Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Film Review)

1989 Galaxy Releasing
Directed by: Dominique Othenin-Girard; Written by: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard, and Shem Bitterman
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Wendy Kaplan, and Tamara Glynn
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 97 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 2/10

Last we saw Jaime Lloyd, she was stabbing her mom, after witnessing her uncle, masked murderer, Michael Myers, get knocked down a mineshaft. Now, a year later, Jaime's in a children's psychiatric hospital, and Michael, after apparently lying on a table in a forest hut for a year, wakes from a coma and is after Jaime. Some people get in the way, and Michael stabs them to death. Meanwhile, Michael's psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, gives chase, as well does a mysterious man dressed in black. Get ready for less than mediocrity.
1989's Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers sucks. After Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers satisfyingly brought the series back to its roots, this rushed follow-up is a crushing disappointment. Featuring soap opera level productions values, including a goofy, keyboard-produced score that's downright embarrassing, Halloween 5 offers little to nothing on an aesthetic level. Unfortunately, there's even less satisfaction found beneath the surface, as the film features a plot so badly diced up by the studio, little makes sense. Characters are introduced for no effect or reason, and often, there's barely any movie here at all. To somehow miraculously make matters worse, Halloween 5 also features some shockingly silly moments, involving teens jamming to pop songs that sound like they were made by moonlighting production crew members in their spare time. Nearly everything here is bad. So bad
The only positive words I can offer are praise for Danielle Harris' much improved acting here as Jaime. She struggled with some line delivery in the previous film, but she's quite capable here, even if she's mostly just screaming, crying, and running away. She does all three quite well. There's also a visually pleasing shot of some hay bales that occupies roughly two of the film's nearly 6000 seconds, as well as a fairly cool attic set near the end of the film. Unfortunately, inside that set, even Michael Myers looks lame this time around, with an ill-fitting, not scary mask redesign, and a weird shock of hair that's more off-putting than terrifying. At a time when it seemed the Halloween series would remain a beacon of light in a dim sea of low budget slasher schlock, The Revenge of Michael Myers sinks the series far beneath the surface of mediocrity, into a deep abyss of previously unimaginable awfulness. It sucks.