When Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) really took off, there were any number of studios, big and small, that scrambled to replicate its success. The goal was to create something that perfectly blended stylishness and scares just as Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson did. And, while Scream 2 (1997) was the only one that really managed to beat Scream at its own game, at least as far as some fans are concerned, there was one other that did an admirable job of taking the template established by Scream and making it its own. That would be Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), which not only brought Michael Myers some success after two particularly lackluster entries, but even managed to bring director Steve Miner back into the slasher fold over a decade after he gave Jason his mask in Friday the 13th Part III.
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But, make no mistake, H20 (which, like Craven’s Ghostface movies, came from Dimension Films) wears its Scream influence on its sleeve. At least in one case, but there are other cases, too, where the influence is much more subtle. Let’s go through all the ways H20 and Scream (and Scream 2) are linked.
The Ghostface-Michael Connection & A Dialogue Reference
Throughout the Scream franchise we’ve gotten some pretty big reveals as to who has been wearing the Ghostface costume this whole time. However, outside the rare occurrence (like when Skeet Ulrich was wearing it as Ghostface stands behind a couch-bound Randy in Scream), it’s almost always a stunt double wearing the get-up.
This is pretty typical for slasher movies, which put their masked murderers through the wringer, and Ghostface is no different from Jason or Michael in that regard. And, in the case of Scream 2, the stuntman who inhabited the role of Ghostface was Chris Durand. And what did Durand do one year after that gig? He played Michael in Halloween H20.
That’s a subtle connection for sure, as is one line of dialogue from H20, which merges a reference to its own originator and a reference to Scream. As one might remember, in the original Halloween Laure Strode tells Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace to “Go down the street to the Mackenzie’s house.” This dialogue sounds awfully familiar in Scream, when Casey Becker’s father says to her mother, “Get in the car. Drive down to the Mackenzie’s.”
So what does the Mackenzie have to do with H20? It features a line where Laurie says to her son, John, that she wants him to “Drive down the street to the Beckers.” It’s a clever little name switch there.
The Score Sounds Quite Familiar
Halloween H20‘s score was initially composed by John Ottman and, while far from poor music, it simply didn’t gel with a movie trying to be tense. It’s a very crowded, ambitious work.
So, for the film’s several chase scenes throughout the Hillcrest Academy campus, Marco Beltrami was brought in. Not to compose all new music, but rather some of his themes from Scream, Scream 2, and Mimic were used to supplement Ottman’s score. Beltrami then wrote a few new cues during H20‘s final days of sound mixing.
So, if you’re watching H20 and you start to get a subliminal twinge that Ghostface may be nearby, it’s not your imagination, it’s because you’ve heard the exact cue when Ghostface was chasing Sidney Prescott on Stu Macher’s property. For instance, when Michael approaches the car Laurie Strode is using to try and get her son and his girlfriend, Molly, off of the Hillcrest property.
One Inadvertent Connection & One Intentional Blatant One
In the original Scream, multiple Ghostface masks were used because it took a bit to get legal permission to use the Fun World ghost mask we see in many of the shots. So KNB Effects Group, who did the film’s kills, made a replica. Hence, this is why Ghostface looks quite different in a few shots such as in the opening sequence, when Ghostface is chasing Casey Becker on her lawn in slow-motion. It didn’t stop with just two masks, either, as several slightly different looking Fun World masks ended up being used. Though, with the different Fun World masks, there was no major disparity like there was between the Fun World mask and the KNB mask.
The connection to H20 here is that multiple masks were used to bring Michael to life and, well, the results varied. In the opening scene, when he slits Marion Chambers’ throat, that is the same mask from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Throughout most of the production a KNB mask was used. It’s pictured first above and was frequently seen in the trailer and stills of the film. But producers found it too be too white and vacant, so Stan Winston made the one we see throughout the majority of its runtime after a few reshoots (pictured second). Then there’s a single scene with a horrendously aged CGI mask, pictured third above. All of this is to say it’s a blatant connection between Scream and H20, though not an intentional one.
As for the intentional blatant connection, there’s a scene in H20 when we see a scene from Scream 2 playing on a television. It’s a neat connection, but also not quite a logical one. If Scream is a fictional franchise in the world Laurie Strode occupies, how can she also be a character beloved by Randy in Scream? But that thought process is a dog chasing its tail, so we’ll leave it alone, enjoy it, and say Happy Halloween.
Stream Scream and Scream 2 on Hulu and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later on HBO Max.
What are your thoughts on Halloween H20? Do you prefer it to David Gordon Green’s Halloween? Let us know in the comments.
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