‘HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS’ REWATCH REVIEW

This film ventures a little deeper into the Thorn storyline as we venture closer to what this timeline is all about. That being said, this is an extremely disappointing follow-up to what was already a lackluster sequel. ‘Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael MYERS’ decides to completely shift tone, add weird twists and focus on a bunch of new characters that aren’t intriguing at all while completely wasting the time we get with returning characters making this kind of a waste of potential. For completionists out there who want to make sure they see everything in the franchise, definitely give it a whirl, but for everyone else, you can skip it.

warning! - Spoilers Ahead

This movie initially opens right where we left off in ‘Halloween 4’ and looks super hokey from the beginning. Michael is seen surviving the big blowout that ended the last film, and is seen surviving and falling into a river. For some reason, though, he suddenly has a completely different mask even though it’s edited with the footage from the previous films making the cuts feel super out of place when spliced together. The sequence of Michael floating down the river looks super amateur and you can literally see the life vest under the jump suit. Why this footage wasn’t tossed out immediately after filming it is beyond me because there had to be a hundred different ways to redo it so it didn’t look so ridiculous. Anyway, Michael makes it ashore and an old man who lives by the river takes Michael in and somehow treats him for his injuries?

Because this movie has to take place on Halloween, Michael slips into yet another coma and the old man just….lets him sleep in his little shack for a year? What the hell? Alas, Michael awakens a year later and kills the nice man immediately.

Jamie is now in a children’s clinic after attacking her foster mother at the end of the last film. She seems now to have a psychic connection with Michael (ugh) to explain the ending of the last film and she seems to have a vision of Michael killing the man the nursed him back to health. Right from the jump, viewers will realize that this is the ‘Friday the 13TH: The new Blood’ of this franchise. When we add supernatural powers randomly to slasher movies, I tend to check out immediately, with the ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ movies being the exception since it was designed to be a supernatural slasher in the first place. Doing it this late in the game always feels so dumb, for lack of a better term. Also, Jamie is mute now (I guess because Michael is mute?) and can’t speak at all. Dr. LOOMIS is hovering around her all the time trying to get Jamie to use her connection with Michael to stop him once and for all. I’m not sure why the clinic allows LOOMIS to be there, though? Also, aside from being mute, I’m not sure why Jamie is still committed to inpatient therapy at a facility. She seems back to her normal functioning otherwise and her “visions” don’t seem to start until Michael awakens from his annual coma.

Rachel, Jamie’s former foster sister, is back and the movie completely wastes the opportunity to develop her any further by having Michael kill her. This is after Rachel seeks some assistance from some comic relief cops complete with terrible sound effects and musical cues. Whatever the movie was trying to achieve with these cops, it fails spectacularly and is absolutely cringe worthy. With Rachel dead, we instead get a plot involving her friend Tina, some random chick we haven’t met prior and don’t care about now. Why? Who the hell knows. For some reason, Michael decides to stalk Tina and kill all of her friends at the Halloween party she goes to. Weird that he’s after Jamie and could easily get into the clinic to kill her, but he wastes all this time with Tina instead. It feels like there’s a much better film somewhere buried under this garbage that would exist if the film focused on who it actually should focus on.

Jamie escapes from the clinic during their own Halloween party and attempts to rescue Tina only to nearly be rundown by Michael. Dr. LOOMIS rescues Jamie, she fully regains her speech and they hatch a plan to trap Michael at the MYERS house, which now looks different again for some reason. Michael arrives and of course wipes out the officers guarding the house and nearly kills Dr. LOOMIS and pursues Jamie. Why the hell wasn’t he doing this the rest of the movie? Jamie gets Michael to remove his mask when hiding in the attic to appeal to his…softer side? He comes to his senses though and then he continues to terrorize her in the house until Michael is successfully captured by Dr. LOOMIS. It seems to be left to interpretation that LOOMIS maybe dies here. Almost like they didn’t know whether or not they wanted LOOMIS’ story to continue.

Oh and a shadowy figure has been wandering around HADDONFIELD during this whole movie but the payoff won’t come until the very end and it happens so briefly and infrequently during the movie, you pretty much completely forget about that plot point until the very end.

Michael is taken into custody at the police station and while waiting outside to be taken back to the clinic, the shadowy man in black figure kills everyone in the station breaks Michael out of jail. Jamie goes in to see what the commotion is and is devastated to see that her uncle has been released and this is where the movie ends.

In all honesty, the final twenty minutes or so is pretty solid, which makes it a shame that the rest of the movie is such a waste. the child actors give better performances than most of the older actors, which also seems odd, and the younger characters are actually much more dynamic than the older ones as well. The film wastes the opportunity to essentially be another ‘Halloween II’ and instead goes a super bizarre route that really doesn’t pay off at all.

That being said, along with ‘Halloween 4,’ the film has definitely earned a soft spot for die-hards in the horror community ensuring it’s longevity during the Halloween season both on streaming and on cable for decades to come.

3/10

You can see ‘Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael MYERS’ with an AMC+ subscription or by renting it/purchasing it on several digital platforms now.