Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Meyers (1988) October 9th, 2023

I enjoy comparing the big three slasher franchises each October, even if that increases the likelihood of seeing a terrible movie (click the hyperlink to read my A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master review). Before we examine the next installment in the Friday the 13th franchise, we’re making a pit stop in Haddonfield, Illinois to see Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. I know the day will come when the overall quality of the Halloween franchise will fall, but it is not this day.

Good filmmaking utilizes a nonverbal storytelling language to communicate emotions, themes, and important plot information. This can be as simple as using a color to evoke a feeling or giving two characters the same outfit or mannerisms, or as complicated as utilizing an accelerated low angle POV trucking shot to suggest a character is moving with supernaturally accelerated speed. Utilizing this language is essential to great filmmaking and comprehending it is essential to appreciating the best work in the medium.

Five essential elements make great movies. Performance, sound design, special effects/set design, script/editing, and directing/cinematography. When all five harmonize they become a film greater than the sum of its parts, like a celluloid Captain Planet. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers isn’t just the best of the franchise thus far, it’s one of the best slasher films I can recall. While that might be a bar low enough for Chucky to step over, it’s nevertheless a well earned superlative.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers grabs the brass ring where so many other sequels fall short. It is able to be both reverential to the previously established lore, without becoming repetitive or stale. At its core we know what to expect from a Halloween film, Michael Myers stalks someone and kills everyone else in his path to get to them. I didn’t expect to see wonderfully textbook visual storytelling and franchise staples effortlessly woven into the script.

In lesser movies we might have to sit through a contrived sequence over explaining which department store sold Freddy Kruger his sweater, or introduce midi-chlorians. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers avoids those horrible pitfalls by keeping it simple. We all know what Michael Myers looks like, dark blue jumpsuit and a bleached Captain Kirk mask, but that’s not what he’s wearing in the insane asylum. Believably acquiring that outfit after escaping is essential to both satisfying the brand and suspending the audience’s disbelief. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers does both by positioning a country automotive shop in Michael Myers path to Haddonfield. There he’s free to murder as many mechanics as he likes and steal any color jumpsuit he wants. Then he steals their two truck, which when next we see it, is conspicuously parked outside a Halloween costume shop where the jaded Illinois residents market Michael Myers masks in a wry mockery of their coming deaths. Yay!

These moments are essential but written well enough to appear natural or even incidental to the larger goings on in the story. That’s where so many other franchises drop the ball. Oh the story about a small town being destroyed by their weak infrastructure and moronic populace is cool too, but really it’s all about how he got the mask.

If you’ve seen them all you already know Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is a more fitting sequel to Halloween than Halloween II which takes place immediately after the events of the first film on the same night. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers begins a decade after the events of Halloween with Michael Myers displacing his obsession with Laurie Strode to stalking his orphaned niece. Donald Pleasance’s exhausted yet resilient performance ties the whole film together in Jamie Lee Curtis’ absence. They even try to set up an heir apparent by framing Michael’s niece as the next in line to take up their murderous family traditions.

Often slasher films start strong and peter out with maybe a standout sequel somewhere down the line (Here’s looking at you Jason X) but rarely do they form a strong trilogy. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers rounds out an impressively satisfying and artfully done trilogy often imitated but never duplicated (Here’s looking at you Rob Zombie). This achievement should be celebrated for elevating the slasher genre like a machete impaled victim about to be hung from a wood paneled wall. Way to go Mikey!