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Ten years after committing a notorious killing spree, a serial killer escapes custody and returns to his hometown to kill again.
Given how much I dug Halloween III for shaking things up in the franchise, you'd think (as I did) that the scramble to bring back a certain Shat-faced murderer would be easy to regard with cynicism and possibly contempt - after all, this does come across as abandoning a bold new direction in favour of returning to a well that was already in danger of going dry. However, by the extremely modest standards of Halloween sequels, The Return of Michael Myers is arguably one of the better ones. The problem being that Jamie Lee Curtis had moved on to other things so the film had to figure out how to continue on after Halloween II had revealed that Michael Myers' continued targeting of beleaguered babysitter Laurie Strode (Curtis) was due to her being his long-lost sister, thus giving this seemingly-inscrutable killer a concrete motivation that tied into his first murder being that of his older sister. The work-around seen in Return is that Laurie has died in a car accident, but not before having a daughter of her own that has since been adopted into a normal Haddonfield family. Even without the threat of Michael's seasonal escape looming, things are already tough for Jamie (Danielle Harris) - she's got a somewhat strained relationship with her teenage foster sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell), plus the kids at school tease her for having "the boogeyman" as her uncle (who she already seems to be marginally aware of due to having recurring nightmares about his pale visage). Meanwhile, just as day follows night, so too does Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) follow in Michael's bloody footprints in yet another attempt to put a stop to his crimes.
The Return of Michael Myers plays like an obvious reflection of the various imitators that sprung up in the wake of Halloween's runaway success (one can readily draw parallels to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, most notably through the introduction of a child protagonist) and it only just manages to add its own particular spin to the proceedings. I do acknowledge that it has its strengths - Harris and Cornell have good chemistry as siblings that have their differences but ultimately come through for one another in the face of an incredibly traumatic ordeal, forming a potent emotional core without which the film would become a complete and utter mess. Otherwise, it's the kind of semi-competent slasher business as usual but with somewhat effective series-specific additions like Loomis as a battle-scarred Cassandra who underscores the conflict with his own weariness of the constant battling with Michael (illustrated perfectly in an early scene where he straight-up begs to be killed if it means "the Shape" might spare anyone else, which goes about as well as you can imagine). While I'm not inclined to consider Return a classic by horror standards or even by slasher standards, I do concede that it's still relatively okay and does just enough right to not be out-and-out terrible - something its successors would have done well to copy.
#38 - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Dwight H. Little, 1988
Dwight H. Little, 1988
Ten years after committing a notorious killing spree, a serial killer escapes custody and returns to his hometown to kill again.
Given how much I dug Halloween III for shaking things up in the franchise, you'd think (as I did) that the scramble to bring back a certain Shat-faced murderer would be easy to regard with cynicism and possibly contempt - after all, this does come across as abandoning a bold new direction in favour of returning to a well that was already in danger of going dry. However, by the extremely modest standards of Halloween sequels, The Return of Michael Myers is arguably one of the better ones. The problem being that Jamie Lee Curtis had moved on to other things so the film had to figure out how to continue on after Halloween II had revealed that Michael Myers' continued targeting of beleaguered babysitter Laurie Strode (Curtis) was due to her being his long-lost sister, thus giving this seemingly-inscrutable killer a concrete motivation that tied into his first murder being that of his older sister. The work-around seen in Return is that Laurie has died in a car accident, but not before having a daughter of her own that has since been adopted into a normal Haddonfield family. Even without the threat of Michael's seasonal escape looming, things are already tough for Jamie (Danielle Harris) - she's got a somewhat strained relationship with her teenage foster sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell), plus the kids at school tease her for having "the boogeyman" as her uncle (who she already seems to be marginally aware of due to having recurring nightmares about his pale visage). Meanwhile, just as day follows night, so too does Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) follow in Michael's bloody footprints in yet another attempt to put a stop to his crimes.
The Return of Michael Myers plays like an obvious reflection of the various imitators that sprung up in the wake of Halloween's runaway success (one can readily draw parallels to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, most notably through the introduction of a child protagonist) and it only just manages to add its own particular spin to the proceedings. I do acknowledge that it has its strengths - Harris and Cornell have good chemistry as siblings that have their differences but ultimately come through for one another in the face of an incredibly traumatic ordeal, forming a potent emotional core without which the film would become a complete and utter mess. Otherwise, it's the kind of semi-competent slasher business as usual but with somewhat effective series-specific additions like Loomis as a battle-scarred Cassandra who underscores the conflict with his own weariness of the constant battling with Michael (illustrated perfectly in an early scene where he straight-up begs to be killed if it means "the Shape" might spare anyone else, which goes about as well as you can imagine). While I'm not inclined to consider Return a classic by horror standards or even by slasher standards, I do concede that it's still relatively okay and does just enough right to not be out-and-out terrible - something its successors would have done well to copy.