Are Halloween 5 and 6 as good as they could have been, or did they miss the mark in capturing the essence of the Halloween series? This is a question that continues to divide the fanbase. If you’ve ever wondered how these films might be reimagined to enhance their coherence and overall impact, you’re not alone. Dive into my detailed analysis and proposed changes to these contentious entries in the beloved Halloween franchise.
Watch my full video essay on TobattoVision for a comprehensive breakdown, especially if you’re not in the mood to read a lengthy discussion. Your thoughts and opinions are invaluable—please share them in the comments section below! Let’s get the conversation started on whether these sequels could have truly been better.
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When it comes to the topic of Halloween’s four, five, and six, most people have very mixed reactions to those three films. Together, these three films form a sort of sub-trilogy, a trilogy within the Halloween franchise that is usually referred to as the Thorn Trilogy or, to a lesser extent, the Jaime Lloyd Trilogy. Although part 4 marked a return to form for the series in 1988, with the triumphant return of Michael Myers himself, a terrific ensemble cast, and a solid story to go along with it, the film’s two direct follow-ups, Halloween five and six, were a much different story. Upon its release, Halloween four was met with almost universal acclaim from the fan base, and the film remains a fan favorite in the franchise to this day.
Halloween 5 and 6, however, remain two of the franchise’s most heatedly debated entries, with fans split down the middle like a fault line. Some fans hate the films, some absolutely love them, but there seems to be no middle ground. It’s either one extreme or the other. But why? There may be no definitive answer when it comes to Revenge or Curse, but I can illustrate for you one of the biggest issues with those two films people have. The issue that seems to be at the top of everybody’s list regarding Halloween five and six: coherency, or lack thereof, I should say.
Let’s begin with Halloween five, The Revenge of Michael Myers. Halloween 5 was and still is an extremely incoherent film, pretty much from start to finish. It tries to introduce tons and tons of overly complicated, unnecessarily muddled plot elements but never attempts to address or resolve any of those elements by the time the movie is over. Instead, we are left with an abrupt and open-ended conclusion that tries and fails to be an intriguing cliffhanger, choosing to stave off any answers or any form of resolution until the inevitable sequel. The film is so focused on world-building toward that sixth entry that it fails to deliver on the goods in and of itself. Whether you love or hate Halloween five, it’s easy to see that the film is an absolute mess. Coherency is a necessary part of filmmaking, and without it, you’re left with a film that is disjointed, strangely paced, and has no real direction or sense of momentum—an identity crisis of sorts.
Unfortunately for Halloween five, a film that could have been devastatingly brilliant, the filmmakers chose to make it a pathway to the next installment, rather than ever giving it a chance to be its own film. Still, I personally like Halloween 5 a lot. I don’t necessarily love it or consider it one of the better sequels, but I find it to be a very different and very avant-garde style Halloween film, regardless of the flaws mentioned. However, generally speaking, those flaws mentioned were some of the biggest reasons why the next installment, Halloween six, was doomed before it ever went into production.
And on that note, let’s talk about Halloween six. Halloween six, which was originally titled Halloween 666: The Origin of Michael Myers but retitled before its release as Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, is probably just as debated of a film as its predecessor is if not more. Before we dive in, let me start this off by saying that this entry is actually one of my personal favorite Halloween films in the series, probably in my top four, so it would be easy for me to look beyond its flaws and overlook its many, many issues. But I’m just not the type of guy to do that. This film is loaded with numerous flaws, it’s bogged down by questionable decisions, and it’s very much held back by the fact that it has to try and tie up so many of the weird loose ends left undone by Halloween 5. Don’t get me wrong, I embrace Halloween 6’s many flaws, and I love every bit of that film, both cuts as a matter of fact, but you would have to be blind, deaf, and delusional not to recognize the film’s issues for what they are.
