Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Michael Myers is back, and with Laurie Strode mysteriously out of the picture you have to wonder what he is going to do for the next ninety minutes.

Well, Halloween II explained to us that Michael was after Laurie because she was his sister and this movie expands that to Michael being after all his relatives and it turns out Laurie had a little girl, so Michael knows what he has to do.

While being transferred from one mental hospital to another Michael overhears a doctor mentioning that Michael has got a niece somewhere out there and upon hearing this immediately kills that guy. It's really hilarious, I am talking immediately as in the second the guy says "blah blah niece" Michael flexes his hand and then before you know it his is driving his thumb into the guy's forehead! I guess Michael just really hates his family.

Michael heads back to Haddonfield to take out his little niece Jamie, and while he is expertly tracking her everywhere (regardless of the fact that in Halloween II he was shot in both eyes, then exploded, and then left to burn to death) it just so happens that there are a bunch of people around for him to murder graphically. Following Michael around is Dr. Loomis again, who survived the same gas-filled room explosion Michael lived through. Loomis is definitely feeling the effects of living through a massive fiery explosion- he sort of limps sometimes, and has a little patch of scar tissue on his right cheek.

As much as Halloween II was a huge step down from Halloween, Halloween 4 is even more a step down down the ladder of Halloween movies. There's just nothing much you can say about Michael Myers, and every time they try to fill in his background a little or give him a clearer reason to kill people it just ends up taking away from what made him an interesting villain in the first place (and consequently what made the first movie so good).

In the first movie, you cared about Laurie and her friends because they all seemed like good kids. Nearly every character in this movie is annoying and the dialog sounds like it was written by adults who have forgotten how they acted and talked when they were kids. At one point Jamie is bullied by some other little kids and she runs outside, rests against a tree and tells herself, "you're gonna be alright, you're gonna be alright." I don't think I've ever seen an adult say this, never mind an eleven-year-old kid. That's because people don't speak like this! It's movie dialog nonsense.

There is really nothing to recommend about this movie. Like Halloween II it trades the suspense and wonderful direction of the first movie with gory deaths and pointless background information. Just even more so.