In this movie, Michael Myers is “not a man”. No, he’s “evil on two legs”. Or he’s “pure evil” or something like that. They’re really proud of this line because Donald Pleasence restates it at least three times just in case anybody in the moviegoing public missed it because they got up for a piss break or to get some more Milk Duds. (I also like the moment early on where Pleasence refers to Myers as “it” rather than “he”.)
What Michael Myers really is, ultimately, is the shark from Jaws, but in the form of something that resembles a human. Bullets can’t stop him. He’s big on doing his killing in the same place. He defies all common laws of nature. He also has his own instantly recognizable theme music that never fails to accurately announce his presence.
Jaws is an oft-unacknowledged influence on the slasher movie, but I think it’s every bit as important a touchstone to the genre as Psycho or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
And Halloween 4 goes even further with the Jaws influence by depicting a Haddonfield, Illinois that’s galvanized by the return of Michael Myers ten years later. (He escapes in the middle of his transfer from the mental hospital to some other detention facility). The kids in town who don’t remember 1978 don’t take it seriously (some of them even prank the authorities by wearing Michael Myers masks, which is another thing from Jaws), but the adults snap to action and form shitty vigilante groups while the police don’t know how to deal with this logic-defying killer, but the harried sheriff does his flawed best.
This movie doesn’t TOTALLY suck. Some of the kills are good. The first one is a well-done jump scare. This is also the only movie I know of where somebody dies by being STABBED with a shotgun.
It’s dumb as shit, but you expect that.
There’s a moment where Mike Myers has sneaked inside the house where everyone’s hiding out and somehow the front door is locked from the outside (have you ever lived in a place where you can be locked in from the outside?) and so the genius protagonists in the movie consider themselves trapped.
Meanwhile, everybody in the audience who knows that 2 + 2 = 4 is yelling at the screen Well, just escape through one of those big living room windows, you dumb cunts! You’re on the first floor! Even if you can’t get the window open, you have a gun! Blow a hole through it and haul ass, you FUCKING JERK-OFFS!
Scream all you want. The idiots in this film won’t hear you.
But that’s not even my biggest problem with this movie.
Nope, the top bee in my bonnet is that in this particular universe, Jamie Lee Curtis died in a car accident years ago, but not before she had a young daughter, who’s now about nine or ten years old and living with a foster family. So now THE KID is the target of Michael Myers, due to his insane logic. So one of our central characters here is this little girl who spends the entire movie whining and crying.
Child actress Danielle Harris does a good job whining and crying, but it gets irritating over ninety minutes.
What stopped the screenwriters from having Michael Myers go after Jamie Lee Curtis’s cute, adult-age half-sister? Catherine Mary Stewart would have been great. So would Kelli Marony. Or Joyce Hyser. Or even this film’s pretty blonde Ellie Cornell would have been fine. She even seems annoyed with the kid throughout this film because Cornell rightfully understands that she herself should be the star.
The prepubescent should never be principle characters in slasher movies. Because you know they’re not going to die.
There are some decent things in this film, but still approach it with caution. It’s some second-class, maybe even third-class, Halloween candy. If John Carpenter’s original Halloween is a full-sized Snickers bar in your haul, this film is a roll of Smarties.