Harefooted Halloween: Halloween 5 (The Revenge of Michael Myers)

What I Liked: Michael Myers looks and moves more like the Michael from parts 1 and 2.  Gone is the ultra smooth pristine white mask and rigid body movements.

What I Didn’t Like: Jesus, too much to list.  Just skip to the next section.

Overall Impressions: I’m reminded of what John Doe said at the end of Se7en: “What I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed forever.”  Ok, that may be an exaggeration but there is so much in this movie that doesn’t make a shred of fucking sense.  The tattoo on Michael’s wrist, the man in black, the chain net trap Loomis somehow sets up, the prison break, killing off the Rachel character from part 4 only to replace her with an unbearably annoying woman (Wendy Foxworth, nee Kaplan (Guiding Light)) who has no connection to Jamie, for some reason Jamie is mute for the first half of the film, she has a telepathic connection to Michael but only sometimes, the Myers house is completely different than in the first movie, it’s unclear if Jamie killed or just maimed her foster mother at the end of part 4, some hermit takes care of Michael for a year in secret (yea, yea I know this was different and somewhat explained in an earlier version), there are these two bumbling cops that are supposed to be funny but they’re not and there’s this cartoon sound effects music that accompanies them and all sorts of other shit.

This picture is such a gargantuan mess it’s mind boggling.  I mean Michael races around in a sports car for a really long stretch which doesn’t fit the character.  So many odd decisions.

That's Michael in a different mask that he wears for a while

Man in black doin' his thang...whatever that is

The kindly old man who nurses Michael back to health

Niece and uncle have never been closer

At the same time this has more of a typical slasher feel than part 4 with the blood and violence up to an appropriate level.  It also looks better than the previous installment by shedding the cheap look with nice effective lighting.

The filmmakers decided to abandon what was established in part 4 and make up some new crap for part 5, but they then also made the conscious decision to lean on part 6 to explain the mysterious man in black and tattoo shit.  That’s never a good strategy.  You don’t want to explain your shitty movie away by saying that it’ll all make sense in the next one.  In my opinion the current one should make sense.

But anyway, chalk this up as another bad Halloween sequel.  Man, these ain’t gonna get any easier are they?