Twenty years later, Laurie Strode is once again forced to wrestle with her past! For these years she has been living under an assumed name with her son John. But Michael Myers has suddenly returned to her life with a vengeance. With vengeance not just for Laurie. The horror has begun for the whole town! When a group of students go to a Halloween party, they find themselves in a bloody river. Once again, it’s up to Lori to save everyone from the spawn of Hell.
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In agreeing to the realization of producer Irvin Yablans’ idea that somewhere in a quiet town a maniac roams at night, killing babysitters, director John Carpenter had no idea what it would eventually turn into. The inexpensive, but eerily effective and suspenseful film shows the audience the face of true evil, roaming the streets in a mask and not shy to kill teenagers in the most brutal way, giving them almost no chance of a successful escape from his clutches. The story’s simplicity was augmented by Carpenter’s undeniable talent as a director, who, despite his relative inexperience, managed to pull it off with a ferocity that made “Halloween” one of the biggest box office hits of the horror genre, spawning a franchise that drew crowds of moviegoers. Overseeing the creation of the sequel in the position of writer, Carpenter prescribed quite digestible, albeit no longer as sharp and memorable sequel, which nevertheless proved to be incredibly popular with audiences eager to see the full return of Michael Myers in all its glory. However, the subsequent parts of the franchise were no longer as balanced and logically aligned, from which the glory of “Halloween” began to gradually fade and finally lost even John Carpenter himself, refusing to deal with the conveyor belt. Finally, after many years and some frankly controversial pictures, the producers of the series also realized their mistakes and decided to reimagine the franchise, but without ruining everything at the root. The veteran “Halloween” Mustafa Akkad, who stood at the origins of the series along with Yablance and Carpenter, joined forces with the producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who revived the mass interest to the slasher through the release of the landmark “Scream”, and attracted to write the next continuation of the Michael Myers story writer Kevin Williamson, known for his fresh look at maniacs and everything related to them. And though the final version of the updated “Halloween” did without Williamson, his ideas had a serious influence on the work of director Steve Miner, so “20 Years Later” became one of the strongest films in the franchise and gave faith in the story, which the creators were getting ready to put an end to.
So the plot of the movie unfolds two decades after the sinister maniac Michael Myers came back to the calm and peaceful town of Haddonfield and committed a massacre, which had nightmares for more than one generation of locals. By some miracle survived in the confrontation with Meyers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) became a true heroine of Haddonfield, around which literally swarmed crowds of journalists, but memories of Halloween 1978 did not leave her, forcing mentally return time and again to that terrible night, when she managed to win the fight for life against the very embodiment of evil. But since Myers’ body, which had succumbed to the effects of the fire, had disappeared without a trace, the police had speculation that the maniac might well have survived and fled to an unknown destination. That, in turn, meant that Laurie’s life was once again in danger and the girl had to accept the authorities’ offer to enter the witness protection program. During the years away from the ill-fated Haddonfield, Laurie managed to change her name, get married, give birth to a son named John (Josh Hartnett), get a divorce, and at the same time become the principal of a diligent private school. But the memory of the Halloween experience continues to intensify with each succeeding Saints’ Day, and the anxiety for herself and her loved ones directly overlaps with Laurie’s relationship with her son, who refuses to understand his mother and treats her warnings with a fair degree of irony. Left with his close companions in the deserted hallways of the school just in time for Halloween, John hoped to have a good time and have a good time, but suddenly Laurie’s old horror, the inflexible Michael Myers, is on the doorstep and continues to hunt for the surviving members of his long-suffering family. But this time Laurie is ready to act much more decisively and harshly, because now she is fighting not only for her own life, but also for the future of her own son, who certainly did not deserve to be stabbed by the negligent uncle.
It was released at the height of the slasher renaissance, marked by such unforgettable films as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, so Halloween: 20 Years Later was not lost on the screen, but on the contrary, it was extremely brilliant and breathed new life into a story that had already begun to smell rotten. Last but not least, this culturally dramatic effect was due to the efforts of Kevin Williamson, whose original screenplay, though radically transformed, nevertheless remains the basis for a film that was genuinely frightening. The filmmakers succeeded in showing us a well-known, somewhat tired maniac from a very unexpected angle and once again presented him as a threat that cannot be ignored. The film’s deserted locations, excluding the occasional passerby and the leisurely police patrolling around instantly make the audience anxious, and you never know when a sinister silent silhouette will appear from the shadows, ready to strike a blow to the very heart. Steve Miner skillfully builds a sinister web of despair around his characters, thereby acting as a diligent disciple of John Carpenter, who at one time managed to inflict such fear on virtually nothing, that it still alarms and scares the audience no small amount. The viewer cannot feel safe a priori, he literally feels like one of the participants in the school maze, whose paths invariably lead to a date with Michael Myers. And while the laws of the genre leave us with very clear hints that someone may still be able to escape reprisal, this does not lower the bar of tension, as the director knows which accents to push and when to surprise.
One of the strongest sides of the movie is the cast headed by the unforgettable Jamie Lee Curtis whose talent is beyond belief. In her years away from “Halloween,” Curtis has become one of the most respected actresses of the Dream Factory, and yet she could not miss the triumphant return of the John Carpenter franchise. Having played a weary, tired, but nevertheless woman who has not lost the sparkle in her eyes, Curtis has shown us the development of her character, we can see that a lot of time has indeed passed since the incident in Haddonfield and Laurie has not escaped its influence. But while Curtis has had to play in part a very different woman than she was twenty years ago, the literate script and the director’s understanding of the dramaturgy does not turn Laurie into an eccentric parody of herself, which is what will later happen in the nonessential “Resurrection”. So the tape “20 years later” appeared on the screens for a reason and managed to save “Halloween”.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (88.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles
English SDH.
