Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

After the wrongfully hated “Season of the Witch,” Moustapha Akkad and crew simply restarted the Halloween storyline by completely remaking the first film. While it does add some new stuff, “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” released in 1988, is half restart and half remake. It’s also the start of another story arc about Michael and his evil mark of Thorn. After Michael was burnt in the second movie, Michael has been in a coma for a decade and is kept under high supervision in a hospital. During a transfer, Michael, played by Tom Morga in this scene, is now conscious and kills every guard that gets in his way. Dr. Loomis returns and looks into the ambulance crash Michael was in. While the police are sure Michael died in the crash, Loomis is determined that Michael is still alive and is out in the public.

We see young Jamie Lloyd, an adopted and disturbed little girl with a weak personality who is close to her foster sister Rachel, played by Ellie Cornell. Continuously haunted with nightmares and visions of Michael Myers, she wants to forget her problems with Halloween preparations, as Rachel also has relationship problems with her boyfriend, played by Sasha Jesnon. Jamie is an interesting and very convincing character with a nice back story that makes her the perfect follow-up to Laurie Strode. That is because we find out she’s Laurie’s daughter.

Danielle Harris (who was very adorable in this movie) gives a very realistic and brave performance as young Jamie who has trouble with the scary dreams of Michael, while giving one of the greatest screams in horror movie history. Harris manages to turn Jamie into a heroine we can cheer for and sympathize with, and she successfully puts the viewers in her trouble. Like Laurie, Michael, now played mostly by George P. Wilbur, is sadly the person she has to fight alone. He’s quickly traveling all the way to Haddonfield once again. For some reason, Haddonfield is still just a quiet town and has done nothing to recover the Myers curse at all. The residents are still wearing his mask during Halloween. You would think the town would not allow the mask after what Michael has done.

Felix Vasquez stated in his review, “Nonetheless, director Dwight H. Little manages to evoke some sense of tension every so often, with Loomis’ attempts to warn police about Myers re-entering Haddonfield, while Jamie and Rachel become victim to Michael’s murderous rampage. Once again under Akkad’s presence, Michael becomes another routine masked slasher who has a knack for doling out some painful murders, and “The Return” is changes its narrative mid-way from a stalk and slash to a suspenseful mission involving Rachel’s efforts to keep Jamie alive.” Even though this is not the best in the franchise, it’s an enjoyable slasher film with a very good final scene that takes the cake compared to the other titles in the franchise.

Despite this was a superfluous entry in the franchise, it’s actually not a bad film. It’s good, and if you were one of those people that wanted Michael Myers back after the third movie, your wish has been granted. So if you didn’t like the third one, you’ll like this one. I personally think the third one was a good movie that was wrongfully hated, but I think this one is better.

Check in tomorrow when we look at another wrongfully hated entry in my “Halloween-a-thon” in this year’s “Halloween Month.”