Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Year: 1998
Director: Steve Miner
Screenplay: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg, from a story by Robert Zappia and Kevin Williamson (uncredited), based on characters created by John carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, LL Cool J, Janet Leigh
Running Time: 86 minutes
Genre: Horror, slasher

Summary: In 1978 seventeen year old Laurie Strode (Curtis) narrowly escaped the murderous rampage of her psychopathic brother Michael Myers (Chris Durand).
In 1998, Laurie is now living under the name "Keri Tate" with her seventeen year old son John (Hartnett), and is working as Headmistress of the prestigious Hillcrest Academy High School private boarding school, which her son attends. She is also dating the school's guidance counsellor Will (Arkin). However Laurie is a recovering alcoholic, still haunted by the memory of her experience and suffers from horrible nightmares, especially when Halloween rolls around. Despite most people believeing that Michael Myers is dead, Laurie is convinced that he is still out there somehwere. Angry at his mother's overprotectiveness, John and his girlfriend Molly (Williams) decide to team up with their friends Charlie (Hann-Byrd) and Sarah (O'Keefe) and take advantage of the rest of the school taking a camping trip to Yosemite National Park over the Halloween holiday in order to have the school to themselves. However, it turns out that Laurie's fears are correct. Michael Myers has tracked her down and, on Halloween night, he arrives at Hillcrest Academy to finish what he started.

Opinions: This film is the sixth sequel to the classic horror film Halloween (1978). The film only really ties in to the original Halloween and Halloween II (1981), completely ignoring the other films as if they never happened, which is probably for the best. The film is also very heavily influenced by the hugely successful Scream (1996) and it's first sequel (themselves very heavily influenced by Halloween). Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two Scream movies, did uncredited rewrites on the script to Halloween H20, and has an executive producer credit, it was also made by the same studio that made Scream, features some of the same music, and even features a brief clip from Scream 2 (1997). They also feature a very similar style as Halloween H20 also mixes scares, jokes and pop culture references, it also includes Michelle Williams who starred in the hugely successful television series Dawson's Creek (1998-2003) which was created by Kevin Williamson. Which all means that the film belongs squarely in the typical style of late 1990s teen horror films.
The film concentrates more on the "stalk" and less on the "slash" than many of the previous installments, which hearkens back to the first film. It means that the viewer spends time with the characters and gets to like them before they get turned into sushi. Directed by Steve Miner, who also directed Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and Friday the 13 Part III (1982), there is extensive use of a mobile floating camera which constantly gives the impression of the characters being stalked or tracked by the camera itself. The film also recognises that Michael Myers, who is a kind of limited villain, being more like a supernatural version of the Terminator, works much better when he is kept largely off-screen, frequently glimpsed briefly in the background or through open doors. In fact when Laurie Strode first encounters Myers in the film, she has to pause for a few seconds to convince herself that it is not one of her nightmare or hallucinations.
The scares are mostly effective and there are several good shock moments, even if the gore is probably too limited to appeal to the gorehounds.
The acting in the film is good, and the cast are engaging. Janet Leigh (in real life the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis), and who has also had previous experience of knife-weilding maniacs in the film Psycho (1960), appears briefly as a schoolteacher. It also has an appearance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a hockey mask wearing teen.
Aside from the original film, this is definitely the best in the series, and is a good slice of entertaining horror, featuring good performances, some decent shocks and plenty of humour.



Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) faces up to Michael Myers (Chris Durand) in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

The Faculty

Year: 1998
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay: Kevin Williamson, from a story by David Wechter and Bruce Kimmel
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Shawn Hatosy, Robert Patrick, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, Daniel von Bargen, Usher Raymond
Running Time: 104 minutes
Genre: Science-fiction, horror

Summary: Herrington High School is a perfectly normal school in Ohio. The star quarterback, Stan (Hatosy), wants to quit sports to concentrate on his academic work. Stan's girlfriend, Delilah (Brewster), is the head cheerleader and editor of the school paper. The frequently bullied Casey (Wood) photographs for the newspaper and has a massive unrequited crush on Delilah. Zeke (Hartnett) is a very intelligent but lacklustre student, preferring to concentrate on selling fake IDs, pornographic videos and his own home-made drugs to his fellow students. While goth girl and science-fiction fan Stokely (DuVall) is happy being left alone. Meanwhile new girl Marybeth (Harris) is just trying to fit in and make friends in the new school.
However, they soon become aware of strange changes taking place in the behaviour of the staff and fellow students. They quickly begin to realise that the faculty and most of the students are being infected by mind-controlling alien parasites. The problem is finding out who is infected and who isn't and whether there is any way to stop the parasites before it's too late.

