Once again pursing the unrelenting maniac is Dr. The entry that introduced Danielle Harris to the franchise! As Michael returns home and subjects the town to another deadly rampage, little Jamie and her older step-sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) find themselves struggling to stay one step ahead of the psychopath. He violently escapes custody and attempts to find and kill the girl. Michael- who survived the fiery blast at the end of part II – learns about his niece, discovering that she lives in his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. In the film, we’re introduced to young Jamie Lloyd, the recently adopted daughter of the Carruthers family and biological daughter of Michael Myers’ sister Laurie Strode (who, we learn, has apparently died in the interim, covering the fact that Jamie Lee Curtis wasn’t interested in returning to the role). Thus October 1988 saw the arrival of Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, which picks up ten years after the events of Halloween II. Producer Moustapha Akkad realized that the time was ripe to resurrect the slasher who had started it all. Starring Donald Pleasence Danielle Harrisīy1988, sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Phantasm, Friday the 13 th and Hellraiser were scoring at the box office. “She looks at the dark stuff,” Sara says of Jess, “and I turn away.” In a film that takes pains to point out the subjectivity of its camera, and how all of the supposed horrors that jump out at us are in Sara’s head-her own sadness weaponized against her-it’s the only instance of the director using the dark stuff as effectively as his evil spirits do.Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myersĭirected by Dwight H. In his film’s one genuinely cinematic moment, Zada doesn’t linger on the discrepancy, inviting the audience to fill in the blanks for themselves and wrestle with how Sara’s apparent history of denial might be affecting her ability to make rational decisions about her sister, particularly after we learn that Jess has attempted suicide twice before. As Sara tells Aiden about the incident that orphaned her and her sister when they were only just girls, the yarn she’s spinning about a drunk driving accident doesn’t match the barbaric imagery we see on screen, a murder-suicide in the basement of her family’s house. (Abandon all hope, ye who are hoping for an inexplicable twist ending that might at least make it fun to tell your friends about that stupid new movie you saw.) Yet, for one moment, the film hints at a sharper intelligence, and of course it’s when the film stops throwing things in your face and delivers a subtle scene of deception. It’s remarkable how little actually transpires from that point forward. Faster than you can say, “This exact shot of someone riding in a taxi cab through downtown Shinjuku sure was a lot more interesting in Lost in Translation,” Emily has flown 6,000 miles on a quest to find her sayonara’d sibling. The authorities assume that Jess is but the latest person to drown in the Sea of Trees, but Sara refuses to believe it. Sara ( Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer, shot here to look like a chiaroscuro Saoirse Ronan) receives a heavily accented phone call informing her that her sister, Jess-an English teacher working in rural Japan-has disappeared into the country’s infamous Aokigahara Forest, a real place known for being one of the world’s three most popular places to commit suicide (as well as a major ubasute hot spot!). The indifference is clear right from the start, as first-time feature director Jason Zada opens with a blitz of shots that squeeze 30 minutes of exposition into roughly 11 seconds. Just to be clear, The Forest couldn’t possibly care less about you, and the indiscriminate apathy with which it was made sheds off the screen like a contagion. The only question worth asking about an early January horror movie is if its inevitable badness is at all interesting. All of this is to say that anybody with access to a calendar already knows that The Forest is bad at this point, that’s less of a presumption than it is a tradition.
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