4¾ Pies

Reviewed by Yankee

Plot Summary

A year after the end of Halloween 4, Michael Myers returns to rein terror onto his favorite niece, Jaime. This time Haddonfield is ready for him, as is a mysterious stranger…

Review

A problem that immediately came to mind when anticipating Halloween 5 was that the previous movie had already made a great bookend to the series. While its ending did leave plenty of room for more, I was content with letting my imagination run amok. Still, I admit to a little salivation upon hearing of a Halloween 5 because of my good experience with Halloween 4.

I then thought up a few good ways to “shape” the story into a new movie and assumed that the direction the series would take would follow one of those ideas. It could have been interesting if they took the ending of the previous film to mean that Jaime was going to follow in her uncle's legacy. From there they could have explored why/how this was happening, either while she was still a child OR they could have picked it up years later.

Of course, some of the elements of what I just said could even have been laced with some story where Michael did come back but still explore the consequences of what happened in the previous film. After all, with the exception of Halloween 3, each chapter thus far has been some kind of step forward in the saga of Michael Myers, has it not?

What we ended up with instead, was the start of what I think MURDERED this particular continuity of my favorite horror franchise. This movie, like the ones soon to follow, will be a mishmash of a few great ideas with many bad ideas and sub-par to poor execution.

This is what happens when greed and medium success happens to a franchise. You wind up with “too many hands in the soup.” You'll get many new movies with poorer quality as it goes. Can anyone say, “Friday the 13th , Children of the Corn, Nightmare on Elm Street …”?

Quotes:

Mikey: Okay, asshole... you wanna play? Trick or treat!

Jaimie Lloyd: Uncle! Boogeyman. Let me see.

Tina: Psycho boyfriend…

Tina: I'm never sensible if I can help it.

Spook Factor: ¼ Pie

This could very well be the least scary of the entire Halloween series, including the remakes. Yet, I suppose some little jumps could be found, especially if you're not yet familiar with the other films.

Antagonist: ½ Pie

Here is where the soup loses a lot of its flavor. Michael becomes the stereotypical unstoppable slasher in this movie. Seriously, right now he is no better than Jason in the later films. Yeah, he's one tough SOB, but I'm not feeling the despair the old Michael gave me…

Story: ½ Pie

Making this into the first half of a two movie arc was a bad, bad, bad idea! We get little gratification from the story elements started here and quite frankly, watching the next movie STILL didn't gratify them! More exploration into the better elements, like why Jaime went psycho last movie and how/why Michael is using her and trying to kill her would have VASTLY improved this story! The loose ends were annoying and the plot holes big enough to drive a pickup truck through…

Acting: ½ Pie

My major complaint here is the acting job done by Donald Pleasance (RIP) here. I do understand that his character is supposed to be further over the edge, but it's just way too over the top here. Still, his performance, along with Danielle Harris and a couple of others does help pick up the slack from the otherwise so-so cast.

Directing: ½ Pie

This is kind of down the middle. The cinematography was well done as was most of the pace and action sequences. However, this otherwise feels like a film version of stone soup. Yeah, you could blame a lot of that on the writing but the directing is kind of all over the place too. Maybe two heads aren't always better than one.

Soundtrack: ¼ Pie

How stupid could they be here? Think about it, if they just kept the same soundtrack from the previous three movies (I'm not counting 3), they would just automatically get a half pie. But to introduce stuff that lessens the film? Geez! The music that accompanied the two bone-headed cops was beyond ridiculous! I thought I was watching the Brady Bunch for a minute…

Special Effects: ½ Pie

Quite honestly, this wasn't any better than the previous film. If anything, it was less impressive. Easily forgotten…

Gore: ½ Pie

The blood in particular in this film merits the same mention that it did in my review of the previous movie. It does seem to be the general sweet spot for gore in this series.

Replay, Rewatch, Rewind: ¾ Pie

Despite my bitching, this IS a very watchable film. Every year a few channels will run this movie as part of their horror movie marathons because people keep watching it. I'm guilty as charged…

Pros

Proof that Halloween 4 did its job of reviving a franchise that hadn't had a chance to prove itself…

Cons

This film failed to push the overall concept forward despite ACTUALLY having somewhere to go with its forced continuity. Turning Michael into a bad cliché was also a downer.

Final Word

While fairly entertaining if not taken too seriously, I DO find it hard to love this film because I know where it ultimately leads… but I'll save that for when I review the next movie as this one left the franchise still with some potential.

He'll never die.