10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers (1995)

The bread-and-butter of the Halloween franchise, at its best, has always been suspense. Obviously, Carpenter's original sets a high-bar but the best sequels (Season of the Witch, Revenge of Michael Myers) have thrived off of being able to tap into the same kind of classically cinematic approach to suspense.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers may attempt to do this same thing, but it is hysterically unable to understand what generates suspense in the first place. Part of this falls on the poor editing, but a large part is also due to the incredibly lackluster direction of Joe Chappelle.

Take, for instance, the scene in which Jamie is hiding from Michael in the bus station bathroom. The audience is shown she is hiding in the final stall on the left, so when Michael comes in and begins checking each stall, getting closer and closer, the idea is to build up suspense. But Chappelle and cinematographer Billy Dickson stage the sequence so incoherently and in such close shots that by the time viewers understand what it is they're looking at, it's too late.

Or even Debra Strode's murder scene, in which Michael chases Debra through the house. But it's all so heavily truncated that Chappelle never gives the film any chance to build suspense. It's like watching a film on fast-forward for the entirety of these sequences.