Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers DVD: Review By Null and Void.

This, to me, is the ending to the actual series. I sound self-contradicting (read "H20" review) but this is the last film that carries the stories and characters of the already established films.

To rank the films:

I.- "Halloween" (1978) [no sh*t]

II: "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers"

III.- "Halloween: The Revenge of Michael Myers"

IV.- "Halloween III: Season of the Witch"

V.- "Halloween" (2007)

VI.- "Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers"

VII.- "Halloween II"

VIII.- "Halloween: H20 (20 Years Later)"

IX.- "Halloween: Resurrection"

"The Curse Of Michael Myers" has been trashed since its release. Nobody has ever given it the credit it deserves. Sure, it doesn't live up to the original, but this is a slasher sequel. What were you expecting? Out of all the sequels, though, this one would be the best. It attempts to explain the origin of Michael's evil(i.e. "Jason Goes To Hell"). Not a great success, but it does explain why nobody has been able to kill him. Bothering to explain why he's killing isn't really important. A killer is scarier when he doesn't have a motive, right? He's been killing off his family(and anyone else who happens to get in his f*cking way). The only survivor is a newborn baby, Stephen. He spends the rest of the film chasing the baby as the rest of the cast is slowly eliminated. That's the story.

What makes this film the best of the sequels isn't the story. I mean, let's face it, there never was one. It's the style. Director Joe Chappelle brings with him some of the style of Carpenter's original. However, there are significant differences: terror and violence.

I can't say the original "Halloween" was all that terrifying. It had all the suspense of a Hitchc*ck film, but no terror. Chappelle takes the accent off suspense and puts a healthy dose of terror in its place. Why? Well, this was made for a 90's audience. Slasher films aren't suspenseful anymore, so all that's left is pure terror. Any director can create terror, but it takes one who understands a bit about fear to do it with style. Chappelle is such a director. Particular scenes to pay attention to are the barn and the disappearing axe. Then, of course, there's the finale. There is one scene that qualifies as the most chilling moment in the entire "Halloween" series: the conclusion to the family argument at the breakfast table.

Over the course of the "Halloween" films, the depiction of violence has changed. The first was completely bloodless. They got a bit more violent, in order to keep gorehounds from falling asleep, but it was still very tame for the genre. No matter how violent they got, they never included any gore. This one, on the other hand, is a full-blown horror film. All the gore you didn't see in the previous installments is on display right here. We have, in addition to the obligatory axe murders, more creative deaths, like: an electrocution, followed by an exploding head; impalement on farm equipment; a man's skull being pushed through a steel grate. It should be noted that one murder is staged without gore, much like Carpenter would have done.

As you can clearly see, this was meant to be the last of the films. All the terror and gore were meant to give the series a big slasher film sendoff. It worked perfectly. That is, until "H20" hit theaters.