Halloween: Being The Adventures Of Michael Myers | Halloween: The Night He Came Home | Halloween II
Halloween III: The Season Of The Witch | Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers
Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers | Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers | Halloween: H20 | Halloween: Resurrection

Setting: Haddonfield, 30 October, 1988.

Michael Myers is to be transferred from Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium - where he was imprisoned following his killing spree (and miraculous survival from two point-blank bulltes to the head and six to the body) in Haddonfield ten years before - to Smithsgrove Mental Institute. On the journey, he escapes and returns to Haddonfield. It is revealed that the heroine of the first two movies in the series, Laurie Strode is dead, having been killed 11 months earlier in a car accident. She left behind a seven-year-old daughter, Jamie, who was then adopted by the Lloyd family.

The obsessive Dr Loomis - angry at the discovery that Michael was transferred and has subsequently escaped - rushes to Haddonfield, despite his burns and limp caused by the explosion in Halloween II. Jamie (incidentally, wearing a Halloween costume identical to that worn by young Michael Myers in 1963), is being looked after by her adopted sister Rachel. Michael causes a blackout, kills everyone in the police station and is then pursued by a half-drunk mob of vigilantes.

Rachel and Jamie are rescued by the sheriff, who takes them to his home - where Rachel discovers that her boyfriend Brady has cheated on her with the sheriff's daughter. Michael, however, has followed them there and goes on a killing spree in the house. Rachel and Jamie escape and are picked up by the drunks in their truck, but they are easy pickings for Michael. Rachel drives the truck over Michael and drives him into a graveyard, where he is shot several times before the ground swallows him up.

Back at home everything at last seems back to normal until Jamie, still wearing the Halloween costume and putting on the mask that goes with it, picks up a pair of scissors and attacks her foster mum. Horrified that the Myers curse has claimed another, Dr Loomis breaks down in tears.

Deaths

Cast

Characters with names in italics are recurring characters.

Review:

1988's Halloween 4 showed that, although the series was no longer as fresh and inventive as it had been in the past, it was still going strong. The death count was increased, even though many of the deaths were really unnecessary to the plot and seemingly inserted just for sensationalism. The film still succeeds in being atmospheric, however, with many entertaining sequences. Rachel and Jamie running along the road, and the scenes in the Meeker house especially help to build up the tension.

Halloween 4 does have its weaknesses. Dr Loomis is not as central to the story as he perhaps should have been, and his absence is felt. One of the scenes he is in where he tells the drunks that Michael Myers is in town is particularly out-of-character; In Halloween Loomis prevented the sheriff from letting people know that Michael was at large, saying that the townspeople would 'see Michael at every street corner' as a result. Yet now, in Halloween 4, he is prepared to go against his previous advice - as a result of which an innocent man, Ted Hollister, is killed by the drunks.

The drunks themselves seem surplus to requirements, as are several teenage characters we briefly glimpse - though one, Lyndsey, has potential for further development; all we see of her is her giving Rachel a lift, however, her character may have been the grown-up Lyndsey initially seen being baby-sat in Halloween (she would be the right age, at least). If so, it would have been interesting to see how her character had developed.

Halloween 4 remains scary despite of, rather than because of, the massacre scenes in it (those involving the drunks, the police and the scene in the ambulance). For the most part, they just get in the way of the story of a child and her sister's reaction to danger.

One bonus though is that the film boasts the best shock ending in the Halloween series.

Overall, Halloween 4 brings the series back on track, and paves the way for more sequels with a fresh, interesting, more original character than the 'typical teen,' Laurie Strode.

Further Reading

Halloween: Being The Adventures Of Michael Myers
• Halloween: The Night He Came Home
• Halloween II
• Halloween III: The Season Of The Witch
• Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers
• Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers
• Halloween: H20
• Halloween: Resurrection