Review of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) by Brad M — 04 Nov 2009

I remember as a kid being pretty unnerved by this installment in the franchise. I hadn't seen it since. Until now. It's not nearly as good as I remember it being. There are highlight and the series only gets worse from here, however this film could have been a lot better. Carpenter's ideas for Halloween died after the third installment. Carpenter thought that there was nowhere else to go with the character of Michael so he and the other producers decided to try and turn it into an anthology series of films where each story occurs on Halloween night.

This is a great idea in theory, and I would have loved it had the series successfully gone down this route, however in order to make that achievement Halloween III would have had to have been really, really good. Not just good, but fucking fantastic. It had a very, very high level of expectations to meet. And unfortunately, in the eyes of many, it fell flat on its face. I will blame much of this on a low budget, but Halloween III is an awesome film in it's own right. Once I actually knew a little bit about the backstory of why they made it the way they did, things made sense and I gave the film a chance and I love it. I only wish so many others could be this open to it, but alas everyone craves Michael.

So with the release of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, critics and fans hated it and it bombed. The franchise was dead and buried for five long years, until in 1988, Halloween 4 (notice the chance from roman numerals to numerical for idiots): the Return of Michael Myers was released. This assured the many, many skeptical fans that this movie would indeed be about Michael Myers. The resulting movie is a very, very mixed bag.

The story takes place 10 years later and Michael escapes while being transported to another location when he overhears that he has a niece. They go on to say that Laurie Strode's character is dead, however I like to believe that she went into hiding instead (otherwise H20 and Resurrection must ignore parts 4-6 entirely). Loomis tracks him down and once again has a hard time getting people to listen to him as Michael makes his way back to Haddonfield on Halloween.

The problems in this film are many. Michael's mask doesn't look right. It's a little too wide and though this is minor, it is distracting. More importantly though is that there are way too many off screen kills and this makes the film rather boring. Much of the cast is terrible. Many things just feel recycled. Overall it film just comes off as lazy and this film could have been so much better. It really could have.

The highlights include an awesome yet hilarious kill with a shotgun, Donald Pleasence and a twist ending that freaked the crap out of me as a kid and still makes my hair stand on end a bit. Additionally there is the fact that it's not as bad as the films that followed. For me the best Halloweens are the first 3. For the die hard fans, watch 4-7, 8 is only if your desperate, Rob Zombie's remake is ok, not great, not terrible and Zombie's Halloween 2 is the absolute worst out of all of them. THAT is truly a film to be avoided.