Opinions: A mix of science-fiction, horror and teenage high-school comedy-drama, this film is an entertaining blend of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Thing (1982) and The Breakfast Club (1985) all of which are explicitly referenced.
The screenplay is by Kevin Williamson, who at the time was one of the hottest scriptwriters in Hollywood having written Scream (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream 2 (1998) as well as creating the TV series Dawson's Creek (1998-2003). The film features many Williamson hallmarks such as quick-witted dialogue, multiple pop-culture references as well as Williamson's genuine interest in and liking for his teen characters.
The movie benefits a lot from Robert Rodriguez's typically stylish and fast-moving direction. The main cast of young, up and coming actors are effective and receive good support from their more established adult co-stars, including Robert Patrick as the enjoyably sinister Coach, and Famke Janssen as a repressed English teacher. Also comedian, satirist, TV presenter and host of The Daily Show Jon Stewart appears as a science teacher and there is also a cameo from Harry Knowles, founder and maintainer of movie news and review site Ain't It Cool News.
This is an enjoyable and interesting variation on some familiar themes. Also a high school, with it's emphasis on conformity and the pressure to fit in, is a perfect setting for "mind-control" horror.



Shawn Hatosy, Josh Hartnett, Laura Harris, Clea DuVall and Elijah Wood in The Faculty

30 Days of Night

Year: 2007
Director: David Slade
Screenplay: Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, based on the comic book by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Manu Bennett, Mark Boone Junior and Mark Rendall
Running Time: 113 minutes
Genre: Horror, action, survival, vampire

Summary: The small town of Barrow, Alaska, is the northmost town in the United States and every year experiences thirty days of total, twenty-four hour darkness. On the last day of sunlight, while many of the residents leave the town to escape the month long night, the town experiences unusually severe occurances of vandalism as the town's power supply and communications are shut. Following a disruption in the local bar, the town's sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) arrests a mysterious and violent stranger (Foster). Oleson is also surprised to discover that his estranged wife, Fire Marshal Stella (George), is trapped in the town after missing the last flight out. As soon as the darkness takes hold, the town is swept by a series of brutal murders. It turns out that they have been overrun by a tribe of vampires, led by the philosophical Marlow (Huston), who have been drawn to the town by the month of perpetual night. Soon, Oleson and Stella find themselves with a small group of survivors who have to survive thirty days in a small town overrun by hungry and unsleeping vampires.

Opinion: This movie is based on the three-issue comic-book miniseries 30 Days of Night, written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith, which was published in 2002 and subsequently followed by several sequels. The movie itself is fun if not particularly special, being very firmly in the "small group of people trapped and surrounded by evil" school of survival horror. The film's main twist on the vampire mythos is the fact that the humans are denied the one main advantage they have in other vampire stories i.e. the fact that vampires can only go out at night. Here there is only night. This makes the movie more similar to zombie movies such as Night of the Living Dead (1968). The film's main problem is that it lacks variety becoming stuck in a fomula (they go out, are attacked by vampires, they escape and go back), and the action, though well done, becomes repetitive, particularly in the middle on the film. The vampires in the film are interesting, they are much stronger and faster than humans and are very resiliant they are also given their own language. The movie is well performed by an effective cast and well directed by David Slade, who made his name with the controversial thriller Hard Candy (2005) and returned to the undead with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).
The film was followed by a straight to DVD sequel called 30 Days of Night: Dark Days.

"When man meets a force he can't destroy, he destroys himself. What a plague you are."
- Marlow (Danny Huston), 30 Days of Night