Twenty years after Jamie Lee Curtis' portrayal of Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's "Halloween" became the Rosetta Stone of stalked women in horror movies the actress was lured back to play the same role for the first time in 17 years. Not since 1981's "Halloween II" had Curtis played the role of the stalked sister with a demented serial killer brother on her trail, but the "Halloween H2O - 20 Years Later" project must have seemed to good to be true at the time. The 'IT' writer/producer of the moment, Kevin Williamson (hot off the success of his "Scream" movies), would supervise the project alongside Moustapha Akkad (the only producer involved with every "Halloween" movie ever made) while directing duties were handled by "Friday the 13th" veteran Steve Miner. One of the up-and-coming young stars in the cast included Josh Hartnett, and even Jamie Lee's mother Janet Leigh (the woman that gets slashed at the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho") dropped by for a cameo appearance.

Unfortunately all the behind-the-scenes gossip, attempts at being a serious drama (the Laurie Strode character is seriously traumatized from the events in the previous films), increased production values and good acting in the world cannot remedy an irrevocable fact that every "Halloween" sequel has had to deal with since Michael Myers was apparently burned to death at the end of the '81 sequel (and which "H2O's" plot is linked to directly by overlooking every "Halloween" movie released between '81 and '98). The fact is that Michael Myers has shown an ability to withstand death, dismemberment and death that eludes just about everyone else in the world (except for Jason and Freddy, of course, but I digress) isn't mentioned or even discussed at length in "H2O." We get some scenes in which Laurie shares her concern and traumatic experiences with her boyfriend (played with the straightest of faces by Alan Arkin) and shots of her son (Hartnett's character) talking about his uncle as if he were a mythological modern-day bogeyman. Never is the Michael Myers character discussed as or exposed in a way that would provide viewers with any more or any less insight than what was glimpsed at in the four prequels "H2O" ignores to get to where it takes us: the same place we've been before!

Hartnett and friends, surprise surprise, decide to skip a field trip and stay up all night alone at the preppy school where Laurie is a tenure teacher. They can spend a quiet evening having you-know-what while doing the things that irrepressibly horny teenagers do in horror movies. And guess who shows up in time for the third act to ratchet-up the otherwise dull display of carnage? If "H2O" at least had enough carnage and over-the-top deaths to justify the high-minded and serious tone it seeks to achieve when dealing with Myers there might be some redeeming quality to the killer's carnage. Instead the pressures of being a big studio release probably weighed in heavily on the decision to tone down the gore dramatically from previous "Halloween" installments. The result is the worst of both worlds: a potentially cool reunion of characters/stars in a much-deserved quality sequel with the cinematic equivalent of a sour munchkin. Plus the end, which was meant to shock and put a definite end to the series, has since been thrown out the window of any reasonable logic by the cheesy-but-more-entertaining techno-babble "Halloween" flick from last year.