Face-Off: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan vs. Halloween 5

There were indications in HALLOWEEN 4 that slasher Michael Myers' young niece Jamie Lloyd had some kind of psychic connection to him. She had nightmares about him, saw a young Michael staring back at her from a mirror, and stabbed her foster mother while in trance. So it's no surprise to find that Jamie has an even stronger psychic connection to Michael in HALLOWEEN 5. Now a patient in a children's clinic and mute since the stabbing incident, Jamie is able to see the world through Michael's eyes as he once again stalks the streets of Haddonfield, Illinois. It's terrifying for her to watch as Michael kills people, but she also uses this ability to try to help stop him. She struggles to warn people where Michael is and what he's doing, and when nothing else works she puts herself in danger to get the job done. She's a kid, but she's a great heroine.

The worst thing about Michael Myers in this film is his mask, which is in the running for being the worst mask in the series. Made by combining molds of the faces of special effects artist Greg Nicotero and Michael actor Don Shanks, it just doesn't look right. Despite what he's wearing on his head, Don Shanks turns in a solid performance as Michael, who is presented as being the methodical force of evil we know him to be. He lurks and stalks, taking his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. When he does strike, it's quick and brutal. But there's some humanity left beneath the evil, as we see when Jamie gets him to take his mask off and he sheds a tear.

Michael Myers only scored 5 kills in the first HALLOWEEN, but in this one he gets more than twice that – while falling short of his HALLOWEEN 4 score. Several of the kills here are the standard knifings, but Michael does switch it up here and there. We get to see a garden claw smack into a guy's face, there's a cool pitchfork impalement, and the swing of a scythe provides a nice moment. There are also some off screen kills, a beating, and a hanging before the body count is padded out with the arrival of a mysterious figure with a machine gun. Hey, this is supposed to be a slasher! That's cheating!

HALLOWEEN may be the most consistently serious of the major slasher franchises, and HALLOWEEN 5 tries hard to be another dark, creepy entry in the Michael Myers saga. It deals with some heavy subject matter – Michael is after a little kid; that kid sees him murdering her loved ones; she's constantly harassed by Doctor Loomis, who is on the edge of insanity himself. There are some great stalk and slash sequences and an awesome game of cat and mouse in the finale. There's also an extra level of strangeness to this one. The tone is let down by the presence of some very obnoxious characters, including a pair of cops so goofy they're accompanied by clown sound effects.

This began with a film about a dangerous escaped mental patient picking victims at random. HALLOWEEN II added in the twist that the mental patient is out to kill family members, and by now the franchise was so entrenched in that idea that a relative even has a psychic connection to the killer. That's an indication things went awry on the way to part 5. Still, it could have been better if director Dominique Othenin-Girard didn't throw in weird additions that hadn't even been thought out, like a mysterious Man in Black walking around town, sporting a tattoo that matches one Michael Myers has but we had never seen before. And what's with the hermit who takes Michael in and nurses him back to health for a year? He was a replacement for an occultist who gave that tattoo to Michael in deleted scenes, but in the finished film he's another weird element that doesn't make any sense. HALLOWEEN is a simple concept they were trying to complicate without putting thought into the complications.