T w e n t y S i d e d

With the recognition that horror movies broadly, and slasher movies explicitly, had to be made within the context of an audience and cast that knew how horror movies functioned, the tropes that made the original franchises work were…sort of…put to rest. At least they were retired as “high-concept” ideas. Really they already had been to a degree. “Escaped mental patient kills babysitters with no motive” was a great idea in the late 1970’s. But despite John Carpenter’s intentions the series couldn’t escape from the trend of “just doing the same thing over again.” As good as I would argue Halloween 4 is, you wouldn’t be wrong to point out it’s just a different take on the original, using information developed in the second film. From the beginning Friday the 13th was designed as a cash-in on Halloween and other early slashers. It proved to be a repeatable hit thanks to extremely low budgets. That it occasionally even did something interesting was just a bonus. A Nightmare on Elm Street arguably had the loftiest goals and cleverest idea. But even though New Line pulled the rug out from under Craven, the second film has subtext that didn’t reach a wider audience until years later and the Dream Warriors era that dominated the sequels successfully re-imagined the franchise in a new way. So thoroughly, in fact; that Craven was able to revisit his original idea through commentary to try to remind everyone what the point was (or points were, depending on your argument.) Horror movies hadn’t been doing as well at the box office since the late 1980’s, but even as the latter half of the 1990’s saw a resurgence in interest, the major slasher franchises would produce future installments as remakes, re-imaginings, reboots, or even just simple genre films.

Scream was released in 1996 as we talked about last week. Scream 2 followed the next year, premised on the concepts of slasher film sequels and featuring two new killers both acting as “Ghostface,” the masked antagonist from the first film. Two people performing the same murderous job was introduced in the first movie, partly to “explain” how the villain can seemingly teleport to different locations in slasher horror films. The Scream franchise would go on to feature this idea in four of seven movies with two having one villain and one having more than two. Scream 3 continued the same story three years later in the year 2000, but critics were already pointing out that the Scream franchise was literally doing the same things it was making fun of. Despite that Scream 3 would be a box office success. Continuous behind-the-scenes issues would significantly limit further releases until the series was taken over by Blumhouse in the 2020’s. The franchise added no further innovation or renovation to the structure or tropes of the genre after the first movie. (Although arguments can be made for elements the series lampshaded or otherwise highlighted and ongoing themes of abuse and power structures.)

In 1998 Halloween would return in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later. Believe it or not that is the legal title, although it was rarely marketed that way and I doubt anyone thinks of the film like that. In fact, I’ve always called it Halloween H-2-O, as in “water.” Most people I know do that as well, although I’ve heard  “H-20” as well. This movie ignores all sequels after the second film. Dr. Loomis is known to be dead; killed by the explosion in the hospital at the end of Halloween II. Michael’s body was not recovered; he is presumed dead. Which EVERYONE knew going in was NOT true. It was part of the advertising, dammit. Michael is alive and he’s going after his sister Laurie Strode twenty years after the events of the first two movies. But it’s just a Halloween sequel. It is more of the same, you know what to expect because it is still built on what came before and only makes sense in the context of those movies. (This is an argument I made early on in the series, in case you missed it or forgot. Sure, the premise of this movie is that everything after Halloween II didn’t happen; but this film is still made with the events depicted in the “ignored” movies influencing ideas. Even if it’s not directly relevant.) H2O was a success, but a lot of its reception and recognition, even now, seems to be connected to Jamie Lee Curtis’ involvement and performance. Not to dismiss those factors; building the story as a continuation of the original and Curtis’ portrayal of Laurie Strode are *the* reasons this film succeeds. Without Jamie Lee Curtis or a plot centered on Strode for the first time in twenty years H2O would likely have been a thorough flop. All other elements are disjointed and largely irrelevant. This movie’s performance led to 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, which retconned H2O in order to bring “back” Michael (remember, he’s no longer supernatural in this continuity). Jamie Lee Curtis smartly demanded the Laurie Strode character be killed off at the beginning of the movie, as H2O was meant to be a “concluding” film. Resurrection was widely panned by critics and audiences.

Friday the 13th would make an appearance in 2001 as Jason X, called both Jason Ten and Jason Ex. And it is, of course, the tenth Friday the 13th movie. Also frequently referred to as “Jason Goes To Space,” Jason X performed poorly and was rejected by both critics and audiences. This film is thought better of twenty years later, but being an actual *fan* of this movie and considering it to be one of the better entries in the franchise is still an uncommon opinion. I really enjoy this one. Yes, it IS just “Jason Goes To Space” but that’s part of the charm to me. It had been almost a decade since Jason Goes To Hell and this idea was one of several proposals mentioned while Freddy vs. Jason was still in development. The movie uses a type of meta-awareness; the characters in the story are genre-savvy and jaded. The film pokes at genre tropes and the Friday the 13th series in particular, but not as explicitly as the first two Scream movies did. There are even some creative kills and decent FX for the approximately $10 million budget. In some ways this makes the movie at least conceptually more of a descendant of the later Nightmare sequels. While the comedy is spread around the creativity is more in line with Nightmare‘s MTV-style productions.

Even though Jason X under-performed, Freddy vs. Jason was released only sixteen months later in late 2003. The long-awaited, long-rumored, much-delayed project arguably lived up to expectations. A viewer can point to dozens of problems with this film, including the fact that the titular “vs” only occurs at the end of the movie. But fans of both franchises were largely satisfied, consistently ranking the film as one of the best of both worlds. Despite making back nearly four-times its budget both franchises would subsequently lie dormant until the era of remakes came for them. Halloween would receive a somewhat-experimental reboot/re-imagining in 2007, Friday the 13th in 2009, and A Nightmare on Elm Street in 2010. Considering Scream was effectively in hiatus at the same time (and the reboots wouldn’t really be able to change that) horror slasher villains were effectively dead. While horror movies had been evolving and developing their own new tropes and frameworks (1999’s The Blair Witch Project boosted the concept of “found footage” horror to being a mainstay concept. 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection used the less-popular “live-steamed horror” setup) no slasher really grabbed people’s attention enough to form the foundation of a franchise. For quite a while.

That’s it for now, see you soon!

Paige Francis He/him