10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
6. Painfully Of Its Era
The three-year gap between Halloween 6 in 1995 and H20 in 1998 might not seem like a very long time, but it was long enough for a lot to change about the horror genre, especially at Miramax.
That's because, in 1996, Miramax released a little film called Scream that became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. And suddenly, Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson became Hollywood's hottest horror scribe.
Miramax had Williamson do a treatment for what would eventually become the H20 script. While he may only officially have a producer credit on the finished product, his fingerprints are all over this film. From his infamous cold-open to the incredibly '90s references, H20 still has Williamson's voice through-and-through.
And it dates it, painfully. Everything about this film screams '90s slasher flick in both form and content. For crying out loud, it features a Creed song on the soundtrack.
It's saying something that H20 now feels older than Carpenter's original film. Whereas the original film feels timeless and classic, H20 feels outdated specifically because of how modern it was trying to be at the time.