Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers, which brought the title slasher - and the series - back to life. The fourth movie might not be hugely original, but it's one of the better sequels in the franchise and a solid little chiller.
In the years that followed, he wrote the cult Brandon Lee action film Rapid Fire, the screenplay for 1997's Spawn and John Cena action vehicle The Marine. Horror fans will probably know McElroy best for his pulpy 2003 movie Wrong Turn, where a group of friends becomes stranded in the woods and stalked by a family of cannibals. The movie was a solid hit and went on to receive five direct sequels and a 2021 reboot.
Just prior to Wrong Turn he wrote the action movie Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever which hit screens in 2002, which cast Lucy Liu as a mysterious assassin being pursued by Antonio Banderas' hardboiled FBI agent. The movie had been in development for years, with names such as Jet Li, Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes circling. Unfortunately, the end result was a slog and despite featuring near-constant gunfire and explosions, choppy editing and one-note characters made it feel interminable. It also holds the "honor" of being Rotten Tomatoes worst-reviewed movie.
Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever currently holds a 0% approval rating with 118 reviews, and for context, ranks lower than the likes of Jaws: The Revenge, Mac And Me and Highlander II. In a 2019 interview with Film Combat Syndicate, director Kaos revealed he originally envisioned the movie as Chow Yun-fat Vs Jean Reno - AKA The Killer Vs The Professional - but they weren't considered commercially viable, and after a bad test screening producers took the movie away and cut it to pieces. Plans to shoot it in Bangkok fell also fell through and it was moved to gloomy, rainy Vancouver instead.
Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever has many issues, from a PG-13 rating that renders most of the action toothless to a "high speed" motorcycle chase that looks like Banderas and Liu are both going around 20mph. That said, there are FAR worst movies in existence, so it doesn't quite deserve its tag. It also spawned two surprisingly solid GBA games, which were both first-person shooters. The movie was in development so long that the first game was based on an early, unused draft that came out a year before the movie.
Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever was clearly an attempt to make a propulsive, John Woo/The Matrix-inspired action flick but it dramatically failed to land. Even the normally reliable Banderas and Liu seem mildly sleepy throughout, with only Gregg Henry's hammy villain providing any real spark. Alan McElroy soon rebounded from the movie's failure with Wrong Turn and recently penned the 2021 reboot, which currently sits with a much warmer 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
