Review of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) by Roger B — 30 Jul 2011

After not seeing Michael Myers on the big screen for 7 years since Halloween II, a lot was riding on Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers. With Halloween III: Season Of The Witch being the fiasco that is was, director Dwight H. Little went back to the basics set by the 1978 original. To a certain extent, it worked. The overall film isn't as bad as Halloween II and is miles better than Halloween III. Unfortunately, it suffers from one fatal problem - it's boring.

The events of Halloween 4 unravel incredibly slowly. We see a burned Michael Myers escape from a hospital in search of Laurie Strode daughter, Jamie (kind of ironic seeing as the actress that played Laurie was Jamie Lee Curtis). Where this daughter has suddenly come from I do not know. I don't remember her ever being mentioned in Halloween I or II, and certainly not in III. We then see Dr. Sam Loomis played by Donald Pleasence, the only recurring character from the 1978 original, bearing the scars from the ending of Halloween II when he attempted to burn Michael to death. He also has the mother of all clichés - a limp and a walking stick (*rolls eyes*). Once again, he tries to retrace Michael's steps and find him before he gets to his next victim, but ultimately ends up going round in circles telling people how evil Michael is and that he isn't a man, blah blah blah...

The film then tries to get back to basics by bringing us back to Haddonfield on the night of October 31st where we see Jamie and her step-sister Rachel go out trick-or-treating. Why anybody sticks around in Haddonfield on October 31st is a mystery to me, you'd think they'd have learned by now. But I digress. They go out trick-or-treating, Jamie wonders off and ends up being chased by what we assume is Michael Myers. We're not entirely sure as there seems to be several copies of him wondering around at the same time. Eventually it is revealed that they're just kids playing a prank, wearing identical masks (what sick fuck creates Michael Myers masks and sells them to kids?). Jamie also has several hallucinations of Michael - grabbing her from underneath her bed and appearing behind her in a mirror at a costume store. At least we're led to believe that they're hallucinations.

*SPOILERS* Jamie, Rachel, Dr. Loomis and a few random bystanders and police officers then hold up in a house where they sit around waiting for Michael to show up. And he sure takes his sweet time about it. We don't see him kill anybody until 40 minutes into the film, where he throws a man into an electrical conduit cutting off the power to the whole town. He then turns up at the house and rams a shotgun through a girls chest, pinning her two feet off the ground against a door. But for some strange reason, we don't see any blood. We then see a ridiculously long scene where he chases Jamie and Rachel on the roof of the house that doesn't amount to anything, then he chases Jamie and Dr. Loomis through a school but again nothing happens, and then finally Jamie and Rachel hitch a ride out of town from some bar men in their truck. Michael emerges from the bottom of the moving truck and kills the bar men without any of them noticing but is thrown from the roof of the truck and run over and Rachel. He is then shot to smithereens by the cops and falls dead. Or so we think. *END OF SPOILERS* We're then given a bizarre plot twist at the very end which I won't spoil for you. It is stupid, but I honestly did not see it coming. Not because it's a good plot twist, but because it comes out of nowhere with no solid reason to back it up.

I can see what Dwight H. Little was trying to do here, but there's far too much waiting around and not enough actually happening. I felt like cheering every time Michael appeared for a brief moment only to skulk off seconds later. The scene where he climbs from underneath the moving truck is downright stupid, how could he possibly have been there? And why didn't the bar men or Jamie/Rachel hear him? Overall, a failed attempt at reviving the franchise, even if it is the best one since the original.