For some reason, I notice a lot of Halloween fans think rather highly of this one. I never really understood why. I assume if you're just a fan of Halloween, maybe it was nice to get Michael and Loomis and Haddonfield back after Part 3's weirdness, but I think this movie is overall lacking. It's style-free, tension-free, scare-free, drama-free, and practically gore-free. (And what's with the excessive slow-mo all throughout?) You're never given a real reason to care for the characters, other than Jamie and Rachel, and that's only, completely 100% because of actresses Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell, who share a sweet bond and make everything work even though the script is really letting them down.
It's only the third true Myers sequel, but it's already smelling of barrel-scraping desperation; the filmmakers want you to forget about Part 3, dammit, so we're bringing Michael and Loomis and Haddonfield back no matter what cockamamie bullshit we concoct! Loomis lit a match in a room filling with gas? No problem, he somehow got away with just a couple of crappy prosthetic burns on his hand and cheek. Michael went up in flames, after having his eyes shot? No big deal, he's just in a bit of a coma. Laurie Strode (and Jimmy Lloyd) is unceremoniously killed off-screen to make room for her newly introduced daughter, Jamie. Michael, who has been a comatose brick for a decade, is brought back to consciousness by just hearing a background conversation between Smith's Grove van drivers that he has a niece. It's...pretty stupid. Michael Myers, being what he is, decides it's a good time to escape and go kill the niece he doesn't know...just 'cuz!
So the movie just meanders through a bunch of low-grade slasher kills until the final act. If you try to transcribe the actions in this movie, it's moronic. Michael is teleporting all over town in order to cause blackouts and kill every diner and policeman and walk-on extra he can find for the sake of upping the body count. Meanwhile, Loomis pisses away the running time by hitching a ride to Haddonfield and running around making his grandioso nonsense speeches instead of being like "It's the fourth fucking movie, you know what Michael does, let's get this over with."
This movie also begins a trend in the series of having what I think of as these lame little laugh moments, these pre-Scream types of cutesy, self-referential moments that they think are cute, but are really infuriating in how they underestimate the audience's ability to be scared or amused. Loomis et al. are surrounded by many Michael Myerseses, only to realize it's a bunch of kids playing a prank. Ha-ha. It's filmed like a scare scene, but ends up a laugh. Well, it's neither.
Also: Michael's mask in this movie is terrible. He has this really dopey expression on his face, really bemused-like, like he just farted and is waiting for it to hit the rest of the room.
The one interesting thing this movie does is end it by having Jamie crack and stab her foster mother, as Loomis looks on in horror at history apparently repeating itself. The Friday the 13th movies did the same thing with Tommy Jarvis, where they hint at the end of The Final Chapter that he's cracked and will become the series' new killer. Neither Friday the 13th nor Halloween had the guts to stick to that plan. Tommy at least becomes the red herring of the follow-up sequel, though, which is more than Halloween bothered to do.
TO BE CONTINUED
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