I’m sure those of you watching this video have seen Halloween five and six, so I don’t need to get into all the specifics. But as with Halloween five, the severe lack of plot coherency is one of the major problems with six. What the fan base seems to have the biggest problem with, however, are the story decisions that occur within the film, including but not limited to Jaime Lloyd being killed off so early in the film, Michael seemingly impregnating his 15-year-old niece, an ancient cult being responsible for Michael’s psychosis and evil empowerment, and much, much more. I think it just strayed too far from the formula Halloween fans wanted and were expecting, and perhaps gave audiences too much of a look behind Michael’s madness. Things do become less frightening the more we know about them, so I can understand the frustration with knowing too much about the franchise’s resident boogeyman. Although I was one of the few at the time who adored Curse and thought the whole Cult of Thorn saga was strangely enticing in the natural progression of the storyline, it was also completely justified for so many fans to be split down the middle.
It’s really only in these last few years that Curse has found its hardcore fan base among the franchise’s overall fan base, and it’s great to see the film receiving so much more of a positive response from not only the casual Halloween fans but from those who are re-watching it after having not seen it since its initial release. With the official release of the Producer’s Cut, a version that represented the original cut of the film that had been circulating in bootlegging circles for many years prior, fans have gotten the chance to see H6 in a much different light and can make the decision about which Halloween 6 they prefer overall. I would like to think that Halloween 5 has found its true inner fan base in the same way part 6 has, and in many ways, it is, in fact, revered in its own right. But it’s not hard to see how much of a cult hit part 6 has become among the hardcore fanbase. Not too shabby for a film that never really had the chance to do anything but explain the nonsense of its predecessor, huh?
Whereas Halloween 5 spent its runtime setting up questions for Halloween 6, Halloween 6 spent its entire runtime answering the questions of Halloween 5. Therefore, both movies are films that never really got to be their own movies, both were either setting up for or paying off muddled and confusing plot elements. That’s kind of weird when you think about it. My question, however, is what could we do to fix the issues of Halloween’s five and six? Of course, these days, after having two franchise timeline reboots and even a remake series to boot, it may seem that a course correction for Halloween’s five and six is a pointless exercise. But I’ll ask you this: isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice if 5 would have been a quote-unquote better movie? Wouldn’t it be great if Halloween 6 was a little less bogged down with the sins of its predecessor than it is? The answer is yes, of course, it would. So today, I’m here to tell you what I would do to not only fix Revenge but save Curse from both its theatrical and producers cut versions. And again, just to clarify, I love Halloween five and six, regardless, but there’s always room for improvement, especially with these two films.
Halloween five, there’s a few major changes or small ones depending on how you look at it, that Halloween five needs in order to be a more coherent and, in my opinion, better movie than it is.
Number one, Jamie’s recovery. Make Jamie Lloyd’s recovery in the children’s ward a more intricately explored plot element. If she is that messed up from the events of Halloween 4, explore those ideas. Don’t just give us this crazy, suddenly mute, suddenly psychic Jamie Lloyd in a slew of her wild temper tantrums and freak outs to go along with it. Show us her psychosis, dive deep and explore it. This is chapter five of a slasher franchise; it’s time to try some stranger concepts the series hasn’t seen before. Go for it, damn it.
Number two, Jamie’s stepmom. Jamie’s stepmother is dead. Make Jamie’s stepmother dead. She died that night in the bathtub from her stab wounds at the hands of a crazed and seemingly possessed Jamie. In Halloween five, we get clarification that her stepmom did in fact survive the attack. That would not be the case here. This decision, however dark and brutal it may be, would render Jamie a ward of the state, since her stepfather would have most likely given up custody since, well, his adopted daughter just murdered his wife. This would also add an interesting twist to her relationship with Rachel. Rachel would not only become much more of an understanding guardian/mother figure for Jamie in her desperate time of need at the child’s ward but she would also be extremely conflicted about quote-unquote being there for Jamie in the first place, since this seemingly innocent little girl was the reason her mom was murdered and now six feet under. It would drive home a good bit of drama within the film.
