The Scariest Thing In Halloween Movie History? Michael Myers' Unforgivable H20 Mask
The "Halloween" franchise is one of the most iconic and enduring in all of horror. Beginning 45 years ago with director John Carpenter's seminal classic, audiences have enjoyed the saga of Michael Myers and his brand of slasher goodness across many different incarnations – not to mention somewhat confusing timelines. 25 years ago, one of the most important entries in the series hit theaters in the form of "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later." Arriving 20 years after the original (hence, that subtitle), the film brought Jamie Lee Curtis back as Laurie Strode for the first time since 1981's "Halloween II." It was a big deal. The only problem? Michael Myers looked like an absolute clown for the movie's entire runtime thanks to his unforgivably bad mask.
Let's set the stage a touch. The series had been kind of a mess because "Halloween 4" killed off Laurie off-screen and things got really weird in 1995's "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers." So, Miramax, Curtis, and the powers that be decided to more or less ignore the recent entries in favor of bringing Laurie back to face her demons 20 years after that fateful night in 1978. (2018's "Halloween" would similarly go the direct-sequel-to-the-original-route, albeit with radically different results.)
"Halloween H20" sees Laurie serving as the headmistress of a private school, still struggling with her Michael Myers-related trauma. As one might expect, Michael makes a sudden reappearance and Laurie's students become the killer's latest victims, setting up one final(?) showdown between the two. Let them fight!
It's a damn fine premise and, in many ways, director Steve Miner made a damn fine slasher film. Unfortunately, the slasher at the center of it all is wearing a mask so distractingly bad that it manages to override anything good happening on screen.
Not one, but four Michael Myers Masks in H20
Instead of the unsettling blank white face that scared the s*** out of audiences in '78, in "Halloween H20" we get a bland, silly, B-movie-looking mess. It was a travesty then, and it remains so now. If anything, Chris Durand's Michael Myers looks even worse in hindsight (all due respect to Durand as an actor) thanks to David Gordon Green's recent "Halloween" trilogy, which made Michael's mask scary again. I'm particularly fond of the burned-up "Halloween Kills" mask, myself. What we get in "H20" is a cheap-looking hodgepodge of nonsense that makes it look like Michael's eyes are bulging out of the damn thing much of the time.
A major part of the problem is that we actually end up with at least four different masks in the film. As explained by Collider, the first mask appears early in the film and is modeled after the one in "The Curse of Michael Myers." It's only glimpsed in dark shots when Michael is stalking Marion Chambers, but it's the most effective in the film. Unfortunately, its appearance is necessarily brief and, again, shrouded in darkness.
Special effects company KNB crafted a mask we see in some of the film that even the filmmakers realized was bad, so they tried to replace it. It's bad but only seen a few times, largely in long shots. Most tragically, one close-up of the mask couldn't be erased, so CGI was used to create an unholy abomination that best exemplifies the idea that one truly cannot polish a turd.
Amazingly enough, it was special effects legend Stan Winston ("The Terminator," "Jurassic Park") who created the Michael Myers mask we see the most of in "Halloween H20." Against all odds, the legendary Winston created the flat, dull, broke-ass cosplay looking mask that gets the lion's share of screen time. How did a respected visual effects guru create such a terrible-looking imitation of an unmistakable piece of cinematic imagery? I'm sure I do not know, but damned if the mask doesn't ruin what should be an enjoyable experience.
Ruining an otherwise important movie
It can't really be overstated how big of a deal it was when "Halloween H20" was coming out. The fact that Curtis was coming back after all those many years away for a proper sequel was genuinely exciting. One need look no further than the box office returns for the preceding entries to see that audiences had, by and large, stopped caring about these movies. Laurie Strode's return made them care again. It's just a shame Michael Myers looks like he found his mask at a damn dollar store. This brief, upsetting montage serves as a good reminder of just how bad the mask really is in the film.
Yikes. That mask robs Michael Myers of everything that made him scary in the first place. Those vacant holes for eyes and that white, blank expression that was magically created from, of all things, a William Shatner mask back in '78. Gone is that cold look of the unfeeling boogeyman in favor of a silly-looking travesty that is not only the opposite of scary but also a startling result for a studio-produced movie with A-list talent behind the scenes.
But it's not just the mask itself — which is, make no mistake, absolutely dreadful. It's the fact that it distracts from a movie that was special at the time and, in some ways, should still be special now.
Scary for all the wrong reasons
Jamie Lee Curtis is an Oscar-winning legend, but she's still most often referred to as "Star of Halloween." The fact that her return to the series is forever going to live on beside this atrocious-looking version of Michael Myers is a real shame, to put it lightly. Sure, it helps that we have 2018's "Halloween" as a genuinely good return for Curtis as the character but it wasn't her first trip back. That cursed mask makes it genuinely difficult to enjoy "Halloween H20" when viewed through a modern lens. Who would have thought a little bit of rubber and fake hair could do so much damage?
There are those out there who will argue that the mask in "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers" is worse. It's hard to argue in favor of that mask but, at the end of the day, that movie is watchable if not outright pretty dang good. "H20," on the other hand, is left out to dry because the monster at the center of the movie looks like a buffoon. In a franchise full of scary things, this is the scariest of them all, for all the wrong reasons.