Halloween 5: The Sequel That Wasted Halloween 4’s Perfect Ending

This is where the movie's story becomes much more interesting.

An early screenplay by Shem Bitterman reportedly followed the implication of Halloween 4 far more directly: Jamie had become evil after stabbing her foster mother.

Producer Moustapha Akkad rejected that direction, with the franchise instead returning Michael Myers to centre stage. The official Halloween site notes that ideas for the sequel varied considerably before the final approach was settled.

Think about what was sitting there.

A child related to Michael Myers.

A traumatised Loomis watching history apparently repeat itself.

Rachel trying to protect a foster sister who may now be becoming the very thing they spent the previous film escaping.

And one enormous question:

Is Michael Myers the source of the evil, or merely one version of it?

That’s a sequel. That’s genuinely unsettling.

Instead…

Michael wakes up. Here we go again.

None of this is Danielle Harris’s fault.

Quite the opposite.

Jamie remains the emotional centre of the film, and Harris has to convey enormous fear and trauma through expression, movement, and panic.

But look at what the story takes away from Jamie.

At the end of Halloween 4, she had suddenly become the most intriguing person in the franchise.

In Halloween 5, she spends much of the film unable to speak and once again running from Michael.

The movie does give her a strange connection to him, almost as though she can sense what he is doing.

But that isn’t nearly as interesting as the possibility that something Michael-like might actually be growing inside her.

Jamie had stopped being merely Michael’s victim.

Then the sequel largely turned her back into one.

Oh, Rachel.

We spent an entire film watching Rachel Carruthers grow from a mildly irritated foster sister into somebody prepared to put herself directly between Jamie and Michael Myers.

She survived the rooftop.

She survived the truck chase.

She helped keep Jamie alive.

She became one of the strongest characters in Halloween 4.

So naturally, Halloween 5…

kills her early.

Fantastic.

The problem isn’t simply losing Rachel.

It’s losing Rachel and Jamie's relationship.

That relationship gave the previous film its heart.

Jamie mattered because Rachel cared about her.

Rachel mattered because protecting Jamie transformed her.

Remove Rachel, and suddenly the sequel has to build a completely new emotional structure.

And it does that almost immediately.

Enter Tina Williams.

Now, Tina has plenty of defenders.

And to be fair, we understand why.

She is energetic, funny, and eventually proves that she genuinely cares about Jamie.

The problem isn’t necessarily Tina.

It’s timing.

We have only just lost Rachel — somebody audiences already spent an entire movie getting to know.

Then Halloween 5 asks us to transfer that emotional investment to another character almost instantly.

That’s an impossible job.

Tina never really stood a chance.

And then there is Dr. Sam Loomis.

By movie five, Loomis isn’t merely concerned about Michael Myers.

He is absolutely bloody furious.

Donald Pleasence plays him like a man who has spent more than a decade telling everyone exactly what was going to happen and has finally run out of polite ways to repeat himself.

Is Michael alive? Of course he is. Jamie has some connection to him?

Use it.

Is Michael coming? Get out of the way. Loomis is harsher here.

More desperate. Sometimes genuinely unsettling.

But that actually makes sense.

He has watched Michael survive everything.

He has watched people ignore his warnings, again and again.

Now there is a traumatised child caught directly in the middle of it.

Loomis isn’t calmly studying evil anymore.

He is trying to beat it.

There is a moment late in the movie that remains genuinely fascinating.

Jamie calls Michael:

“Uncle.”

And he stops.

For just a moment, Jamie appears to reach something inside him.

Michael removes his mask. Jamie sees him. And he cries.

Then she touches his face.

Bad idea. Very bad idea.

Michael immediately becomes violent again.

But for those few seconds, Halloween 5 flirts with something the franchise usually avoids.

Humanity inside the Shape.

Whether you love that idea or absolutely hate it, it's at least interesting.

And that is part of what makes this film frustrating.

There are good ideas everywhere.

They just don’t always connect.

Right.

We need to talk about the house.

The Myers house in the original Halloween is instantly recognisable.

Simple. Suburban.

Creepy precisely because it looks like somewhere ordinary people once lived.

Then we arrive at the Myers house in Halloween 5 and…

What the hell happened?

It’s enormous.

Gothic. Completely different.

Director Dominique Othenin-Girard later explained that the change was deliberate. He wanted a larger location for the extended climax, with corridors, bedrooms, a basement, an attic, a staircase, and a laundry chute, and felt a house resembling the original was simply too small for the sequence he wanted to stage.