Number three, Loomis suspects Jamie. Make Dr. Loomis suspicious of Jamie’s intentions from the very start. I mean she killed her mother for Christ’s sake, in the same way Michael had killed his sister those decades prior, no less. Is she the new Michael? Is she possessed by his evil? I feel like Loomis would be investigating this concept in extreme fashion. A plot element that would definitely spice up the film. He would not only be dealing with the looming presence of Myers but he would also be compelled to keep a close eye on Jamie herself, not just because he suspects she may be evil but because he is also compelled to protect and watch over her.
Number four, Rachel survives. Rachel would not die. Instead, she would again feature as the main character in the same way she did in four, unlike Tina which rose to prominence after the death of Rachel to kind of fill in those shoes so to speak. We already know and root for Rachel’s character. I personally enjoy Tina and the performance of the actress who played her, but she does seem outlandishly cartoonish for her Halloween film. And it’s a pretty well-known fact that the majority of Halloween fans are very put off by her character. Keeping Rachel alive would make Tina’s rise to prominence null and void, and she would no longer need to fill in the void left by Rachel’s absence, effectively rendering Tina as nothing more than another victim for Myers’s inevitable rampage.
Number five, no year-long coma. The escape of Michael Myers through the well at the beginning of Halloween five would remain intact, from jumping into the river to flee the dynamite to winding up at some old hermit’s house downstream. This was a very cool and memorable sequence in the film, and although it sort of seems out of place with Michael’s character, or at least what we know about him so far, the scene does show us a very injured and vulnerable Myers doing whatever is necessary to survive. In this case, crawling into the water to avoid the blast and the police. That’s something we’ve never seen Michael do in previous films. He’s avoiding danger like an actual human being would. He’s not just standing in the middle of the road waiting to be hit by a truck. However, everything after he crawls out of the water at the old hermit shack, that needs some work. He definitely wouldn’t spend a year in comatose limbo in some old man’s riverside porch. This always bugged me. Why would this old man watch over Michael for a year without ever calling the police or going for help? Did Michael take sustenance when the man tried to feed him, or did he simply sleep and not eat, not drink, and not use the restroom for an entire year? We see in the film as is that Michael Myers awakes one year later and finally kills the hermit. As a kid, I always assumed that maybe that happened on Halloween night in 1988, you know the same night that he showed up at the herm’s house and Jamie only saw the flashes of Michael killing the man the following year for some reason. But with the way Halloween 5 is edited, it seems to suggest that Michael was under the care of this hermit for 365 days. What? No. He arrives at the old man’s shack, kills the hermit, tends to his own wounds, and then disappears into the woods and goes into hiding for a year until the following Halloween season arrives, much like what he did in between Halloween seasons in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films. Either way, Michael would not be comatose in some old man’s shed for an entire year. Just stupid.
Number six, Jamie’s personal demons. Jamie must fight the temptation to become like her uncle, the same evil force that took control of him when he was a child seems to be attempting to overtake her as well. She must confront her demons and help Loomis destroy Myers once and for all, all the while arguing with Rachel over what’s best for her—staying in a child’s ward and trying to get better with drugs and therapy, or helping Loomis kill Michael Myers once and for all, effectively ending the nightmare forever and always, allegedly of course.
Number seven, no thorn tattoo, yes man in black. Absolutely no thorn tattoo would appear on Myers’s wrist. I understand how many of you love the symbol and think the tattoo is awesome. I’m one of those people too, but no, you’ll see why when we cover Halloween six’s list of corrections momentarily. With that said, the man in black would still appear in the bus station as is. There is no need to change that small scene or his existence within the film overall, contrary to what many of you would do in order to fix Halloween five and six. I personally would not cut the thorn cult out completely, nor delete the introductory scene of the man in black, regardless of how small of a scene it may be.
Number eight, Jamie fails to kill Michael. After beating Michael senseless with a 2x4, Dr. Loomis would collapse onto Michael, unable to finish Michael off before succumbing to the pain of his stab wounds. Rachel would be badly injured and unable to kill Michael. And Jamie, attempting to use Michael’s own knife to stab him in the heart and kill him once and for all, would be too small and too weak to push Loomis off before the cops finally arrived and took Michael into custody, stripping Jamie of the one chance to see Michael dead. Loomis and Rachel would be taken to the hospital to recover from their wounds.
