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41 thoughts we had while watching Halloween H20
Yes, it's that time again, friends, time for us to partake of some classic Halloween viewing.
No, we're not talking about the original '78 Halloween, or the 2018 Halloween reboot-quel, or even the wildly unrelated Halloween III: Season of the Witch. No, we're going back to the late '90s, when overplucked eyebrows and way too much lip gloss were a thing and the cast of any slasher movie was essentially plucked from whatever teen dramas happened to be airing on the WB that fall season. And for this latest installment of our SYFY FANGRRLS' Deja View series, we're going to be watching a little treat known as Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.
1. Two kids scaring a neighbor with a hockey mask feels like a weird choice for THIS movie, but OK.
2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt scored the "and" credit in this movie, but his character dies before the opening credits even show up on screen. What a flex.
3. It takes JGL's character less than 10 minutes to check his burgled neighbor's house for her, and somehow afternoon becomes total pitch-black night, because… Daylight Savings Time?
4. "They never found his body." "Yeah, but that was like 20 years ago." Death has no hold on creepy masked serial killers, local cop bro.
5. Introducing Josh Hartnett?! I can't believe I'm going all the way back to a time before Joshua Daniel Hartnett blessed all of our lives in three seasons of Penny Dreadful.
6. The version of the Halloween theme in the opening credits is too sweeping and orchestral; give me John Carpenter discordant synthesizer score or give me NOTHING.
7. We never talk about Jamie Lee's obvious swol-ness in this movie. Yes, Linda Hamilton bulked up between Terminator 1 and 2, but Halloween H20 Laurie deserves to be included in that same category. DEM ARMS.
8. Ah yes, a scene that will never not make me paranoid about peeing in roadside rest stop bathrooms.
9. I'm sorry, I do find it hard to believe that Laurie would be a private school headmistress thriving in good knitwear and making out with Adam Arkin and not a complete recluse, but she IS living under an assumed name, so that does explain some of it.
10. One of Josh Hartnett's friends is played by the kid from Jumanji. That's it, I just feel like it needed to be called out.
11. LL Cool J plays the security guard for the school named Ronny who has dreams of becoming a romance novelist and frankly, I support him in his dreams to express his creativity through whatever adjectives he wants to use for certain female body parts. Based on the summary he reads his lady over the phone, it sounds like he has a gift.
12. Laurie is trying to get her school guidance counselor boyfriend to shrinkify her and there is never a scenario in which this ends well.
13. Low-key dependence on many glasses of Chardonnay and a cabinet full of pills are all signs of fully coping and moving on from one's long-standing Halloween trauma.
14. Laurie drops an F-bomb with her son Josh Hartnett and he says he's "really uncomfortable" with her saying that word, but really, all I can think is that that would just make her the Coolest Mom Ever.
15. Remember when Laurie and Michael were brother and sister? That was weird.
16. Really, seeing everyone at this school running around with collared shirts and striped ties is just making me think of Harry Potter.
17. "You are a sterling example of what's right." "I'm honored." WHO WROTE THIS SUPPOSEDLY ROMANTIC DIALOGUE?
18. Gotta love the conversation in English class that is actually a meta-commentary on what will happen in the movie! Fate and confronting the monster! Surely that won't be revisited at any point at all ever!
19. SURPRISE CAMEO FROM JANET LEIGH. I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS GORGEOUS SCENE BETWEEN MOTHER-DAUGHTER SCREAM QUEENS SET TO A SUBTLE PSYCHO THEME.
20. Ronny's girlfriend beta-ing his romance novel over the phone is relationship goals, honestly.
21. Being the only students on campus after everyone has left for a fun weekend trip sounds more like a nightmare to me than the rest of this movie.
22. So based on Scream 2 playing on this television, does this mean this universe's version of Wes Craven saw a newspaper clipping about the Haddonfield murders and decided to base Ghostface on an actual real-life masked killer? Also, Randy is watching OG Halloween in the first Scream movie! My brain hurts.
23. So far, Laurie is getting more action in this movie than any of the teenagers and frankly, I'm OK with that. Mama deserves it. But she also confesses her real identity to her boyfriend while they're making out and that feels like the wrong moment, especially since he keeps trying to see down her shirt.
24. And THEN he tells her there's nothing to worry about when the phones stop working. Gotta love it when the supposedly supportive boyfriend turns gaslighter.
25. Ah yes, a movie that also gave me an irrational fear of sticking my hand into a garbage disposal.
26. Goodbye, kid from Jumanji. You never stood a chance.
27. Two students are murdered before Laurie even meets up with the rest of her kids. Exactly how big is this campus anyway that she can't find them immediately?
28. Josh Hartnett doesn't care if a dude is his uncle, he'll punch him in the face.
29. Say what you will about this movie, but the scene where Laurie locks eyes with Michael on the other side of that window is a beautiful moment of confrontation and I half-wish they'd replicated it in the reboot-quel.
30. And in the end, Ronny's demise was literally caused by the fact that Adam Arkin thought he was Michael Myers and shot him accidentally. RIP, Ronny. The world was deprived of your beautiful romantic prose.
31. Say what you will about Laurie's journey in this movie, but Jamie Lee Curtis has and forever will have great authoritative voice. "DO AS I SAY, NOW!" To that all I will ever say is: yes, ma'am.
32. Laurie calling Michael out to come get her while wielding a damn fire axe is a moment I also wish we talked about more.
33. Looks like Michael's been working on his pull-ups in that psychiatric hospital.
34. Laurie might not have the arsenal in this movie that she does in 2018 Halloween, but the resourcefulness is really on point. A giant California state flag! A drawer full of kitchen knives! The drawer that formerly held all those kitchen knives!
35. RONNY'S NOT DEAD.
36. OK, but Ronny also stops Laurie from delivering another series of stabbings to Michael and as we all know, that man is indestructible.
37. Ronny comes to the revelation after his near-death experience that he wants to write a romantic thriller, and actually, the market for that is pretty great so I hope he thrives in his dreams.
38. Oh, right. I forgot the part at the end of the movie where Laurie goes "off the rails" and kidnaps Michael's body at gunpoint and drives him to a remote place where she can presumably decapitate him in peace. Eventually, she slams on the brakes so he flies through the windshield, tries to run him over, and then rolls the entire van down the side of a mountain with still clinging to the front of it, all so she can decapitate him that way while he's pinned between the van and a tree.
39. THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR A BROTHER-SISTER RECONCILIATION, MICHAEL, YOU CREEPY DICK.
40. I don't know about you, but this part screams Last Jedi Force connective touching to me.
41. And just think, all of this was completely erased from continuity last year, including Josh Hartnett's choker necklace and the amazing Creed song over the closing credits.
