A Nightmare from Friday to Halloween - Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

The three most prominent American horror franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street) have influenced American cinema even beyond the horror genre. As of 2021, there are exactly 31 movies across all three franchises, and I am going to attempt to watch all of them, for this Halloween, one per day.

Apparently this movie was rushed into production following the success of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and it shows. Storylines from the previous film are abandoned, and the sequel doesn’t really do much to justify its own existence. The whole idea of a psychic link between Michael Myers and his niece Jamie is potentially interesting, but again, I don’t think it was as well-fleshed out as it could have been. Because really the only thing the psychic link seems to do is...lead Michael to Jamie. There’s a brief moment when Michael seems to pause in his quest to kill Jamie because of a small inkling of familial connection. But of course that is swept under the rug. The only bright spots really are Danielle Harris as Jamie, who gives a great and sympathetic performance as a traumatized child. And of course, the real trooper Donald Pleasance, who came back for these sequels of increasingly diminishing returns, is always a pleasure to watch and his conviction to see Michael truly dead gives this movie more urgency than any number of gruesome kills could.