Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Halloween H20 (simply known as H20) is a 1998 Slasher Film starring Jaime Lee Curtis for her third appearance as Laurie Strode, Chris Durand as Michael (The Shape) Myers, John Hartnett as Laurie’s son John and LL Cool J as Ronnie the security guard. So H20 takes exactly 20 years after the events of Halloween 1&2, this movie ignores the whole Curse of Thorn storyline that was established in Halloween 4-6 so Laurie has a son instead of her Daughter Jamie. This is also the first Halloween film to not include Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis since he died back in 1995 after they finished filming the first cut of Halloween 6. Laurie has survived her encounter with her deranged older brother Michael, but is now traumatized because of the events. She wakes up screaming from nightmares, to taking a bunch of different medications, to seeing him in mirrors and to top it off, she’s an alcoholic.

So now Laurie faked her death and changed her name to Keri Tate and is now the head mistress at a boarding school in Northern California. She’s also dating the school’s guidance consouleor Will, who can be kind of a insensitive jerk at times. She has a tight grip on her son, not allowing him to go on the school trip to Yosemite Park with his girlfriend Molly, and their two friends Charlie and Sarah. Which of course him being a teenager is kinda insensitive to his mothers trauma, telling her that Michaels dead and she needs to get over it. Michael is able to find information about Laurie from an old colleague of Dr. Loomis Marion Chambers who was also in Halloween 1&2, so now Michael is on his way to finish what he started.

Jaime Lee Curtis regains her status as scream queen in this movie, you genially feel bad for Laurie and how her paranoia has taken over her and how it’s affected John. Chris Durand is also good as Michael, though I personally don’t like that you see Michaels eyes a lot in this movie, I like it better when you just see nothing but darkness around the holes of his eyes. This movie definitely has that 90’s slasher feel to it, hell even the poster for the film did the whole Scream idea, by having the main characters on the poster directly looking at you. LL Cool J was just there to boost ticket sales, his performance is fine but you could of gotten literally anyone else to play his role. This was Josh Hartneet’s first role and he does fine in this movie, well it’s at least better than his performance in Pearl Harbor. We all known why everyone’s here though, it’s to see Michael and Laurie go at it once again.

The climax is probably the best part of the movie, Michael finds Laurie at her school and the two of them have a proper rematch 20 years in the making. There’s no Dr. Loomis to bail her out this time, so it’s all on Laurie to once and for all kill Michael. There are some parts of the fight that are rather comedic like when Laurie hits Michael in the head with a fire extinguisher and runs off. So Laurie “defeats” Michael and then the typical cops and paramedics arrive to take Michaels body away, but Laurie being the smart character she is, hijacks the ambulance carrying Michaels body knowing that he isn’t dead. Michael wakes up and tries to attack her, she slams on the brakes and sends him flying out of the ambulance, then floors it hitting him and driving off a steep hill. Laurie jumps out the car and when the car lands, Michael is trapped against the car and a giant tree, unable to escape or fight back. Right when Laurie is about to finish him off, Michael then starts to reach out his hand and looks at his little sister right in the eyes, she gets closer to him and even reaches her hand out to his and their hands touch for a brief moment. Then she takes her Axe and cuts his head clean right off, seemingly killing him and Laurie is just standing there victorious and the movie ends.

H20 is a fine entry to the franchise, it’s not my favorite Halloween movie but still had suspense and a great Climax. You think that this would of been the end of the franchise and of Michael like how Halloween 2 was supposed to be the end of it all, but then just four years later, Halloween Resurrection is released and just comes to terms that evil never dies, and by that I mean box office dollars.

Surrounded by Silence

Surrounded by Silence is the debut song/music video by the band Design The Skyline, and let us just say they left an impact they probably weren't expecting. This song has been panned by critics and listeners of music, with some even actually asking Victory records to kick them off the label mainly due to the actual song (and their image but that's a stupid thing to criticize) and I'm here to tell you that I actually enjoy this song and this band. 

So the video begins with keyboards playing, while showing us some shots of a forest with some quick cuts of a snowy forest. Then the actual song begins, most people stated that the song just sounds like a bunch of random noises jumbled together and I can see that argument. Though I see it as some friends who decided to just jam out and see where it would lead them. On their Youtube channel, they listed this song as Experimental/Grindcore and I hear both those genres combined in this song. Now the only real problem I have with this song is that at one part, they use autotune for the clean vocals. Given that this song was recorded in 2010 when just about almost everyone was using it I can see why they went with it. When it actually comes to Core music in general, clean vocals are probably the thing I care least about, but their autotune vocals aren't the worse I've heard either. 

Another thing criticize are the lyrics and at first hearing I can see why people say that they don't make sense, but take the time to think about them and they are actually very clear. For example the lyrics "I taste the salt drip onto my lips missing the touch of your fingertips"is basically saying he misses his lover and that he's crying over her, and I'm sure we've all had our tears touch our lips and tasted how salty they can be. 

Since the backlash of Surrounded by Silence, the like/dislikes cannot be viewed on the video and the comment section has also been disabled. Design The Skyline has since stated that this song was a Demo and that most musicians 1st demos aren't that great (on their website, the video isn't even featured on their video selection) so basically they even thought it sucked. I still enjoy the song very much and see that these guys get negativity that they shouldn't get. If Design The Skyline were to tour again, it would be quite the blast to see them live again and perform this song even though I know they wouldn't, so check out this song just to see what you think about it.