Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

This is the movie that threw the franchise into the rubbish bin, and not counting one bright spot (H20), it was forever tainted by the mark of unwatchable dookie.

Taking place one year after the events of Halloween 4 we learn that Michael survived the police shootout (duh!) and has been in a coma in some hobo’s shack out in the woods. Jamie (Danielle Harris), after stabbing her foster mother, has been institutionalized in a home for disturbed children and has lost the ability to speak. On Halloween Michael wakes up to resume his hunt for his niece who discovers she now has a psychic link to her murderous uncle. And some random dude in cowboy boots wanders around following Michael on his new killing spree.

Yes, there is a random dude in cowboy boots who shares a druid tattoo on his wrist that we learn Michael has as well. This sub-plot is introduced and never explained. 

Donald Pleasence returns again as the crazed Dr. Loomis, but it’s plainly obvious that at this point he’s cashing a paycheck. He phones it in as the uber talented Danielle Harris outperforms him at every opportunity. It saddens me that she isn’t in more movies, as she’s this film’s only saving grace. Old characters we came to love in part 4 are unceremoniously killed off to make way for a gaggle of horribly written and obnoxiously portrayed teenagers that I couldn’t wait to see get slaughtered. Wendy Kaplan’s perpetually coked up and extremely annoying character of Tina being the worst of the lot. I know that when she bites it the audience is supposed to sympathize with her for sacrificing herself to save Jamie, but I always say “FINALLY!” when it happens.

The script by the two hacks I won’t name and the supremely untalented director Dominique Othenin-Girard is nonsensical and inane. There’s just so many bad decisions made here that it’s mindboggling. We have the aforementioned Cowboy Dude. We have the fact that when the hobo is attacked by Michael, who promptly collapses into a coma before killing the old fart, he takes this psycho masked dude in for a whole year and never once alerts the cops. We have an all-points bulletin out on Michael, but he wanders the streets of Haddonfield all day with no one noticing him, not even when he kills Tina’s douchey boyfriend in the open and steals his car. We have the two bumbling cops who are useless in every possible way, and are even given their own clown theme music. We have Tina being picked up by Michael in her dead boyfriend’s car to go to a party, and she doesn’t even notice that this guy has a totally different body type than her main squeeze. Not to mention the fact that he constantly looks at her as if he’d like nothing more than to stab her in the coccyx.

And then there’s the ending. I’m going to spoil it for all of you regardless if you still want to watch this travesty or not, but Loomis uses Jamie to lure Michael back to his old house so he can trap him and kill him. Michael obviously has other plans and manages to kill all the dumb ass police surrounding the place and stalks Jamie until they face off in the attic. She sweet talks him into taking off his mask, and what do we get? A close up of his unblemished eye region… and the sumbitch even sheds a tear because she called him “Uncle”. This mofo was burned alive and in part 4 spent a good chunk of the movie wrapped head to toe in bandages, and here he doesn’t have one burn scar? I call bullshit! Then Loomis drops a chain net on him and beats him to a pulp with an effing 2x4 before the surviving cops show up out of nowhere and arrest him. Yup, Michael gets thrown in the slammer. We even get a ridiculously silly shot of him behind bars that elicits a hearty laugh from me every time I see it. But you haven’t lived until you see Michael’s jailbreak scene. It’s a real hoot.

Where the fourth film had ample tension and mood to spare, this is just a big joke that was obviously rushed out to be in theaters a year after its predecessor. There’s nothing good I can say about this turd, except that Danielle Harris carried the movie on her small shoulders for the entire runtime and she pulls it off like a pro. Too bad she couldn’t have been a better example to everyone else around her. They could learn a thing or two from this talented tyke.

0.5 out of 5