Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

After the failure of Halloween 3, the producers rushed back to the Michael Myers well. They had a lot of things working against them. It had been seven years since the last Halloween with him, so his name wasn't exactly top of mind. The slasher movie craze had died down, in large part due to being done to death (pardon the pun). Even Friday The 13th had swooned at the box office (and, in a couple of the installments, with fans) in its past few iterations. So, resurrecting a dead brand in an era where the genre itself was tumbling down the hill at high speed was putting this movie in a horrible starting position. That any of it manages to work is amazing. Danielle Harris is a revelation as young Jamie Lloyd, the orphaned daughter of Laurie Strode (don't do the math, continuity is not this movie's strong suit), now the last remaining target of Michael's desire to exterminate his family. Putting a child in peril is also different for slashers. Too often, it's teenagers or young adults, so to see someone in single-digit years brings up a different level of fear. A teenager should, in theory, be able to fight back; a seven year old girl is SCREWED. I also like the latter half of the movie, when the town mobilizes and hunts down Michael. And I will go down with the ship on this one in saying Rachel is a better Final Girl than Laurie is, because she goes on the OFFENSIVE. So, why does this get 2 1/2 stars, when it sounds like I really like this movie? Two problems, and they're show-stoppers. One is Michael, who has completed his transformation into Jason. He moves like a robot. He no longer stalks, he no longer looms. He just waits, moves in with ruthless efficiency, and kills in the most brutal way possible (including a stabbing with a shotgun ... yes, that's correct). It's fine for a slasher, but it is so far removed from the original Halloween, it's depressing. And that leads to problem number two: this is a bog-standard slasher. Characters are given no more personality than necessary to get them from introduction to death. The body count continues to increase for this series. The tension is not a slow build, there is no suspense. There's murder, the parts of the movie between murder, and the final act. It's an exciting final act, with a climb over a rooftop, a car chase, and the town mobilizing into a mob to do away with Michael once and for all ... but the rest of the movie could literally be any slasher movie ever. At least H2 gave us the Haddonfield Hospital. This is just Haddonfield all over again. It's the original with H2's body count and style. Fine for slasher fans, but we're getting farther away from the original than ever.