Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
In a bid to increase the wider appeal of the franchise again, Jamie Lee Curtis was brought back for this special 20th anniversary movie which completely dispensed with the continuity set up by the last three films. The Curse of Thorn backstory is never referenced and, most important of all, it’s revealed that Laurie didn’t die in the car crash but merely faked her death.
Now living in California under an assumed name with her son John (Josh Hartnett), Laurie is a successful high school principal. However, her past catches up with her when Michael Myers (Chris Durand) tracks her down and gets up to his old murderous mischief. At the end of the movie, it seems that Laurie puts an end to Myers’ rampage once and for all when she decapitates him. The guy’s indestructible but he surely can’t come back from that, right? Right?
H20‘s back-to-basics approach worked a treat, as the film turned out to be the most critically and financially successful Halloween movie in years. And its cast isn’t too shabby, either – there’s Michelle Williams, a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt and even Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother Janet Leigh (Psycho).
