RATING Out of 100

H20 comes down to the basics: Gather some teens at Halloween, add Laurie Strode, unleash Michael - and let the bloodbath begin. With Donald Pleasance already dead, Dr. Loomis is missing in this part - which is indeed quite a loss, a loss which cannot be compensated. But that's not the director's fault, how could it be. The movie itself starts somehow promisingly, and this is the only part of the series I had the possibility of watching in the theater, so it had a much different impact. Everything seemed bigger. So I was expecting even more. But when the credits started rolling over the screen, my first reaction to it was: That's it? - Simplicity was mostly understood as brevity in this one. The problem was being taken care of, there was a confrontation between Laurie and Michael, but almost everything was predictable. That's the first mistake. Never give the audience exactly what they want. Except, of course, a great movie.

John Ottman might have written a great horror soundtrack, and how he lets the Halloween Theme appear sounds great. But it isn't the right choice anyway - it defies everything we're used to hear within the series. Don't get me wrong, change might be something positive. But adapting the music to contemporary style was not the right choice at all and contributed to the second mistake: The loss of atmosphere. This movie felt like a more brutal version of Scream, it looked too tidy, too neat - this was being contrasted with quite a risen slasher factor, but also with strange niceties. It doesn't fit, it's like an attempt to assimilate what was unique in Carpenter's creation into the mainstream, without any quest for originality. If there is a next part, if there should be, they would have to resurrect Michael, but, well, he has died countless times now - and has made reappearances time and again; so if there be a next part, they should try to get John Carpenter back into the command chair. Otherwise the series might soon lose both its relevance and distinctiveness