Number nine, replace the jailhouse ending with a convoy ending. This is where things get very interesting for Halloween five. Instead of making it to jail, being chained up, and then busted out by the machine gun wielding man in black, we would let the climax instead happen during the convoy to the police station rather than the station itself. On the way to the station, Myers’s transport vehicle and the convoy of police cars, with Jamie safely inside one of the units, would suddenly be ambushed on one of Haddonfield’s more deserted streets by dozens and dozens of Thorn cult members, including the man in black. In unison, they’d be firing machine guns into vehicles, they’d have a roadblock set up to stop the convoy, they’d be throwing explosives, and catching these poor police officers completely off guard. The cult would end up killing most if not all of the officers, and capturing Myers, loading him into one of their vans, much like the scenes we saw on the producer’s cut of Halloween six, and fleeing the scene. They would not take Jamie, as we came to find out they did in Halloween six. No, they would leave her right where she is, after she luckily survived the attack by ducking way down behind the seats of her police car. She would emerge quickly enough to see her uncle being loaded into the van, and perhaps just long enough to crawl from the vehicle and connect eyes with a mysterious man in black as his followers flee the scene with Myers. Maybe he would nod at her or something creepy like that, never saying a word, but slowly getting into his own vehicle and driving away. Jamie would be alone, walking the streets of Haddonfield in the midst of this vicious and blood riddled conclusion. Boom, cut to black, the end. That’s how Halloween five ends. What do you think about that?
Moving on to Halloween six, Halloween six’s storyline would be drastically altered by the inclusion of Jamie Lloyd as a main character, her rekindled relationship with Dr. Loomis, and the fact that Rachel is still very much alive. The Thorn cult would also play a very different role in this film compared to how they were portrayed in the actual part six. Let’s see what we can do about this.
The Cult of Thorn did not create The Shape. Much like Halloween six already begins, Michael Myers has been in the secret cult facility for over six years, being experimented on and studied by the members of the mysterious Cult of Thorn, headed by the men in black. They believe that with the forthcoming constellational realignment of their respective druid symbols in the skies above on Halloween night, they can use Michael’s unknown evil to harness the resurrection of their primary demigod on said night. Now, I don’t know if this demigod would be Satan, some kind of demon, or maybe the spirit of Thorn itself. That doesn’t matter. Whoever their lord is is besides the point and in no way factors into Michael’s own evil or own origin story. Why doesn’t this factor into Michael’s backstory? Because in this version, the Cults of Thorn are trying to use Michael, but they are not responsible for his evil in the first place. They are merely trying to exploit it for their own unrelated gains. This means that Dr. Nguyen would not end up being the man in black. As a matter of fact, the identity of the man in black doesn’t matter in this version. He’s but a leading member of the cult and nothing more. Maybe it could wind up being Wade or something like that. But this would also mean that there would be no need to host the film’s finale at Smith’s Grove. There would be no inclusion of runestones to stop Myers, and no attempts to explain Michael’s origins or blame it on some druidic cult, for that matter.
Haddonfield would be ready. Michael would obviously have to return to Haddonfield, right? And since he is at this point in the hands of the Cult of Thorn, there would have to be some kind of situation where Michael kills a bunch of them and sets back out into the night on his own to finish what he started a few years earlier: kill his niece Jamie Lloyd once and for all. By the time Michael escapes the clutches of the cult and inevitably returns to Haddonfield, he would come to find that Jamie, Rachel, and Loomis are not only ready and willing to fight, but that they also have the entire police force ready to back them up. The police are sick of Michael’s nonsense just as much as anyone else’s at this point. But that’s not all. The townsfolk would be ready to hunt Michael as well. In this version of Halloween six, Haddonfield itself is sick of Michael’s shit and is ready to fight. This would lead to a lot of really cool scenes when Michael first arrives. A montage, if you will, of townsfolk preparing their weapons, readying their shotguns, locking their doors, clearing the children from the streets, etc. It would be epic, to say the least.
