Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers Review - Michael Comes Home

There are certain movies you remember seeing as a kid because you absolutely were not supposed to be watching them. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is one of those for me. I saw it at some point when I was young, long before anybody responsible for my viewing habits would have signed off on it, but I hadn't actually sat down and watched it as an adult until now.

And the timing couldn't have been better. After recently seeing Halloween, Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch at Regal Cinemas one-night-only events on the big screen, I went home and continued straight into Halloween 4. Watching those first three movies so close together made the differences in this one incredibly clear. It also made me realize something I genuinely wasn't expecting - I really love Halloween 4.

Not in a "this is pretty decent for the fourth movie" way, either. Halloween 4 is a damn good Halloween movie, and one that understands bringing Michael Myers back means more than simply putting the mask on somebody and sending him down another dark Haddonfield street.

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Michael Myers Comes Home

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a wonderfully strange little detour and I've got plenty of love for what that movie attempted. But after spending one movie away from Michael, Halloween 4 wastes absolutely no time reminding us what we missed.

Directed by Dwight H. Little from a screenplay by Alan B. McElroy, the 1988 sequel jumps ahead ten years from Michael Myers' original Halloween night massacre. Donald Pleasence returns as Dr. Sam Loomis, because neither explosions, burns, bureaucracy nor basic human exhaustion can keep this man from chasing Michael Myers.

Loomis is basically the world's most committed Yelp reviewer. He had a terrible experience in Haddonfield once and has now devoted his entire existence to making sure everybody hears about it. (I wish I had that kind of dedication, tbh).

But the smartest thing Halloween 4 does is resist becoming Halloween: The Greatest Hits. Michael is back, Haddonfield is back and Loomis is back, but the movie gives Michael a new target and the franchise a new emotional center in Jamie Lloyd, played by Danielle Harris in her film debut.

Jamie is Laurie's young daughter and Michael's niece, which gives his return a connection to the original story without requiring the movie to simply recreate Laurie Strode's Halloween night. Harris is wonderful. She doesn't just play "scared kid in a horror movie." She makes Jamie vulnerable, sympathetic and genuinely worth rooting for.

She is also a friggin banshee of a screamer.

There were moments where I stopped thinking about Jamie and started feeling bad for Danielle Harris herself because DAMN! This child spends a significant portion of the movie absolutely terrified and Harris sells every second of it.

Rachel Carruthers Deserves Her Flowers

Then there's Ellie Cornell as Rachel Carruthers, Jamie's foster sister and one of my favorite additions to the Halloween universe.

Rachel is a kick-ass addition to the franchise's great babysitter lineage. She feels like a believable teenager rather than a character who wandered into the movie carrying a giant FINAL GIRL sign, and when things go bad, she steps up in a major way.

Dare I say it? Rachel may be more kick-ass here than Laurie Strode is in Halloween II.

I said what I said.

Cornell and Harris give Halloween 4 its heart. Their relationship matters, which means the danger surrounding them matters. That's something weaker slashers routinely forget. You can have the coolest killer in horror history wandering around outside, but suspense only works when we care about the people trying to survive him.

And unlike certain previous residents of this franchise, nobody in the supporting cast annoyed me nearly as much as Annie in Halloween or Ellie in Season of the Witch. Progress!

Haddonfield Remembers

This is where Halloween 4 really surprised me.

The movie doesn't merely expand Michael's family tree. It expands Haddonfield.

Ten years have passed since Michael's original rampage, and the town feels like a place where that history actually happened. His actions didn't only affect Laurie Strode. They affected families, cops, neighbors and an entire community that has spent a decade living with the knowledge that a masked psychopath once turned their hometown into a slaughterhouse.

There's trauma bubbling underneath Haddonfield, and Michael's return brings it roaring back to the surface.

That feels like an organic evolution of the original story. By the fourth film, Michael shouldn't exist only in relation to one survivor. Haddonfield itself should have scars. The town should remember him. People should react to his return with fear, anger and some extremely questionable decision-making.

They do.

It makes the world of Halloween feel larger without making it feel disconnected from John Carpenter and Debra Hill's original foundation. That's an incredibly difficult line for a legacy sequel to walk, and Halloween 4 was doing it decades before "legacy sequel" became a phrase we all started throwing around every six months.

The Shape Is Back...and So Is That Mask

George P. Wilbur takes over as The Shape and continues to do Michael Myers justice. He's imposing, relentless and still capable of appearing exactly where you don't want him to be.

The mask, however. Guys.

At one point I saw blonde hair on Michael Myers' mask, and for my own peace of mind I have chosen to pretend that I did not. We saw nothing, moving on.

