Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers Ending Explained: Here Comes The Man In Black
Look out! Michael Myers is back — for revenge. Sort of. While "Halloween 5" is officially subtitled "The Revenge of Michael Myers," that subtitle never actually appears in the opening credits. Maybe they forgot. In any case, The Shape is back yet again, despite being shot approximately a billion times and dropped down into a mineshaft at the end of "Halloween 4." But you just can't keep this guy down for long (unless you're making a sequel about masks that turn kids' heads into bugs or something like that).
In "Halloween 5," The Shape spends a full year sleeping, only to then wake up, refreshed and ready to go after his niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) once again. Meanwhile, his old nemesis Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has gone off the deep end, and he's willing to act like a crazy person if it means finally killing Michael once and for all. Will this finally be the end of Michael Myers? No, of course not, don't be silly.
What you need to remember about the plot of Halloween 5
Before we can even get to "Halloween 5" we need to go back to "Halloween 4." In that film, The Shape returns to Haddonfield when he learns he has a niece named Jamie Lloyd. Determined to kill off his bloodline, the boogeyman stalks his way through town, killing anyone in his path, all while Dr. Loomis once again tries to warn everybody. Eventually, Jamie and her adoptive sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) are able to escape Michael's wrath, and a posse of gun-toting Haddonfieldians blows him away, shooting him more than a few times. But wait! There's a twist! Jamie dons a clown costume and stabs her adoptive mother with a pair of scissors, mirroring the opening kill of the original "Halloween," when a young Michael Myers murdered his sister. It's as if the evil has been passed down to the next generation.
Then "Halloween 5" chickens out. We learn that Jamie didn't kill her mom, only injured her. Now, Jamie is non-verbal and living in a mental institution, clearly traumatized from the experience of the last movie. Everyone else thinks Michael is dead, except Dr. Loomis, who always knows that The Shape will return. And he's right! After being shot and falling down that mineshaft, Michael Myers ends up taking refuge in a hut occupied by a hermit. A full year goes by, which raises all sorts of questions: did Michael and the hermit become friends? Or was Michael unconscious for a full year? Whatever the answer, when Halloween rolls around again, Michael springs up, kills the hermit, and stalks off into the night, ready to kill again.
Meanwhile, a mysterious man in black has arrived in town via bus. Hmm, wonder what he's up to!?
What happened at the end of Halloween 5?
After killing a lot of people (including Rachel), Michael is eventually lured back to his childhood home, with Loomis using Jamie as bait. Loomis' big plan: to shoot Michael with a tranquilizer gun and, uh, drop a big metal net on him. Sure! Loomis then proceeds to beat Michael with a wooden plank. Really, Dr. Loomis? This is your plan to defeat the ultimate evil that is Michael Myers? Cover him with a net and then wail on him with some wood? Unfortunately, the strain of all this proves too much for Loomis, who has a heart attack and seemingly dies (don't worry, he'll be back for the next film, alive and well, somehow).
Now incapacitated, Michael is hauled away to jail by the cops. Finally! Michael Myers is going to prison! Take that!
Of course, that would be a pretty uninspired ending. Not that what happens next is any better: there's an explosion at the police station, and then gunfire. It's that mysterious man in black! He's arrived to bust Michael out of the slammer! And he does — Jamie rushes into the police station to find all the cops dead, and Michael's cell empty. Uh-oh! Guess they'll have to make another sequel.
What the end of Halloween 5 means
At the risk of sounding callous, the ending of "Halloween 5" simply means that there's now room for a sequel. The ending is kind of a non-ending, really, because it relies heavily on Michael being freed by the man in black, a character who barely exists within the confines of the movie. The next film will reveal his identity and tie it into a secret cult devoted to Michael Myers (or something silly like that), but there's absolutely no hint about any of that here. Instead, the character just shows up briefly and helps Michael escape, because Michael Myers can't really die — he has to come back for a sequel.
"I created the [man in black] character without knowing his exact origin," director Dominique Othenin-Girard told Halloweenmovies.com. "I considered him a soul brother to Michael who came from afar to get to him. I was conscious enough to give freedom of interpretation to the next team of creators as to who he really is. I was attentive not to lock them in too tight of a position, so they could play that card as they wished."
Sounds pretty cheap and lazy, right? That's because it is. The filmmakers needed a way to keep Michael alive for the next movie, and they quickly came up with the man in black as their solution. As for what that meant? Well, that was up to the filmmakers of the next movie to figure out.
What has the cast and crew of Halloween 5 said about the ending?
Speaking with Dustin McNeill for the book "Taking Shape," director and co-writer Dominique Othenin-Girard said that the man in black was created at the request of franchise producer Moustapha Akkad. "[W]e never completely matured his path, his connection to Michael or his goal," said Othenin-Girard. "We just knew the big thing that it did for our movie was to create an enigma and to create a strong end because the enigma frees Michael from the jail. So, it was a promising continuation for the next episode. Further than that, Moustapha had no idea of who he was."
"Halloween 5" is often referred to as one of the lesser "Halloween" films, and it's easy to see why: This is very silly stuff. "Halloween 4" was a nice way to bring Michael Myers back, and the film's shocking ending — Jamie stabbing her adoptive mother, seemingly to death — was a great twist. "Halloween 5" proceeded to undo all of that in favor of a rather bland slasher movie that just happens to have a strange, inexplicable ending. But hey, at least it's (a little) better than the next movie.
Halloween 5's alternate ending
While never filmed, there was an alternate ending in mind that didn't involve that damn man in black. In "Taking Shape," screenwriter Michael Jacobs says:
"We came up with a killer ending. Like the ending of Halloween 4 which starts our film, a small army of cops arrive heavily armed. Jamie is standing between them and Michael. They call for her to get down, but this time she stops. She stands frozen. He could kill her — or having let her see his face moments ago — maybe there was a new relationship. Jamie hears guns cocking and turns to face the cops. She's surprised a moment later when the cops look confused. When she turns back — the Shape, as we had returned to calling him, is gone."
While that doesn't sound very thrilling, it fits with the original film's ending, where Michael vanishes into the night after being shot by Dr. Loomis. Michael is once again out there, somewhere, seemingly everywhere. Honestly, that sounds a lot more chilling than what we got. "For reasons I never heard, it was decided that seventy-five-year-old Donald Pleasence dropping chains on the boogeyman (who hasn't died in four films) and beating him down with a 2x4 and then having some mysterious stranger break him out of jail in a gunfight was a better ending," said Jacobs.
The "Halloween" saga would continue with the abysmal "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers," followed by the slightly-better "Halloween: H20," and then the absolutely awful "Halloween: Resurrection," a film so bad it essentially killed the franchise until Rob Zombie rebooted it. After Zombie made two films, it would be rebooted again with a new trilogy by David Gordon Green. As for the future, who knows what that holds? A TV series is in the works now, but I'm pretty sure the man in black won't be making an appearance.