Halloween (Film Franchise) Movie

We deserve a thread for this iconic film franchise. I just used Bias Sorter to figure out my current ranking:

Halloween
Halloween II
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers
Halloween (2018)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Meyers
Halloween Kills
Halloween: Resurrection
Halloween (2007)
Halloween Ends
Halloween H20
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Meyers
Halloween 2 (2009)

Zombie's Halloween 2 would still be the worst film I've ever seen if it weren't for The Mist. It's a close tie.

 

H20 is great, wtf!????

 

I’ll share mine later but I like H20 quite a bit but it has a few things I’m not huge on. The cast is just so small and there’s not a good amount of killings and a handful of them are offscreen.

Michael doing a one-arm pull up to sneak down on people gets hilarious too. He does it at least twice if not three times.

 

Didn't open this thread expecting the worst The Mist take

 

If this was around 2017-2020 I'd be excited about this franchise. Hopefully whatever they plan on doing in the future gives it another revival. Anyways, ranking.

Halloween '78
Halloween 2018
Halloween II
Halloween 4
Halloween H20
Halloween Kills
Halloween 5
Halloween Resurrection
Halloween (zombie)
Halloween Ends
Halloween II (zombie)

Still haven't seen Halloween 3 or 6

 

I just think it's bland

 

Oh, man. I haven't gone through this in a while.

1. Halloween (1978)

A masterpiece, one of my top five or ten favorites of all time.

Don't really have a ton to add that hasn't already been said better a million times, but I'll throw in my own personal story-- I grew up in a two-family house (my family on the first floor, aunt/uncle/cousins on the second), and by the time I was 11 I was deep in my "I love horror movies and they don't scare me anymore" phase.

That October, I had made my way through most of the Halloween sequels, but I still hadn't seen the original. It was going to be playing on AMC one night, and my relatives upstairs were talking about making a movie night out of it. I was going to be home alone downstairs that night (I think my brother had a hockey game), so they invited me to watch it with them in case I got too scared. I said no, I had seen most of the series and would be fine.

Long story short, I basically ran upstairs at the clothesline scene.

2. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

This was the first in the series I ever saw, and I have a ton of love for it for that alone, but as time has gone on I've only grown to appreciate it more and more. Just a fun, lean, textbook eighties slasher. Obviously not perfect, but I watch this and the original every October. I also want to live in the opening credits.

3. Halloween II (1981)

I go back and forth on how much I like this one, and I've basically come down on it being "fine." I appreciate many things about it, particularly the tonal and aesthetic consistency with Carpenter's original. I think the setting is a lot of fun for a slasher. But with that said, I'd be remiss if I didn't say I find some stretches of it to be a bit of a slog. This was particularly apparent when I went to a double-feature of the original and this at the drive-in a few years ago, which is extremely disappointing, because this movie is built to be watched immediately after the original. Where as every static shot of a setting in Halloween feels like it contains some sort of menace, similar shots here just feel... empty? I would never say I dislike it, it's just missing a little something for me.

4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch

It's been funny to watch this go from reviled to (what I consider to be) an overcorrection in terms of praise. I tend to not include this in rankings just because it's so disconnected (obviously) from the main franchise, but I've revisited it a couple times since my initial disappointment in childhood, and I find it enjoyable. The Test Room scene is superb, as is the ending.

5. Halloween (2018)

I'm so mixed on this movie. I think about it a lot.

It has lots of things I love, especially the score (legitimately one of my absolute favorites). I think Jamie Lee Curtis is excellent, and I think some of the set pieces are a lot of fun. But I also couldn't help but feel a bit led astray with how much they said they were "going back to basics." I find it so frustrating how overstuffed and unfocused this movie is, when it really could have benefitted from a directorial presence that is unafraid to kill his darlings. Is the sequence of Michael going from house to house visually impressive? Yes. Does it feel necessary to me, or in step with the original? No. I could go on, particularly about other sequences that seem tailor-made just to showcase gore and how bRuTaL Michael is (the babysitter sequence; the head-stomping), but it's been discussed to death.

I would have loved a tight 90/95-minute movie, with a heavier focus on Laurie and her trauma. I know, I know-- we are sick to death of trauma simply being used as a plot point/backstory at this point, but I feel it would have been earned here. I also would have appreciated more tact in terms of the violence (I really sound like I am anti-gore here, but I promise I'm not). It's just a movie begging for a great fan edit, although I'm not sure how you'd get around the stupidity of Sartain's turn.

6. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later

Pretty interchangeable in terms of placement with 2018, but I just find there's more to like in the latter. H20 genuinely feels like the type of movie you'd read about in some "unmade sequels that were stopped just before production" article. But it exists! And I don't think it's bad, just kind of insignificant/tepid in the grand scheme of things. The Kevin Williamson-ness of it all hasn't aged particularly well (not his work specifically, just emblematic of this era of horror). Ending is an all-timer though (fascinating to read about the hoops they had to jump through to get that done), and I'm still uneasy around garbage disposals because of this movie.

7. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

I already feel like I'm placing this too high, haha. Not a good movie by any stretch, but I do have a lot of nostalgia for it. My brother and I still quote it all the time, so there's that. But yeah, it was rushed into production and you can tell. I enjoy the scene of Rachel being stalked in the house before the police show up, the laundry chute scene is neat, and the farmhouse sequence is okay. The rest is more or less terrible. It's unfortunate they were too afraid to lean into the ending of Halloween 4, but not surprising. Just squandered any goodwill the previous entry had established by delivering an uninspired and rote bummer. Not to mention killing off Rachel, who should have been the star of the movie. Just baffling choices.

8. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

Growing up, this felt a bit like the elusive entry in the series. It was never on TV, it was never at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, it was never in FYE at the mall. I finally found it at a Strawberries in some random strip mall, and I remember my dad buying it for me. I was probably 12 or 13? But even then, I remember being pretty disappointed. I understand this has its supporters within the fanbase, but I think because I saw it so removed from the rest, it doesn't really even get nostalgia points for me. Just a bizarre, unsuccessful attempt at answering for the pure stupidity established in the last movie. Again, commits the sin of killing off the character who would have been most interesting to follow from the previous entry (never mind recasting her).

9. Halloween Kills

There is a really fun movie in this franchise that examines the impact Michael Myers had on the community of Haddonfield as a whole years after his initial massacre took place. It is called Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

But seriously, what needs to be said? Laughably overwrought and self-serious, nonsensical pandering and fan service, astoundingly inane characters. Takes all of the worst habits from its predecessor. I do kind of enjoy the 1978 flashback, though. Given, the characters in that sequence behave like complete morons, but from a technical standpoint it's impressive. Everything else is a miss.

10. Halloween Ends

I'm already preparing for the reappraisal this film in the future, simply for being the entry that dared to do something different with the franchise, but I promise we really don't need to. Again, a film built on plot contrivances and how willing you are to go along with characters indulging in just the absolute worst decision-making you've ever seen. I understand what they were going for, and think this film could have worked if Corey was established in 2018, or maybe even Kills, and there was a gradual descent into this? But on its own, it just feels like a tacked-on ending to a trilogy they didn't really know how to end, more or less completely removed from the two (or three) films that precede it. I'd be really interested to hear someday about what the initial plan was for the finale of this trilogy, because this can't be it.

Again, great soundtrack from Carpenter and company.

11. Halloween (2007)
12. Halloween: Resurrection
13. Halloween II (2009)

I don't really have anything substantial to say about these ones. I've only seen Zombie's films once or twice each, and I don't have a kind word to say about them. And I think we all know what the deal is with Resurrection.

 

Hmmm I'll have to think about my ranking

 

defend halloween ends

 

Halloween 6, Kills, and Resurrection kind of fall in a so-bad-it's-good tier for me in the sense that I enjoy them for being silly and bonkers and enjoyable as opposed to Halloween 5 and H2 2009, which are actively bad and boring.

 

Halloween 5 is pretty bad. From probably the worst mask in the franchise to the clown shoe noise when the cops are walking out of the house. Weird creative choices lol

 

I generally revisit all - or most - of these every October so there's usually a fluidity to where stuff lands except for my top three. For a number of reasons, this is my favorite horror franchise so I ride with pretty much all of these. Even the bottom tier ones (minus Zombie's and Curse) have something that pulls me back into watching them every year.

Zombie's first one is just rancid for about an hour and then kind of picks up when Myers breaks loose. His second one is so out there that I respect the swing, but his whole hillbilly shtick isn't really my thing.

I guess my controversial take is that I also really ride with DGG's trilogy. I get the disdain for Ends but it's such a swing that I truly love it. I thought their choice to basically make their own version of Christine was rad as hell. I guess my argument is that if they had done a very traditional Halloween movie to wrap everything up, people would complain it's nothing new. But they tried something radically different, and people complain its not a traditional Halloween movie.

I'll say after Ends came out, it seriously landed in my top three of the franchise. I kind of cooled off on that that after rewatching it a couple of times, but I could easily swap it with the 2018 one in my rankings depending on my mood.

They also shot the 2018 one where I live so it's cool to visit some of those spots and think about Michael stalking around


1. Halloween II
2. Halloween
3. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
5. Halloween (2018)
6. Halloween Ends
7. Halloween H2O
8. Halloween Kills
9. Halloween II (2009)
10. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
11. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
12. Halloween (2007)
13. Halloween: Resurrection

 

Thinking and reading everyone's thoughts and now I want to watch one tonight...

 

Halloween 4 grows on me more and more as time goes on. that autumnal atmosphere is so cosy and easy to watch

 

It's the closest to the original in tone and atmosphere imo

 

1,2,4 are goated. I enjoy all the rest to varying degrees. Currently reading the original novelization and it’s kind of a hot mess haha. Shows its age.

 

I feel like 2018 is the closest to tone and atmosphere to the original, but Halloween II and 4 still feel like Halloween films while the rest of the franchise doesn’t.

 

OG
III
IV
II
H2 Zombie
Ends

 

A video that talks about an update on the new Halloween show, basically:
- will take place after first film
- Michael and Loomis will be featured
- Michael is in a state prison
- No mention of Laurie
- Aiming to be released Fall 2025
- Could be on either Paramount+ or Hulu
- Potentially leads into a film where Michael escapes on Halloween night

 

Hmmmm

 

Fell asleep watching Halloween 4 this weekend, not because it's bad but because it's so damn cozy :)

 

Micheal being imprisoned was the worst mistake of H2018 ugh

 

Why? I love the idea of him essentially just waiting for everyone around him to be convinced he's harmless enough to be transferred so he can escape

 

My big gripe with 2018 is just the choice to wipe out Halloween II -- but I understand the reasoning.

Also agree with everyone's feeling about 4 feeling so cozy. I love the idea of transitioning the focus from Laurie to Jamie. I always found her so endearing.

And it's hilarious to watch how unhinged Loomis acts and reacts to Jamie in Return and Revenge. He has absolutely no problem just screaming in her face.

 

He is particularly deranged in Revenge. That's a rough watch.