H20 is not a good movie.

For a whole lot of reasons, actually. But I’m not here to talk about about the awful film as a terrible whole, but rather just an inexcusable piece of the loathsome puzzle.

The problem is in the film’s opening credits montage and, shockingly, it doesn’t have to do with the fact that Dimension, rather than just acquiring the rights to Donald Pleasance’s dialogue from the first film, hired a guy who sounds nothing like him to just read that dialogue. Although I’m still kind of pissed about that.

No, my problem today is about two images from the wall of newspaper clippings (which I’m going to have to scour one day for an ‘adventures in fake journalism, by the way). Here’s the first picture I’m talking about.

This purports to be a photograph of the mask that Michael was wearing when he killed his sister Judith. It’s not, though. See?

I’m not sure how they made a mistake like this. Even if the original mask wasn’t available (and really, why would it be?) there’s ample photo reference they could have gone to. As I just provided. It’s a simple mask, so why would they have had any trouble replicating it for the photo?

Instead, they just found a mask and said ‘eh, close enough’. Which is kind of microcosm of that whole film.

That’s the effect of laziness on the film, the next one is just rank stupidity. Here’s a police sketch that appears three times on the wall during the montage:

So here’s my question. Who made this sketch, and what possible purpose could it have been intended to serve? That’s not Michael Myers’ face. How could it be useful in tracking him down? Let’s say the police assumed that Michael would continue wearing the mask (although, really, there’s no reason they’d do that), it’s a popular mask sold in local stores. What advantage could a sketch of the mask possibly have over just taking a photograph of the mask and distributing that?

Also, and this is kind of key, it’s not like people don’t know what Michael Myers looks like. He was in a state asylum for fifteen years, no doubt given annual physicals and photographed as he grew up. Why not circulate those photos in case he tried to disappear by taking the mask off?

It’s not like his face had to be kept from the audience, either – Michael Myers’ face isn’t a secret. It was right there in the first movie, plain as day-

So why the police sketch? Wish I had an answer to this one. Although it’s just barely possible that they wanted to convey the broad sense of the mask rather than the exact look of it, especially since, as we learned from this film, his mask has a bizarre habit of transforming from scene to scene and shot-to-shot.

Here he is, looking coiffed and dapper-

Now this is three seconds later, and he’s suddenly gone frizzy:

Then his hair goes completely nuts for the rest of the film, shifting from shot to shot.

And that’s not even addressing what happened to his mask in this earlier scene-

Where he seems to have stopped in the bathroom and sketched out every line on his face with an eyebrow pencil.

Yes, film continuity is a chore. But if you don’t put in the effort, it just looks lazy. Which, now that I think of it, really is the biggest problem with the entire film, isn’t it?

Hell, the thing’s barely even feature length.