This quinquel, sub-titled The Revenge of Michael Myers on posters but not prints, opens by taking back the single interesting sequence in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers by revealing that Michael’s nine-year-old niece has not followed in his footsteps and killed her stepmother.
Then, the semi-supernatural psycho (Donald Shanks) returns from his resting place at the bottom of a well to stalk another group of tedious teens. Harris has psychic flashes whenever Michael is about to kill, Donald Pleasence does his old ominous act (‘I prayed that he would burn in hell. But in my heart, I knew that hell would not have him’) and dies for the second time in the series (which wouldn’t prevent him returning for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers), and a mysterious gunslinger loiters in the background, intervening to aid Michael in a jailbreak and presumably help out in future sequels (this sub-plot is left up in the air until the next film).
The story concentrates on Harris, as unkillable because of her age as Michael is because of his importance to the continuation of the series, so the mandatory make-out, practical joke and slaughter sequences seem like intrusions on their family bonding. Late in the film, director Dominique Othenin-Girard (Omen IV: The Awakening) tries preposterously to work up sympathy for Michael, with Pleasence speechifying about the madman’s need to slake the ‘rage’ inside him, and Harris coaxing the killer into removing his mask so a tear can be observed leaking from his eye before business as usual resumes with the murderer ineffectually trying to carve up the girl and getting kicked into touch until the next sequel.