The Halloween franchise has had a storied existence over the decades, riding a rollercoaster of conflicting timelines and polarizing sequels. John Carpenter's landmark title Halloween (1978) left an indelible mark on the horror genre and inadvertently set the bar high for those who would come after. Excluding Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), each subsequent Halloween film has taken a different angle on the mythos of Michael Myers. Despite many of Halloween's sequels being retroactively removed from the franchise canon thanks to 2018's entry of the same name, the merits of each sequel deserve their due credit.
Most agree that most Halloween entries between Season of the Witch and Halloween (2018) are a mixed bag at best, upsides still shine through in places and shouldn't be discredited. One prominent example takes place in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), the film that returned to form after Season of the Witch's poor initial reception. Viewers followed a child named Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the daughter of the late Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who died in a car crash. Her uncle, Haddonfield's own boogeyman Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur), awakens from a decade-long coma in 1988 and sets out to end his niece's life. Michael's nemesis and former psychologist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) returns once more to Haddonfield, hoping to put an end to Michael's evil ways for good.
In the film's conclusion, Jamie and her foster sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) manage to escape Myers' pursuit and ram him with a speeding truck, flinging him into a nearby ditch close to an abandoned mine. Loomis, Sheriff Ben Meeker (Beau Starr), Illinois state troopers, and a group of angry Haddonfield residents arrive to help, but not before Jamie touches her uncle's hand. Myers rises once again, but the cavalry unleashes a hail of gunfire into him before he can attack. At long last, it appears as though the specter haunting Haddonfield has been defeated. Dr. Loomis' mission to defeat his former patient and save the town from evil is complete. However, the evil within Michael Myers is not so easily extinguished.
Jamie and Rachel return home to the Carruthers family, where their parents Darlene (Karen Alston) and Richard (Jeff Olson) rush to console them after a night of persistent dread. Darlene heads upstairs to run a bath for Jamie, but a stalking figure is right behind her. Grabbing a pair of nearby scissors, the assailant begins to stab Darlene horrifically, and she cries out in pain. Believing Myers must have returned yet again, Loomis and Sheriff Meeker begin to race upstairs but don't get far before they're met with a new horror.
Bearing almost the exact same visage as Michael Myers did on Halloween night in 1963, when he stabbed his sister Judith to death, Jamie stands in a clown costume and brandishes a pair of bloodied scissors. Myers' wickedness has survived, and it has passed to his innocent niece. As Jamie stands as an emotionless dead ringer of her uncle, Loomis cries out in despair. Drawing his gun, he attempts to shoot Jamie before being stopped by Sheriff Meeker. Loomis cries out "No!" over and over again as the realization sets in that the evil plaguing Haddonfield has passed hands.
The imagery in this conclusion is ominous, but it's Loomis' reaction that really draws on the scene's darkness. The one character who has done his utmost to stop Michael Myers has to face the reality that he has failed once again. As Loomis said in the original Halloween, he spent eight years attempting to get through to Michael before realizing it was a hopeless endeavor. The only way to stop his heartless killing machine of a patient was to contain him or kill him, and containment failed long ago. Loomis staked his health and his sanity in his pursuit and must have felt justified when Michael fell motionless at the end of the film. Seeing Jamie follow her uncle's footsteps so closely, Loomis realized that his efforts were once again for naught. In desperation, he sought to kill a child in order to stop the cycle of evil from repeating.
Although the psychologist had clearly fallen from grace because of his vendetta, pulling his gun on Jamie signifies a loss of his moral reasoning. He has fallen to an absolute bottom, crossing the event horizon of despair and no longer caring for the consequences as long as he can put an end to the threat. Even if that threat is a young girl who never asked for what happened to her. There is no doubt that if Sheriff Meeker hadn't intervened, the Carruthers would be mourning the loss of their foster daughter. The worst result of such a horrid night was averted, but the fact that Loomis abandoned all hope and came so close to committing an irrevocable deed is just as disastrous as Jamie's attack.
Drastic times call for drastic measures, and in many ways, Michael Myers is the ultimate evil and warrants drastic measures to stop. One can almost empathize with Loomis' fervent pursuit and tactics. But killing a little girl? One who became an unwilling vessel for the curse surrounding her blood relatives? That signals a loss of humanity, and humanity is arguably the only thing Myers didn't take from Loomis. If the doctor had pulled the trigger, if he had passed the point of no return, he may not have become as terrible as Michael Myers, but he would have become monstrous in his own way.
Compared to any other ending in the franchise, Halloween 4's final moments leave one of its most vital characters teetering on the brink of the abyss. In its own way, Jamie's transformation and Loomis' despair is a darker final note than any entry that came before or after it.