#benjamin ruffner

Halloween 4: the Return of Michael Myers (1988)

I can understand the Halloween series wanting to go back where it all began. Halloween III: Season of the Witch has its fans but it’s not good and it didn't deliver what people wanted. Still, I’d take it over this. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers has no ambition to be anything but a run-of-the-mill slasher movie. The only point where it shows the slightest bit of innovation is right at the end and even then, the conclusion’s been so obviously telegraphed ahead of time it’s no surprise at all.

Ten years after Michael Myers' rampage, Laurie Strode and her unnamed husband have died in a car crash. Their daughter, Jamie (Danielle Harris) is now living with a foster family. Despite warnings from Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), a comatose Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) awakens, escapes, and begins carving a bloody trail towards his niece.

I’ve never cared for the idea of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode being related. It’s so much scarier for her to have been chosen at random. If you were going to go full steam ahead with this idea, however, don’t do it like this. Unable to get Jamie Lee Curtis back, we now have Michael going after a little kid. I can buy him somehow knowing of her existence. The same evil that allows him to escape, drive a car, brush off grievous wounds, etc. has been pre-established. In a bad movie like this one, it feels lazy. Same for Michael’s ability to seemingly teleport and get into locations undetected. In the original film, even in the sequel, it felt like this was done purposefully. They banked on you recognizing how impossible it would be for a normal person to do this and take Dr. Loomis’ words about him being pure evil literally. This time around, it feels like a cheap trick used to ensure a body count.

"Cheap" is right. This movie looks and feels shoestring. The mask Myers wears looks like something you’d grab out of a grocery store in a universe that sells knock-off Halloween masks and the way the film crowbars the audience into never seeing his face until he regains his classic look will make you groan. When you’re not complaining about this, you’ll be bothered by how derivative this 3rd sequel is. It plays it so safe you just don’t care. There are no characters in this story, just meat for the grinder. The sooner they die, the sooner we can move on.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is only for a very specific audience; fans of the “Halloween” franchise. Not the first film or even the second film, but people who just love every single movie and want more. It’s not much of an indicator of its quality, as someone who likes this movie will like just about anything as long as it has the familiar mask in it as well. (On Blu-ray, October 25, 2019)