Haddonfield vs. The Cult of Thorn. After Michael returns to Haddonfield and the residents had begun to prep for his imminent arrival, there would start to be some chatter among the townsfolk, word on the street suggesting that mysterious people dressed in black have been spotted all over town, causing the people to assume that this is undoubtedly the Cult of Thorn. The very same cult that was responsible for the police convoy ambush so many years earlier. It would soon become apparent that the cult was there to find Michael and take him back to their headquarters for their demigod’s hopeful resurrection ceremony, causing a violent tug-of-war, so to speak, between the Haddonfield natives and the Cult of Thorn members, both of which want Michael Myers for themselves. It would be extra drama amid the real fight, which would soon be taking place between Michael and our three main heroes.
A Time Struggle. Michael Myers becomes a foil in the midst of what would resemble a turf war of sorts between Haddonfield and the Cult of Thorn, although the hunt for Jamie would be the only thing on his mind, of course. The cult must capture Michael and harness his evil in the form of a sacrifice to their god by the time the Thorn constellation appears in the Halloween skies above, or the power of their lord would be lost for another century or so. This would create a time struggle between our good guys, Michael, and the cult.
Michael destroys the Cult. When attempting to capture Myers toward the end of the film, right when Michael is about to be within reach of Jamie, the Cult of Thorn moves on him and attempts to apprehend him once more. Michael massacres the entirety of the Thorn cult, at least those in Haddonfield at the time, and would ultimately be killed by Jamie after doing so in one final brutal and very quick showdown. How he dies is of no consequence because we all know he’ll be back anyways. And all three of our main characters are still alive at the end of the film.
Loomis closes the film. After the epicness of that final showdown, when Michael’s body is splayed out on the ground surrounded by the bodies of all the Thorn members, the townsfolk would show up cheering Jamie, Rachel, and Loomis on a job well done. Hell, even the police would be cheering and celebrating. One big small-town celebration, an ode to the death of their own hometown boogeyman. Then, in the midst of the celebration, Loomis would sort of walk away from the cheers and think to himself. Upon noticing Rachel and Jamie would approach him, slowly he would turn to them as of just having an epiphany about something, and he would quietly speak the closing sentence of the film. He would say, “No matter how much we want to explain it, no matter how much we wish to know why, we will never, never know what lies behind his madness. I’ve been saying this for decades, and I will say it again: Evil is simply evil.” End quote. Film blacks out.
Michael’s very existence is his curse. Our heroes are saved, for now. The Cult of Thorn arc is done and is as explored as it ever needs to be. They were a failed group of religious fanatics hoping to exploit Michael’s evil to resurrect their own evil god, an exploitation they can never possibly hope to achieve with a guy like Michael. They are not responsible for Michael’s evil, they did not create it, and their god or the Thorn constellation itself has nothing to do with Michael’s evil in the first place. Michael’s curse was merely the fact that he is an entity unto himself and can simply never be killed. That is the curse in and of itself. There is no why, where, or how. He’s killing his family, he’s killing anybody who gets in his way, and that is it. The series could have moved anywhere it wanted to go from there, or it could have simply ended and rested in peace on a very, very good note. And that, my friends, is how I would fix Halloween five and six. What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Hate my ideas? Love my ideas? Have your own ideas? Let’s talk about it. Leave a comment in the comment section. Let’s get a conversation going, or an argument, whatever you guys want to do. But no matter, the point is, Halloween five and six could have been so much better than they actually are. But let’s be honest, the Halloweens five and six that we did get are awesome just the way they are.
Thanks for tuning in! I hope this exploration into Halloween 5 and 6 sparked some new ideas about what might have been. What are your thoughts? Agree with my revisions or have different ideas? Drop a comment below and let’s chat about it. If you found this interesting, please give this video a thumbs up, share it, and subscribe to TobattoVision for more thoughtful film content. Until next time, keep the Halloween spirit thriving and keep questioning the makings of a great sequel!