Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is not a good movie. It does little more than repeat what we’ve seen before and maintain the status quo by ignoring the “shocking” choices at the end of Halloween 4. It's indistinguishable from the later Friday the 13th sequels and pales in comparison to the first or even second instalment in its series. Despite all of this, I must confess to enjoying it more than not. I came in with low expectations (how could I not after the double-whammy of #3 and #4?) and found a couple of tense moments paired with deaths that will satisfy gore-hounds. I’d place it third out of the five in the series so far.
After falling down a mine shaft and narrowly dodging the dynamite explosion in 1988, Michael Myers (Don Shanks) is rescued by a hermit and falls into a year-long coma. Awakening on October 30, 1989, the killer resumes his search for his niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) while Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) seeks a way to end the evil once and for all.
I don’t know what producer Moustapha Akkad was thinking when he green-lit Halloween 4, which clearly intended to end Myers’ reign as the masked murderer and pass the torch to his niece. Why even introduce these concepts if you’re going to "control+z" them immediately? As this story begins, we’re quickly brought up-to-speed with the retcons and off we go. Jamie is somehow telepathically connected to Michael, who now sports a strange tattoo on his wrist, a tattoo we also see on an enigmatic figure which arrives in Haddonfield… Jamie has a teenaged step-sister named Rachel (Ellie Cornell), who is attending a party with her friends Tina (Wendy Kaplan) and Mike (Jonathan Chapin). You know they're as dead as the series' potential to become an anthology based on the day of Halloween. The question is, can it be done in a semi-interesting manner?
While the intro is weak, The Revenge of Michael Myers regains some points in the middle. After each bloody death, the tension is maintained fairly well as we wait to see who will bite the dust next. The police know Michael is out there. Unfortunately, their plans to take him down are derailed by teenage pranks and Loomis’ interference. He’s convinced he’s figured out what makes the killer tick. Has he? While we wait and see, we enjoy some good scenes of the poor little girl trying her best to survive as Michael carves a bloody path in her direction. These scenes - and the conclusion - are good enough that if this was a stand-alone slasher film it would please fans of the genre.
Unfortunately, this is not a horror film that lives and dies by its own merits; it’s a sequel to one of the great horror movies and suffers for it. Myers looks awful. The mask is correct in concept but in execution, it looks all wrong and not the least bit frightening. All of the overcomplicated nonsense with the telepathic link and obsession with the obscure family ties robs the series of much of its scare potential. Then again, who's this movie for? Only those who've the first and loved it, who saw the sequel and enjoyed it too. These same people saw the third, and the fourth movies in the series… and still didn’t give up. If you’re among that crowd, then yeah, check this out.
Despite its appeal for the fans, It's hard to endorse Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. It doesn’t do anything new. Still, I am curious to see the ideas introduced in this movie are going. Guess we’ll find out next October 31st. (On Blu-ray, October 31, 2020)
