Horror Movie Review: Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

So we’ve had his return, then we had his revenge & now we get his curse? That sounds great…

The first thing I noticed about Halloween 6 is how flashy it looked compared to the movies of the past, it is covered a with 90’s slasher shine. It’s very easy on the eyes…The 2nd thing I noticed was Paul Rudd’s name coming up the credits. It turns out this was his first feature film & man does it show!

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers might be the best Halloween film since the first 2 or the worst of the bunch so far, I’m struggling to decide. On the one hand it does an admirable job of finally tying up loose ends from Halloween 5 & goes some way to explaining Michael’s super-human abilities & motivation but on the other hand it doesn’t really matter when everything else about the movie is trash.

Halloween 6 opens with an unknown young woman having her baby delivered in some sort of dark basement. She is tied down so clearly being held against her will. Once born, the baby is taken away by the man in black from Halloween 5 & it becomes clear he is the leader of some sort of cult.

Turns out this young woman is Jamie from the last 2 movies.

Later that night, Jamie & her baby escape with the help of a nurse who promptly meets her end at the hands of Michael Myers who stalks the dark halls of this place.

Meanwhile Dr. Loomis is now a retired man working on his memoirs when he is visited by an old friend, Dr Wynn who is in charge of the Smith’s Grove Sanatorium. He wants Dr. Loomis to come back & work with him there (remember this is the sanatorium that Michael was held at before escaping in the first movie). Dr. Loomis has no interest & their conversation is interrupted by the sound of Jamie’s pleading voice for help. She had escaped to a bus station, overheard a radio-DJ doing a Halloween special on the Michael Myers murder & rang in hoping for help.

The radio DJ doesn’t believe her, of course & she is interrupted by the pursuing Michael. Inside a barn he finally gets his hands on her & kills her quite graphically & brutally. Before she dies she reveals that he won’t get his hands on her child who she has hidden.

In Haddonfield distant relatives of the Strode family are now living at the old Myers house. They’re all fodder for Michael except 2, mother & son, Kara & Danny. Danny is having dreams & visions of the man in black telling him to kill. Across the road lives Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd)…if the name rings a bell it is because he was the small boy Laurie Strode was babysitting in the first movie. Now he is all grown up & obsessed with finding out why Michael kills.

Tommy heard Jamie on the radio & follows her trail to discover her hidden baby, he takes the boy back to Haddonfield & gets in contact with Dr. Loomis. They both know Michael will come to Haddonfield but they are already too late. Michael is back & the first place he goes is to his old home….

What follows is the usual Halloween stuff…people get killed, people have sex & then get killed. Dr. Loomis says something about Michael being pure evil etc. You’ve seen it all before & it isn’t very well done here. Michael looks way more imposing then he did in previous movies & the mask has hit the pinnacle of scariness. He moves faster & just seems a lot more brutal then previous films. It’s a 90’s horror thing…

Where the film gets interesting is with the attempted explanation of why Michael is the way he is…

Michael is a victim of the curse of thorn, the symbol on his wrist confirms that. The symbol represents a demon that spreads death & destruction. One child would be chosen to bear it & offer up his family members as sacrifices on the night of Samhain (Halloween night). A druid cult is keeping the ritual going & also protecting Michael Myers who only appears when the thorn constellation appears in the sky.

How’s that for an explanation of why he is trying to murder his family members & why he is super-human? I was impressed!

Sadly it is used poorly in the end as the cult led by a surprise character (sort-of) capture everyone to start a new age with Jamie’s baby. The final third of the movie takes place in the Smith’s Grove Sanatorium also where the movie began & it’s just a chance for Michael to go to town on everybody with no real explanation as to why he is suddenly turning on the doctors.

It’s a gory scene played out with awful flashing lights that would send an epileptic into a bad fit. The whole Sanatorium feels silly (baby foetuses in jars?) & totally out of place in a Halloween movie.

It’s not really spoiling it to tell you that Michael probably survives at the end (bear in mind the next movie in the series, H20 would ignore the existence of Halloween 3,4,5 & 6) as all we see is his mask lying on the ground. The ending is poor save for one important aspect…they finally kill off Dr. Loomis, sadly, it is off screen.

Donald Pleasance died the same year as Halloween 6 was released the movie was dedicated to this memory.

Once again we have here a decent Halloween sequel that attempts the impossible…explaining Michael Myers! I love that they tried it even if it doesn’t really make much sense. The 90’s slasher stink is all over this film but it looks so much sleeker. The scariest since the original 2.