From a filmmaking perspective?

Fair enough.

From a continuity perspective?

Michael apparently spent his year unconscious dreaming about an extension.

That's why writing the whole movie off would be unfair.

The laundry-chute sequence is excellent.

Jamie is trapped.

Michael is stabbing through the metal.

There is barely any room to move—no obvious escape.

It’s claustrophobic and nasty.

Othenin-Girard specifically designed the expanded Myers house to accommodate set pieces like this and the extended final confrontation.

This is Halloween 5 remembering what Michael Myers is brilliant at.

Not mythology. Not symbols. Not mysterious strangers.

Just putting someone somewhere they desperately don’t want Michael to find them.

Oh, here we go.

Throughout the film, a mysterious man dressed in black wanders around.

Who is he? Why is he there? What does he want?

What is his connection to Michael?

Why does Michael have that strange symbol?

Excellent questions. Would you like answers?

Tough.

By the end, the mysterious stranger attacks the police station, and Michael disappears.

Jamie discovers that Michael is gone.

And the movie ends.

See you next time.

Even people involved in the production have since discussed the uncertainty surrounding the Man in Black and what the character was meant to become.

That tells you quite a lot.

There is also a slightly amusing problem with the title.

The Revenge of Michael Myers.

Revenge against whom exactly?

Jamie? For surviving? Loomis? For being irritatingly correct for eleven years?

Haddonfield?

The mine shaft?

The title sounds fantastic on a VHS box.

We’ll give it that.

But Michael’s actual motivation remains basically what it has always been.

Michael sees Relative.

Michael walks towards Relative.

Relative runs.

Michael continues walking.

This may explain more than anything else.

Halloween 4 opened in October 1988.

Halloween 5 arrived on October 13, 1989.

Production had moved extremely quickly. The official franchise site notes that principal photography began in Salt Lake City in May 1989, only around five months before release, while script changes continued during production.

That is not much breathing room.

Audiences had barely had time to digest Jamie standing at the top of those stairs before another movie had to be ready.

And Halloween 5 often feels like exactly that.

A sequel trying to work out what its mythology means while the cameras are already rolling.

The numbers tell part of the story.

Halloween 5 opened domestically with about $5.09 million and finished at roughly $11.64 million.

A year earlier, Halloween 4 had earned around $17.77 million domestically.

That is a noticeable drop.

Michael Myers had returned successfully.

One year later, some of that momentum had already disappeared.

And after Halloween 5?

Audiences would wait until 1995 for another theatrical entry.

Six years.

Again.

Here’s the thing.

We don’t hate Halloween 5. Some parts are great fun.

Danielle Harris is excellent. Donald Pleasence is completely committed.

There are effective chase sequences.

Michael has some genuinely threatening moments.

The Myers-house climax works. The laundry chute remains nasty.

And something about this era of Halloween makes even its messier instalments ridiculously rewatchable when October arrives.

Put it on late at night. Lights off. Bowl of sweets nearby.

Are we watching it? Of course we bloody are.

But liking a movie doesn’t mean pretending every decision worked.

That is ultimately what frustrates us.

Halloween 4 asked:

What if Michael’s evil could continue through Jamie?

Halloween 5 essentially asks:

How do we get Michael chasing Jamie again?

The second question is safer.

The first is far more interesting.

Imagine a version where Michael remains absent for much of the movie.

Jamie is changing.

Loomis becomes convinced she is following Michael’s path.

Rachel refuses to believe him.

Haddonfield starts fearing another Myers.

And we begin wondering whether Loomis is trying to save Jamie…

or slowly helping turn a traumatised child into exactly what he expects her to become.

Now that could have been terrifying.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers isn’t terrible.

That’s almost what makes it more frustrating.

There is talent everywhere. There are good performances.

There are memorable sequences.

There are ideas that eventually become part of the franchise’s increasingly complicated mythology.

But it followed one of the boldest endings Halloween had ever attempted.

Jamie Lloyd standing at the top of those stairs could have changed everything.

Instead, one year later Michael Myers was back behind the mask, and Jamie was running from him again.

The franchise had escaped its formula for approximately thirty seconds.

Then somebody apparently found the keys and locked it straight back inside.

Maybe Halloween 4 didn’t need its ending explained.

Maybe it needed filmmakers brave enough to follow it.

Because Michael Myers returning in 1988 saved the boogeyman.

But Jamie Lloyd could have become something much scarier.