Review: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

 Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Rated R

Score: 3 out of 5

While I'm one of the growing numbers of Halloween fans who actually liked Halloween III: Season of the Witch, back in the '80s that was very much a rare opinion. Fans in 1982 who wanted nothing less than the return of Michael Myers revolted, killing John Carpenter and Debra Hill's plans to make Halloween an anthology series. And so, when the studio and producers (notably minus Carpenter and Hill, who sold the rights to producer Moustapha Akkad after the flop of Season of the Witch) put a fourth movie in production for the tenth anniversary of the original, they literally called it The Return of Michael Myers as if to let everybody know that the Shape was back and that this film would be following on from the end of the second movie.

The result delivers on exactly what is promised: a new "night he came home", nothing more and nothing less. It's a very flabby movie despite its short runtime, but it has some excellent lead performances, a number of interesting ideas buried within, and a dark ending that, had they actually followed through on it instead of going in the awful directions that they did with the later sequels, would probably have prevented "the Curse of Thorn" from becoming a dirty word amongst horror fans. Taken on its own, as just a follow-up to the first two, it's a pretty good slasher that has little reason to exist beyond nostalgia, but one whose existence I can't really begrudge.

Set exactly ten years after the original, our new protagonist is Jamie Lloyd, the young daughter of Laurie Strode who was left an orphan when Laurie and her husband died in a car crash a year before the events of this movie (the film's way of getting around the fact that, by 1988, there was no way in hell a star of Jamie Lee Curtis' caliber was doing a slasher sequel). Adopted by the Carruthers, whose teenage daughter Rachel had been babysat by Laurie when she was younger, Jamie still mourns her lost mother, whose survival of a killing spree has made Jamie the target of bullying at school and given her recurring nightmares.

Making the movie about Laurie's daughter is a decision that could've easily gone wrong, especially given how the plot of the Myers family saga is such a major part of what sent this series off the rails, but Jamie is far and away my favorite character here. Not only is centering a slasher movie around a child rather than a teenager a unique touch, but the actress they found to play that little girl, Danielle Harris, is absolutely outstanding here. There's a reason why Harris is still a beloved scream queen to this day: even when she has to deliver some clunky dialogue that feels like an adult trying to write a child, she is still compelling as somebody who, despite having never known Michael Myers until now, has probably never been able to not think about him. Every day when she goes to school, her classmates cruelly remind her that her uncle was a murderer, leaving her with few friends to lean on when she needed them after her mother died. From what we see of her home life, her parents are trying to care for her, but she's too attached to Laurie to ever feel like she's truly home. Over the course of the film, Jamie goes through a lot of hell for somebody so young, and Harris' performance does a great job conveying a girl who's just so beaten down that you can't help but feel bad for her, capably selling the dark places that her story ultimately goes. Without spoiling anything, it felt like this was the movie that Rob Zombie's remake was most clearly inspired by and trying to be.

Donald Pleasance is also back in full form as Dr. Sam Loomis, who survived the second film with a massive burn scar on his cheek and is immediately on the case when he finds out that, on the tenth anniversary of the original Haddonfield massacre, Michael Myers broke out of a medical transport and is now making a beeline towards Haddonfield. There's little to say about Pleasance's performance that I haven't said before, except to point out that he is once more a great hype man for Michael, the guy who you know is not easily intimidated but is still clearly terrified of this man, to the point of being willing to do anything to stop him. I also liked Ellie Cornell as Rachel, the film's other final girl. She's clearly meant to be Laurie 2.0, but even with the dull teen love triangle subplot she gets caught up in, she really shines during the third act, forced to protect Jamie in a way that Laurie didn't really have to with Tommy and Lindsay while getting some great action and chase scenes where she both flees and fights Michael.

The better qualities of this film, particularly its central trio of Jamie, Rachel, and Dr. Loomis, were enough to make up for the fact that, for much of act two, this film drags. A long stretch of the film is dedicated to the townsfolk of Haddonfield engaged in their own petty storylines, with Michael's presence in the background feeling perfunctory. I don't know if it was the famously censorious late '80s MPAA cutting all the gore or a deliberate attempt to replicate the first film's reliance on suspense, but this is a very bloodless film in a way that does not flatter it. Multiple kills are offscreen, only telling us that Michael can, say, take down an entire small-town police department singlehandedly rather than showing us. Michael is threatening when we get to see him in action, but between a subpar version of his mask (whose hair color changes to blond in certain scenes) and the fact that we don't get to see him in action all that much, the film felt like it was holding back, sapping much of the Shape's menace. Had the supporting cast been interesting to watch, this wouldn't have been much of a problem, but instead, we get a bunch of dullards. Rachel's horny teenage friends meet predictable ends, with Brady little more than a cocky jock dumbass and Kelly feeling like the film wanted to have it both ways when it came to sex, playing up her role as the sexually active hot chick (and daughter of the sheriff) in the manner of a sleazy Friday the 13th film but holding back on what people most associate with that type of character. A bunch of idiots dress up in Michael Myers masks and try to scare Loomis and the sheriff for no reason. The vigilante mob that the sheriff raises after the police station massacre also fell victim to the exact same problems that befell a very similar storyline in Halloween Kills, from the manner in which it tries to have it both ways on whether vigilante violence is good or bad (they accidentally kill an innocent person, but also play a key role in fighting Michael in the finale) to the fact that they contribute little to the overall arc of the movie except more victims. Precious little time is spent in act two with Jamie and Rachel, and as a result, the film felt like it was spinning its wheels and languishing.

The Bottom Line

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers promised more Michael, and it delivered more Michael. He may not be in full form, but some compelling protagonists, combined with solid scares when the film actually bothered to show us Michael in action, make this a watchable, if flawed, entry in the series, one whose ending was sadly squandered by later films but still offers a very dark note to finish on.