Every Halloween Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
5. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
What a strange time the mid-1990s proved to be for the Halloween series. Barely a year after the sixth film seemed to hammer the final nail in the franchise's coffin, along came a new horror movie called Scream, a post-modern slasher movie which directly referenced the original Halloween as the pinnacle of the subgenre. So it was that, just when Halloween seemed to be dead, it was suddenly hotter than ever.
The original's 20th anniversary in 1998 offered the perfect opportunity to reboot. Halloween H20 brought back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode for the first time since 1981, and ignored the entire series chronology since Halloween II, positing that Laurie had faked her death and started a new life under a new name miles away, in the hopes of losing Michael for good. No such luck.
It should have been the first really great Halloween sequel, but there's no avoiding a sense of commerce going before creativity: consider the fact that John Carpenter, initially set to direct, bailed when the producers refused his requested fee (two-time Friday the 13th director Steve Miner was his replacement).
The tone isn't quite right either; uncredited script revisions by Scream writer Kevin Williamson wind up making it feel too much like a Scream movie. Still, H20 boasts a decent cast including future big names Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and it's nice seeing Curtis share scenes with her late mother Janet Leigh.