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

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

IMDB rate: 5,9

Genre: Slasher

I'm a bit lazy nowadays with writing new reviews, I'm quite busy with school and I developed a World of Warcraft addiction and along with a Netflix subscription I don't get to watch a whole lot of horror movies. Sure, Netflix does have a few horror movies, but I've seen all of them already. 

Anyway, I finally took some time again for watching another horror movie, and this time I chose Halloween 4. A few weeks ago I watched the second one, so I think it's best to watch all of them not too far apart so I won't forget stuff. 

For those who don't know this, there isn't an official third Halloween movie. At least, not in the Michael Myers way. There is a Halloween 3 movie, which is called Season of the Witch but that one isn't related in any way to Michael Myers. At first the Halloween movies were intended to release scary stories about Halloween, and the first two happen to be about Michael Myers, the third one indeed followed that intention and it released and completely unrelated Halloween story. But the movie wasn't received well and people wanted to see more of Michael Myers, which lead to Halloween 4. This explains the gap between the second and fourth part.

It's October 30, 1988 and Michael Myers has been in a coma since his pursuit of Laurie Strode, 10 years ago, was finally stopped. However, when he is transferred from Richmond Mental Institute to Smith's Grove he awakes when he hears that he has a niece in Haddonfield and after killing the transfer crew he escapes. In Haddonfield, the niece, Jamie, has been adopted by the Carruthers family but keeps having nightmares about Michael (but she doesn't know who he is). On Halloween night, Jamie goes out trick and treating, little knowing that her murdering Uncle is following her and her step-sister Rachel. Rushing to her aid is Dr. Loomis and with the help of Sheriff Meeker starts to search the town for Michael and to find Jamie to protect her. But can anything stop Michael this time?

Most of the time with these kinds of slasher movies all the sequels suck. I must admit that I didn't expected anything else from this movie. In almost every case the sequel is probably reasonable (big exception with A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which was just unbearable), and everything else after it is just terrible of just entertaining. I must say that I actually quite liked Halloween 4, which was absolutely not what I expected. 

Now there are a few things unclear in the movie, Laurie apparently got a child and gave it up for adoption. I would have liked to hear more about that, why did she do it for example? What I would also like to hear is why Michael even has the slightest interest in Jamie, who is just a kid. And of course, the most interesting question of all: How the f can Michael survive all this shit?! The storyline is interesting in some sort of way, at least the ending is, but it isn't going in much depth. 

What I of course loved most about the movie was when Jamie walked in her Halloween costume (a clown suit). For those who don't remember, it's exactly the same one that Michael wore when he killed for the first time. This is quite a nice touch I think. The ending was amazing too, -beware, spoilers ahead- because we hear screaming and we see a vision through someones eyes, with a mask on that is. Now, is Michael again still alive? Is he again in the house? It's exactly the same vision we witnessed in the first Halloween movie where Michael is walking around the house as a child. But this time, it wasn't Michael. It's actually his cousin Jamie with a mask on, the clown suit on and with a pair of scissors in her hand. Personally, I loved this twist and I'm actually quite curious about the fifth movie now.

Danielle Harris plays the young Jamie. Danielle Harris isn't a stranger to horror movies nowadays, which isn't strange since she started with it quite young. Nowadays we can watch her in horror movies such as Urban Legend, Left for Dead, Hatchet, Stake Land, a few sequels that come after Halloween 4 and even in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake. I think she's quite a good actress, even though her roles are almost always the same. Anyway, she was 11 years old in the movie and I think she acted very well  for someone of such a young age. Again, curious about her character development in the next movies. 

Overall, for a sequel it was quite a decent one. The ending was incredible and surprising. The storyline itself wasn't much interesting. The town people were very dumb and didn't add anything special to the story. But again, the acting is good. Not only by Donald Pleasance, but also by the young Danielle Harris. Halloween 4 is a watchable sequel, nothing too weird going on and it's staying quite true to the story. 

My personal rate: 6,5/10