The look may not have the eerie perfection of the original mask, but Michael himself still works. Little understands that The Shape is most effective when he's a presence before he's an attacker. Michael appearing in the background, materializing from darkness or simply standing somewhere he absolutely should not be remains infinitely creepier than turning him into a generic slasher killing machine.

Halloween 4 also gives him some fantastic environments to work in. The school sequence is terrific, and the rooftop chase is an absolute banger. The movie keeps finding ways to make familiar slasher mechanics feel tense because its characters are constantly being pushed into increasingly terrible places to hide, run or fight back.

And visually, the movie announces itself beautifully before Michael even gets going.

Snag A Halloween Movie Poster Here.

That Opening Is Pure Halloween

The opening montage is one of the most distinctive sequences in the entire franchise.

Empty farmland. Halloween decorations. Gray skies. Autumn hanging over everything. There's an almost lonely quality to it that immediately tells you what time of year it is without needing somebody to shove a pumpkin directly into the camera.

Do I miss the jack-o'-lantern openings of the first three movies? Absolutely. Those opening credits are practically part of the Halloween ritual for me by this point.

But Halloween 4 earns the change because its opening feels so completely committed to the season. It captures that very specific late-October feeling when everything is colder, darker and slightly dead. Before the movie has done much of anything, you're already in Halloween mode.

That's atmosphere, baby.

Dwight H. Little carries that feeling into the rest of the movie. This feels like Haddonfield on Halloween night, not some anonymous collection of streets that happens to have Michael Myers walking around them. For a franchise literally named Halloween, you'd think that would always be a given. It isn't.

Donald Pleasence Will Chase This Man to the Ends of the Earth

And then we have Dr. Loomis.

Beautiful, exhausted, absolutely-not-giving-up Dr. Loomis.

Donald Pleasence has been through hell and back by this point, and Loomis looks like it. Yet Michael Myers is alive, which means Loomis has exactly one item on his schedule: find that man.

Pleasence understands exactly what kind of character Loomis has become without turning him into a joke. There is something inherently hilarious about a man surviving everything Loomis has survived and immediately deciding, "Well, better go after Michael again," but underneath that is complete conviction. Loomis knows what Michael is capable of because he's already watched everyone else underestimate him.

Again.... And again.... And again.

So while everybody else is trying to process whether Michael Myers could really be back, Loomis has mentally skipped straight to "Yes, obviously, now MOVE."

The Fans Got Halloween 4

Halloween 4 opened at number one at the domestic box office and stayed there for a second weekend, eventually earning about $17.8 million domestically against a reported $5 million production budget. Critics were considerably less enthusiastic.

I can't say that particularly bothers me.

Which is admittedly funny considering reviewing movies is loosely part of my job.

But I've never really thought of myself as a critic. I'm a movie lover. There's a difference. I don't approach a Halloween movie looking for reasons to prove I'm smarter than the Halloween movie. I want to know whether it works, whether it makes me feel something and whether I want to spend another night in Haddonfield.

Halloween 4 absolutely works.

The people this movie was made for got it. Horror fans understand movies like Halloween 4 in a way that somebody approaching it as merely another late-'80s slasher sequel may not. We understand the pleasure of Michael appearing at the edge of the frame. We understand why hearing that music again matters. We understand that returning to Haddonfield can feel like coming home even though literally nobody should want to live there.

And most importantly, Halloween 4 doesn't take that affection for granted.

The Verdict

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is upper-tier Halloween for me.

It brings Michael Myers home while giving him a reason to be there. Danielle Harris is wonderful as Jamie Lloyd. Ellie Cornell's Rachel is a fantastic addition to the franchise. Donald Pleasence remains gloriously committed as Loomis. Collect a Dr. Loomis Figure here! George P. Wilbur keeps The Shape frightening, Dwight H. Little delivers some excellent suspense sequences, and the movie's autumnal atmosphere is among the strongest in the series.

More importantly, it expands the Halloween mythology in exactly the direction I want a sequel to expand it. Michael Myers didn't only change Laurie Strode's life. His violence left scars across Haddonfield, and Halloween 4 finally begins exploring what happens when an entire town realizes its boogeyman has come home.

And that ending? No spoilers here, obviously, but holy shit. It's a fuggin shocker.

I went into Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers expecting a fun continuation of my Halloween marathon. I came out realizing I'd seriously underestimated it. This isn't simply the movie that brought Michael Myers back after Season of the Witch.

It's the movie that proves there was still a hell of a lot more story waiting for him in Haddonfield.