The original Halloween was a scary movie that helped revive horror as a popular genre. Twenty years on, with slasher movies enjoying something of a renaissance, no doubt it sounded like a good idea to end the exploits of Michael Myers with the catchily named H2O. There's just one little problem: the reason these movies died a slow death originally was that they rapidly fell into formula, and the new wave (Scream et al) only survived by injecting large amounts of humour and self-parody. By contrast, H2O tries to play it straight, and doesn't quite pull it off.

The plot is simple - Laurie (Curtis) is still afraid that her brother Michael Myers (Chris Durand, for trivia buffs) will come back and complete what he began twenty years ago. She's now the principal of a private school and has a son who's sick of her traumas. Most of the school goes camping for the holiday. The son and friends decide to have a little party in the deserted building. It's Halloween. You fill in the blanks!

The good thing about horror movies in the 90s is that victims don't just scream anymore, but fight back with knives, fire extinguishers, axes, and anything else to hand. This movie isn't afraid to confound some expectations either (e.g. avoiding the "bonk and die" formula and the garbage disposal scene). But they went too far in the last 10 minutes, in which Laurie breaks every rule in the how-not-to-kill-a-baddie book, not once but repeatedly.

Watch out for LL Cool J, who plays the meek guard brilliantly, and a cameo by Jamie's mum and Psycho star Janet Leigh.

The first "I Know What You Did " had about four redeeming features - the sparky chemistry between Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anne Heche's suitably off-centre performance as a backwoods woman, Kevin (Scream, Dawson's Creek) Williamson's occasionally amusing/spooky script, and Kula Shaker's infectious little ditty, "Hush". Otherwise, we were stuck in a somewhat routine slasher pic with a ludicrously jumbled final confrontation in which the usual "he's dead, no he isn't, now he's disappeared" stuff was played with even less coherence than usual. Plus a silly tag ending that seemed to portend the coming of a far worse sequel, and the frankly appalling acting of the entire male cast.

The sequel retains Ms Love Hewitt, placing a greater emphasis on her, frankly, somewhat spectacular breasts, and one of the aforementioned appalling acting males. And it lives down to the tag in the original in oh so many ways. Directed by Danny Cannon, whose previous films include Judge Dredd, this is the formula much as before, but with even less wit to it. It does, however, offer up a fair few scares in amongst the usual paraphernalia, plus there's a new dangerously infectious song to go with the proceedings, entitled "Hey Now Now". So if you're in a not-too-demanding mood, and are looking for something on about the level of your average Friday the 13th movie, here it is.

The plot? OK, basically, some dude with a big meathook chases our heroes around, until they die or the movie meets the ninety-minute mark. There, happy now?