9) Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
A year after Michael’s most recent shit show—a year he’s spent in a coma, tended to by a parrot-owning hermit who’s completely out of the loop on Haddonfield’s escaped-serial-killer-still-at-large situation—he wakes up and sends a brainwave to poor Jamie (Harris), who’s unable to speak and has been living in a clinic for troubled kids since wounding her adoptive mother at the end of the fourth film. Once Dr. Loomis picks up on Jamie and Michael’s ESP connection, he pressures the girl into helping him track down his former patient, who doesn’t waste any time after his latest revival before he starts killing again (the last film’s final girl, Rachel, doesn’t make it out of act one).
Director and co-writer Dominique Othenin-Girard’s 1989 film improves on The Return of Michael Myers because it has a distinctly unhinged tone, between Jamie’s psychic freakouts, Loomis’ wild-eyed intensity, and other details that just feel off, like the way the film casually swaps in a random Victorian house to portray Michael’s iconic childhood home. If you imagine that The Revenge of Michael Myers is taking place in an alternate reality from the previous Michael films, or is perhaps a Loomis nightmare playing out in long-form, your viewing experience may be improved. However, you might also want to save that strategy for the next film on this list.
