In Defense Of: “Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers” (1988)

That’s not to say that certain shades of the character don’t feel familiar, like the dark sense of humor he occasionally seems to have seen when Meeker’s daughter Kelly (Kathleen Kinmont) approaches what she believes to be a deputy rocking in a chair that turns out to be Michael, or how he breaks into the Lloyd home to search for evidence confirming Jamie is his niece. But some of the more over the top elements – paired with a woefully goofy-looking new mask, as well as an infamous blonde-haired one that appears in a random shot late in the film – don’t fully gel to make this version of Michael feel like the one who kickstarted the franchise.

Despite that, the film does dip its toes into exploring Michael’s legacy throughout Haddonfield. Aside from Meeker’s immediate reaction to the news of the killer’s return, the posse that forms to hunt Michael is driven by revenge for a murder he committed in 1978. When Meeker and Loomis find Jamie and Rachel on the street, they’re surrounded by a group of individuals all wearing Michael’s mask who scatter into the night after Loomis draws his gun on one of them, ostensibly as a joke but alarming nonetheless for the fact some members of the community have no problem making light of a tragedy. Even Jamie – a pretty solid, noteworthy performance from the young Harris – is haunted by dreams of Michael and taunted by bullies over the fact that her uncle is the boogeyman and her mother’s dead.

Halloween 4 sadly doesn’t lean too hard into its exploration of the impact of Michael’s overall legacy in a wider sense, though, which is unfortunate, as certain things that happen, like the posse killing an innocent kid in their bloodlust, end up being glossed over and forgotten about. Instead, it ends up going inward, building up to its final moments where Michael’s (seemingly) dead and everyone’s gathered back at the Lloyd household. Jamie – dressed in a similar clown costume as the one her uncle once wore as a child when he killed Judith – grabs a pair of scissors and makes her way to the bathroom, where her foster mother’s drawing her a bath and stabs her multiple times, the screams alerting everyone to the stairs, where Loomis frantically draws his gun at the sight of Jamie only to be stopped by Meeker.

In the sole context of the film itself, it’s a pretty ballsy, shocking and engaging ending, underlining the idea that some cycles of evil will always find new ways to repeat on, trauma merely spawning more violence. Unfortunately, though, as I mentioned earlier, Halloween 5 essentially sweeps it all under the rug; Jamie’s foster mom survives, Jamie herself is put in a children’s clinic, and Michael survives to kill another day. Had Halloween 5 ran with the ball Halloween 4 set out for it rather than play it safe, it’s possible that Halloween 4 would be remembered more fondly rather than as the first chapter of a trio of films that ultimately amounted to nothing.

But here we are three decades later, the movie often overlooked or lumped into a category where truly bad sequels go to die, and yet, I still personally enjoy revisiting it year in and year out. It’s not the best Halloween sequel – though it’s up there – but it’s also far from the worst, anchored by solid performances from Pleasence and Harris, some slick Michael action and an admirable attempt at world-building, however small it may be, on the foundation of the first two films. As I said at the outset of this defense, a case can be made that Michael didn’t need to return, but he did anyway, and we’re lucky that Halloween 4 turned out to be a fun, harmless entry in the series rather than the utter train wreck it could’ve been.