Halloween H20: The One With All the Famous People

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So remember way back in Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers when we learn that Jamie Lee Curtis aka Laurie Strode died in a car accident? Well, guess what, you guys…Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t die in a car accident. No. She faked her own death and went into hiding. 20 years later, she is living under an assumed name, Keri Tate, and also she’s a principal at an isolated boarding school. She teaches classes in literature (nice continuity from the original film) and, totally coincidentally, her students are reading Frankenstein and have really keen literary insights like, “Everyone the doctor loves is dead so he can finally confront his monster face to face.” Jamie Lee Curtis is understandably a traumatized wreck after being almost murdered by her brother for two whole movies (or one very long Halloween night depending on how you look at it) so even though her son, Josh Hartnett, is going all Little Mermaid on her: “I’m 17 years old! Stop trying to control me! I need to live my own life! I need to be free to go camping with my friends at Yellowstone National Park or wherever! Excuse me whilst I make out with my girlfriend, future Oscar-winner, Michelle Williams!” Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis’ old nurse gets her house broken into and the neighbor boy, future dreamboat Joseph Gordon-Levitt, tries to be helpful but is killed with a hockey skate to the face. This is the 7th movie in the franchise. Michael Myers ain’t messing around. So Michael kills the nurse and pretty much everyone else that gets in his way and steals the Laurie Strode file which obviously explains how he can find her after all this time. Does anyone else feel like this movie is trying too hard to actually provide a feasible explanation for Michael Myers’ abilities? You seriously do not have to worry about this, Director Steve Miner. I don’t know if you saw Halloween III, sir, but in it, the bad guy steals Stonehenge and sets it up inside his toy factory so he can take over the world. Just saying. Side issue: there is a fairly creepy scene where Michael steals a woman’s car keys and her car while she and her daughter are in the rest room, reminding me why I never stop at deserted rest stops NO MATTER HOW BADLY I HAVE TO PEE. YOU CAN TOTALLY GET MURDERED THAT WAY. Meanwhile…LL Cool J is apparently the entire campus security system for this boarding school. But that’s just his day job because he actually really wants to be a screenwriter. He spends the first half of the movie on the phone with his special lady reading the sexy thriller screenplay he wrote. Hey, we’ve all got a dream. But obviously LL Cool J is very distracted and isn’t paying a whole lot of attention to his security guard duties. Again, the film feels it necessary to explain how Michael Myers is able to calmly stroll in through the front gates without being noticed. I’d really hate it if I felt like this film was straining credibility. And it’s about this point when Jamie Lee Curtis decides to tell the guidance counselor, who is also her boyfriend, about how her name isn’t really Keri Tate and how her brother is actually a crazed serial killer who goes cuckoo on Halloween and her boyfriend is like, “Hahaha, JLC, you are soooooooo funny!” And Jamie Lee is like, “I’m not even a little joking.” He is really, really surprised. So then Michael shows up and, as he is wont to do, he kills some teenagers that get trapped in a dumb waiter (because their school is old and creepy and this is a Halloween movie, remember?). Scary piano music, blood, stabbing – it’s a whole big thing. Josh Hartnett is suddenly like, “Uh-oh, my nut-job Mom was totally right!” and he and Michelle Williams go screaming across campus and almost get murdered because Michelle can’t figure out which key on her enormous key ring unlocks the dorm. But then Jamie Lee Curtis and the guidance counselor save them and Michael sees Jamie and it is ON. Because now she is sooooooooooo going confront her monster face to face. So she makes all the surviving people, like her son and Michelle Williams, get in the car and drive away and then she starts screaming, “MICHAELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!” super loud. Which seems a touch unnecessary since Michael always knows where people are but whatever. He chases her around and then falls out of a window and he’s dead. And the police are like, “Well, I’m glad that’s finally over,” and then Jamie Lee Curtis steals an ax and the coroner’s van and is like, “No one move!” and she drives off with Michael’s dead body. Except, of course, it’s not his dead body. It’s his totally alive body and he is trying to get out of the body bag and so Jamie Lee crashes the van and Michael gets pinned between the van and a tree and he reaches out his hand to his sister and she starts to reach back and for one glimmering second you think, is this what it’s all come down to? A touching moment of redemption between evil serial killer brother and functioning alcoholic sister? But then Jamie Lee Curtis whacks off Michael’s head with the ax. Credits.

Okay, for the reals…he has to be dead now right? How is there another movie? Still to come…the final film in the Halloween franchise (minus the two Rob Zombie remakes I am going to watch at a later date). Halloween: Resurrection. Stay tuned.

love, elizabeth