We have now come to the end of the first timeline in the Halloween series. There are a total of 4 different timelines for the series but I’m not looking at the Rob Zombie remakes this year. Remember when I said that the previous movie felt disjointed and nonsensical? Boy were those some halcyon days. Not only does this 6th film in the franchise end up dialing the supernatural bullshit knob all the way up, it also manages to be so poorly edited so as to be baffling for the viewer as we go between scenes. Also, super sad that this was the last movie for Donald Pleasence as his appearances in these sequels were keeping them at least semi-watchable.

The movie takes place 6 years after Revenge and it turns out the random, mysterious man in black kidnapped Michael and Jamie for some kind of weird druid cult that doesn’t have any connection to Season of the Witch in the biggest let down for the film. Jamie is giving birth but she was only 9 in the last film and six years later puts her at 15, which the movie just doesn’t want to linger on so I wont either. She escapes with her baby before getting killed by Michael but not before stashing her baby in a bus depot. Since we killed off our previous protagonist, our new hero is Tommy, the kid that Laurie was babysitting in the first movie, now all grown up and played by a baby-faced Paul Rudd. He finds the macguffin, I mean baby, and then just keeps it for some reason. Oh, our other heroine is Kara Strode, yes strode as in Laurie Strode. She is in college, has her own 7ish year old kid, Danny, that is hearing voices telling him to murder, lives with her parents in the old Myers’ house, and there is just too much nonsense happening in this movie.

Making Michael Myers be the product of an ancient druid curse that turns you into an evil murderer that wants to sacrifice your family is…a choice. I don’t hate it, because I am an absolute fiend for dumb bullshit of that variety, but neither do I love it. The film doesn’t spend any time explaining how or why they put this curse on him. The man in black ends up being some guy we saw for 1 minute in the first movie and about 3 minutes in this movie before being revealed which is unsatisfying to say the least. We also have no explanation of what they want Danny for or why they want to ensure Michael gets to kill his baby grandnephew. There is literally a scene where Loomis is about to get an explanation of what the hell is going on but then some guy knocks him out and we never bother trying again.

The movie makes the same mistake from the last one, killing off the person we have any emotional tie to early on for no reason. The studio refused to rehire Danielle Harris as Jamie, though, so it’s also hard to care when the replacement Jamie gets got. The movie is also so wonky in between scenes with one scene just ending and another beginning with no rhyme or reason. The cult finds our heroes and all seems lost and then…cut to them just standing outside going “I feel like I was drugged”. What? No. Fuck you. There’s a scene where Michael attacks a bunch of doctors/cultists this has the most annoying constant strobe effect going on where you can even tell what’s happening. Goddamn, the directorial choices in this nightmare of a movie are just baffling.

There is apparently a Producer’s Cut of the film that adds in about 30 minutes of alternate footage that gives a bit more backstory to the cult and also gives Dr. Loomis a better ending than “yells offscreen”, which is what the theatrical cut did. Sadly, watching that cut would require sitting through this movie again, so that’s not gonna happen.

Score: 1.5 out of 5