite-awesome attributes.

From a writing perspective, the story stays pretty true to the comic book.  There are some differences, but nothing major.  In fact, some of the changes are for the better, like the invention of the vampire language.  Still, the writing isn't great.  The plot is kind of predictable and there are some scenes that you just know will happen eventually, if you bother to think about it.  For instance, there has to be a scene where we get to see someone start to transform from human to vampire.  It's obvious, really, but the pace was brisk enough to keep me immersed in the moment, so I didn't think ahead.  That sort of pacing should be common in movies, but too often is overlooked, so I am grateful for its presence in this film.

The more I think about 30 Days of Night, the less impressed I am with it. I've seen it three or four times, and this happens every time I analyze it. It's not a bad movie, by any means. It just has a lot of things that aren't objectively great about it. But then I watch it again, and its awesomeness is renewed for me. There is something in this movie (probably scary vampires, if I had to guess) that satisfies me in a very basic way, and it is immune to any cliches or mediocre performances this film may contain. The important thing is that it has vampires, and they do not suck. And that makes me smile.