Directed by Joe Chappelle
Starring Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan and Mitch Ryan
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's November. Halloween is over, but I refuse to let it die, dammit! Every October, I typically throw out another review in the Halloween franchise, but that formula is going to have to take a back seat this time around for two very important reasons: (1) I saw this film approximately 17 times this Halloween season, and thus, I wanted to get this done while it's still more fresh in my head than I would ever, ever wish, and (2) I was busy last weekend and didn't watch anything on Netflix. Laziness rules!
Which brings me to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. This really is a STRANGE movie, and unless you've seen it, no collection of words on a web page can convey its sheer level of weirdness. There were several contributing factors to this, not the least of which was the amount of time that transpired between this and its immediate sequel. Six years is a f**kin' eternity for slasher sequels, let alone ones that try to pick up the plot line as closely as this was one does from the weird Thorn cult/family angle that Revenge of Michael Myers began. In addition to that, this movie was also a classic case of "too many cooks in the kitchen," with something like four different creative directions all pulling on each other in regards with how to wrap up this whole dog and pony show. Yes, kids, this was intended to be the final Halloween film at the time of its release...and I've got to say, had they crafted a slam-bang continuation of the ending of Halloween 5, the potential was definitely there for this to be an absolutely killer way to go out.
But that does bring me to issue #3: it was 1995. This was an absolute dearth of a time for the horror genre, when it had largely moved on from slasher movies and sequels that dominated the '80s but hadn't quite yet found the sometimes clever, sometimes obnoxious self-aware trend that Scream would usher in. Thus, the tone is all over the lace here right along with the story. Looks like we're back to the ultra-long introductions. Let's get to the show.
First things first: an incredibly shitty recap of Halloween 5. In that film, Jamie Lloyd - Michael's 10-year-old niece - had her second faceoff with Myers that ended with her foster sister dead along with a whole slew of dislikable asshats. But along the way, we did get an intriguing wrinkle to the formula in the form of a black-suited man following Michael's mayhem, a curious symbol on his hand and his boots being pretty much all we saw. After Dr. Loomis beats Michael within an inch of his life in the Myers house and all sorts of hints that Michael was not acting under his own power, we got the shocking climax as the black-suited figure busted Michael out of jail and presumably kidnapped Jamie in the process.
And that's where we pick up, ladies and gents. Unfortunately, it also doesn't take long for this movie to take on a decidedly dreary, downright mean-spirited tone, as Jamie Lloyd (unfortunately no longer played by Danielle Harris) is held captive by a Druid-like cult. She has been impregnated, and the baby is born on Halloween Eve. All throughout this sequence - and, hell, the entire movie - Michael is seen patrolling the area, almost like some sort of hitman or guard. This would be something like the third or fourth character-killing moves that got started in the previous installment that could have been easily fixed for this go-round, but I digress. With the help of a midwife, Jamie breaks out of the stronghold, hiding the baby in a bus station before ultimately being killed by Myers. A happy story for Jamie Lloyd, all around.
Unfortunately, from this point on, we get to meet our main characters for the remainder of the film. This would be the descendants of the Strode family who, perfectly enough, live in the recently refurbished Myers family home. Your star final girl is Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan), and of this family, she is the one who has the ability to make audiences watch what's going on without wanting to chuck stuff at the screen. And yes, this includes her 6-year-old son, but you already know my biases when it comes to kids in horror movies. There's also Kara's oblivious mother and her dickwad abusive father, but the less said about these two, the better.
More importantly, we've also got the return of Tommy Doyle to the story. Yeah, you remember Tommy Doyle, the kid who was easily spooked by the schoolyard tales of the Boogeyman? Well, he's back. And he's played by Paul Rudd. This was actually Paul's first big-screen movie role, predating Clueless by a few months, and he does alright in the survivalist role that he's given. See, the kid from that movie grew up obsessed with Michael Myers, and it's this character that REALLY drives everything in the movie forward. After hearing a phone call that Jamie placed to a radio station, he is able to find her baby at the bus station. From here, the movie becomes the usual game of cat and mouse, with Myers on the trail of Kara and Tommy to reclaim the baby for the cult in their plan to do...something.
I actually believe that the plot of this movie sounds good on paper. But the execution...yeesh, it's really rough. As previously mentioned, the tone is all over the place, with the movie trying to be a family drama one minute with the Strode family. The next, it's trying to be darker and more gritty than any of the previous movies in the series. At other times, screenwriter Daniel Farrands is dead-set intent on throwing his own personal touches into the story at the expense of everything else, as Kara's kid occasionally sees hallucinations of a strange figure in his bedroom yelling "KILL FOR HIM" or something else equally as cryptic. As a result, watching this movie is just an incredibly JARRING experience. It's throwing brutal murders at us one minute, and the next trying to intrigue us with all of this cult mumbo-jumbo. And since none of the characters are particularly likable, none of the former will rock your world. Folks, remember when the original film had, like, three deaths, and each one was spaced out and hard-hitting? Pepperidge Farm remembers...but yeah, you get nothing like that here.
And now, it's time for the saddest part of this review. The part that I've left out entirely until now, because, well, the script really doesn't offer much for this guy to do in this movie, yet he's still there. In his final film performance, Donald Pleasence returns as Dr. Sam Loomis. Without a doubt, this dude is one of my favorite characters in any horror film, and his presence throughout the entire series up until this point was always a sight to behold even when the movies involved weren't particularly strong. It was such an interesting change of pace in the horror genre, this resourceful, intelligent doctor chasing after this serial killer like Ahab chasing the great white whale. In this movie, he's just kind of there. I mean, don't get me wrong - he's there, but his presence, sadly, was not needed for any other reason than the script seems to say, "well, it's a Halloween movie, we need to throw Loomis in there." What we get here for such an iconic actor in his final film role and character in his final screen appearance is the dude who stumbles around with Paul Rudd and Marianne Hagan while they do all of the heavy lifting.
And don't even get me started on who the big, bad, Druid cult leader is revealed to be in this movie - a truly character-killing moment that nullifies essentially everything that had already transpired in the series and rendered Michael Myers a pointless be-yotch.
If you can tell, I'm not a fan of this movie. I like it even less than the previous installment, which had its moments despite its incredibly glaring flaws. And it's not like it's a long, slow descent into hell, either. The wheels fall off the tracks early here and just keep veering further and further into the ditch. Even the final fight sequences fall incredibly flat, as we are not quite sure as to who we should be booing - Myers or the figures pulling the strings, neither of which make particularly effective villains due to the diffused effect. It really is a startling change from the first two films, when Michael Myers was the "Shape of Evil" and easily the most completely irredeemable antagonist that horror audiences had ever seen. A far cry from there to "get her, Michael" that we get here.
* out of ****. I've seen a lot of "WTF" horror movies in my day, but this ranks right near the top of the list of my "WTF" scale. And that amounts to a lot of "Whats?"
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