Twenty Years Later: A Look Back at "Halloween H20"

If there's one thing that film executives like, it's a good franchise. Happily-ever-after doesn't have to be forever anymore, as long as it returns decent box office results. A successful film with a good following ensures at least some return on the investment of future films in the series, since there's a guaranteed audience of people who will go to see what happens next in the main characters' lives.

Hollywood took an interesting turn with Halloween though. In the first film (1978), Michael Myers is an escaped mental patient who stalks high schooler Laurie Strode and her friends. With the second film, Halloween II (1981), they changed the plot of the first film, making Myers the deranged older brother of Laurie Strode. In the third movie, Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), the franchise changes course again, making the plot not about Myers or murder at all; instead of a slasher film, the third film features witchcraft. The fourth film (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988) attempts to correct course, with Myers stalking Jamie, the daughter of a deceased Laurie Strode. The fifth (Halloween 5: Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989) is a sequel to the 4th, with the 6th movie, Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers (1995), concluding the Jamie story-line and explaining the source of Myers's "power" is witchcraft. 

But it wasn't untiltwenty years ago that Laurie Strode got to end her story-line in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998); the movie pretends that movies 3 through 6 never happened. Instead, H20 tells us that after Halloween II, Laurie Strode faked her own death, went into hiding, had a son named John, became the principal of a private (read: gated) boarding school where she is a functioning alcoholic due to her perseverance despite serious psychological issues stemming from her encounters as a teenager with her murderous brother.

Laurie Strode bearing the emotional and physical scars of her encounters with Myers 20 years before

In short: this is a heroine we can get behind. She has all of the strength, resolve, and grit of the best Final Girl, while having the character flaws one would expect of someone who had been through what she has been through. Who wouldn't ensure that they worked somewhere with a front gate and security guard? Who wouldn't have a medicine carbonate jam-packed with pills? Who wouldn't have a few glasses of wine with lunch?

At the end of the day, the realistic adult Laurie Strode is the perfect match for Myers. She's tired of running and hiding, and she know that the only way to be rid of Myers is to kill him herself.

But besides this being a perfect end to the franchise, it's a wonderful love-letter to the genre, drawing parallels to the original Halloween as well as having subtle (and some not-so-subtle) nods to other great horror films.

Many of these are single images or lines: "The drains in the girls' shower room is clogged again," says school secretary Norma Watson, a reference to Stephen King's Carrie; neighborhood kid Jimmy wears a hockey mask reminiscent of Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981); "Twenty years from now you'll still be living with her, probably running some weird motel," John's friend Sarah says to him, a reference to Psycho (1960); Nancy Stephens returns as Marion, Dr. Loomis's collegue; and Strode telling her son John and his girlfriend to drive down to the Beckers to call the police, a reference to Scream (1997) where Mr. Becker tells his wife to drive to the McKenzies to call the police (which is a reference to the original Halloween film where Laurie Strode tells the kids she is babysitting to run down to the McKenzies and call the police).

Jimmy in his Jasonesque hockey mask

One of the more in-depth and insightful moments is both--H20's English class draws parallels to the original Halloween and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the original movie, when Laurie Strode is looking out of the window of her English class and sees Myers for the first time, the class is discussing fate. Jamie is called on to explain the difference between the writers, and the teacher agrees with her analysis, saying "Fate caught up with several lives here. No matter what course of action Collin's took, he was destined to his own fate. His own day of reckoning."

Twenty years later, Strode is teaching an English class where her son's girlfriend looks out the window to see Myers for the first time. When she is called on, the girl explains her take on Frankenstein, saying that Victor should have confronted the monster sooner, but didn't do so until he "reached a point in his life where he had nothing left to lose. I mean, the monster saw to that by killing off everybody that he loved. Victor finally had to face it. It was about redemption...it was his fate."

While the original movie suggests that Strode is simply fated to have a run in with Myers, H20 elaborates on this, insinuating that it is Strode's fate to defeat him as well.

But possibly the most memorable and touching tribute to the genre comes later, after the students have left campus for a class trip and Strode bumps into her secretary, Norma Watson, causing her to jump. Watson apologizes before saying "It's Halloween I guess everyone is entitled to one good scare," a line the sheriff said to Strode in the original film. "Well I've had my share," Strode replies, a wink to the audience who unlike the secretary knows Strode's backstory.

Watson goes on to tell Strode she knows it's not her place to be maternal to Strode but she doesn't like to see her like this. "We've all had bad things happen to us...oh what do I know" Watson says before heading toward her car to the sound of violins.

What does Norma Watson know indeed. Actress Janet Leigh, who plays Norma Watson, is perhaps better known for her role as Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). If anyone knows what Laurie is going through, it's Marion. Further cementing the connection, H20's Norma Watson has the same car as Psycho's Marion Crane, right down to the license plate, which is revealed as the camera pans while violins play the theme from Psycho. 

And as one final wink to audience members in-the-know, it is Leigh's place to be maternal to Curtis, as she is the actresses real-life mother. Knowing that Leigh is both Curtis's mother and a fellow horror-movie victim makes the scene between the two actresses all the sweeter.

Because adult Laurie Strode is so realistically flawed but determined to survive, and because H20 lets us believe that Strode is fated to defeat her monster, it's hard to believe that there would be a better end to the franchise. Yet Hollywood went on to make three additional movies for the franchise in the 2000s--Halloween: Resurrection in 2002 (which claims Myers switched places with a paramedic before Strode delivered the final blow in H20, landing her in a sanitarium where Myers finds and kills her before moving on to kill reality TV stars living in his old house), plus two movies in a reboot of the franchise (Halloween in 2007 and Halloween II in 2009).

This weekend, the franchise once again turns to Strode as the heroine of the franchise, picking up after the first movie and giving her one last chance to face, and defeat, Myers. Halloween (2018) could be just another strange turn in the franchise, or a meaningful end for Laurie Strode's story. Either way, fans of any of the Halloween story-lines are sure to flood to theaters this weekend to see the latest in the franchise.