‘He’ll never die…’
I love the first four Halloween films. The first entry is, of course, an all-time classic. The first sequel is often dismissed by John Carpenter but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Season of the Witch ditches Michael Myers all together and despite being derided for years it has now been reappraised as a seasonal classic. Halloween 4 takes us back to basics and includes one of the best conclusions in the whole franchise. That brings us to this fifth entry. The Revenge of Michael Myers. I’m not sure what or who Myers, a man who has spent his whole life murdering people, has to take revenge for, but here we are…
That great conclusion from Halloween 4 is retconned here meaning that Michael’s niece Jamie (Danielle Harris) is not a murderer after all. She is a mute now though for some reason. She has also been institutionalised in a place that allows Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) to come and go as he pleases despite the fact that he now looks and sounds utterly insane. Elsewhere, there are some teenagers having a Halloween party that bring literally nothing to the table but more fodder for Michael’s cannon.
Halloween 5 is undoubtedly a Halloween movie. All the ingredients are there. The problem is that all of the things that make up a Halloween movie are slightly worse than in the films that preceded this one. Pleasence has always trod the line between sincerity and self-parody but in this entry, he crosses that line with wilful abandon in a performance that can only be described as ‘interesting’. Michael’s mask is terrible. The score is like a copy of a copy of a copy. A weak facsimile of the original. The death scenes are forgettable. Michael himself feels like a different character here. We’ve always known he can drive a car but do we need ten minutes of Michael Myers driving a car in any Halloween film? And that’s another problem. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is boring. Despite clocking in at just over 90 minutes, large parts of this film are difficult to sit through. Now, Halloween: Resurrection is one of the worst horror sequels ever made but at least it isn’t dull.
In many ways, Halloween 5 was the beginning of the end for the franchise. This is a film with nothing to say. Nothing to add. This would become a recurring theme in the seven (!) Halloween films that followed this one.