Halloween - Ranked

When I started watching this entire series, I wasn’t much of a fan. I had seen the original and a handful of sequels, but there were a lot of blindspots. Now that I’ve watched them all (some of them multiple times), I’m definitely a fan of the series, though it still ranks beneath Friday the 13th for me. For the most part, I enjoy the original but then I want something different from the sequels and remakes. The series is so all over the place, but I find something to enjoy in all of these movies. Some are funny, some are brutal, some are so bad they’re good, etc. In other words, this isn’t a scientific ranking. It’s just which ones are my favorite at the time. I’ve already written about all of these in individual articles, so I’ll keep my reasoning short for each entry. Just know that this is the ranking of someone who watched all of these close together and that rewatchability is a big factor for me.

Oh, and speaking as someone who has done a number of these horror rankings now, this series is the absolute worst when it comes to keeping the titles unique. There are three Halloweens and two Halloween IIs, for instance. It makes writing about it annoying as I don’t like having to include years in parentheses after the title. Anyway, I just wanted to bitch about that a little. 

1. Halloween (1978)

When I first watched this years ago, I didn’t understand why it was considered a classic, especially in terms of John Carpenter’s work. While it’s still a bit low among Carpenter’s work for me, my appreciation of this as a slasher film has grown with each new viewing. I love the simplicity of it. There is no baggage to this film that every sequel and remake inevitably has to deal with. You can just sit back and enjoy it. I also like how much of it takes place during the day time, and, of course, Carpenter’s music is perfect.

2. Halloween Ends

I imagine I lost a few people with this one, but who cares? I love this entry. I honestly considered putting it at number one for a bit. The mood of the film gets me every time, and I honestly cared about what happened to the main characters. The “ending” promised by the title felt a little tacked on, but I also appreciate the filmmakers finally giving this series a definitive ending…until the next reboot, that is.

3. Halloween Kills

This felt like a brutal ‘80s slasher done with the craft I’ve come to expect from David Gordon Green. It’s hyper violent and goofy. That might put some people off, but that’s what I want from this series. If it wasn’t for the “Evil dies tonight” stuff, it would be number 2, at least.

4. Halloween (2018)

Obviously, the new movies worked for me. Each one felt different, which I appreciated, with this one feeling like an attempt to make it like the original. They did a good job of it, but it also makes it the least interesting entry in the new trilogy. Still, it’s leaps and bounds above the other nonsense.

5. Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Honestly, this one shouldn’t even be considered a Halloween movie. But once you get past the fact that this was an attempt to turn the series into an anthology series rather than a Michael Myers series, there’s a lot of fun to be had with it. My favorite aspect is how much of a dirtbag Tom Atkins is in it. At one point, he seems to slow the investigation down just so he can get some beer. And the mythology stuff they made up for this is so wacky you have to laugh. 

6. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Much like my enjoyment of III, this is definitely in the “so bad it’s good” territory. I prefer the Producer’s Cut, but it’s still incomprehensible trash. There are magic runes and a cult or something. It’s wild. But they were going for something with this nonsense, and I appreciate it.

7. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

This one is sloppy, but it has my favorite Loomis appearance. He is so unhinged in this, and it’s great. He holds up a child as bait for Michael Myers at one point. It’s nuts. This set of movies really made Loomis seem crazier than Michael.

8. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

This one get a lot of love from the fans as a return to form for the series, but I found it a bit boring. I get that bringing Michael back was a popular move, but I only enjoy this one because it’s the beginning of Loomis totally losing his mind.

9. Halloween II (1981)

This one is fine if you just wanted a direct continuation of the first film, just done a bit more poorly. But it features a horror movie pet peeve that I cannot stand with the dark, empty hospital. Maybe hospitals were like that back then, but I just find it crazy that there’s hardly anyone around, and they keep the lights off. And I don’t like that this one created the “Laurie is Michael’s sister” plotline.

10. Halloween II (2009)

I claimed to want something different from the sequels, and Rob Zombie delivered with this one. It’s just not a fun watch for me. I appreciate it, and it’s honestly more interesting than most of the films in this series. But for my rankings, I have to put it near the bottom because I never want to see it again.

11. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Maybe I’m too harsh with this one, but I just didn’t care for how much it was trying to be Scream with Michael Myers.

12. Halloween (2007)

Rob Zombie made this his own, but he was handcuffed by the mythology, forced to give all the backstory of Myers that I’m just not interested in. And just like his much better sequel, it’s not a fun watch for me. It’s an ugly, brutal movie, and I appreciate that, but give me crazy Loomis and magic rocks over this shit every time.

13. Halloween: Resurrection

I do enjoy Busta Rhymes in this piece of dog shit, but overall this is just the laziest entry in the series. And the tacked on beginning featuring Jamie Lee Curtis is a middle finger to the series. This stupidity should be a lot more fun, but for me, it was just unbearable.

Halloween, Kills, Ends - The New Trilogy

The release of the newest Halloween trilogy from writer/director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride spurred me on to watch every single entry. It wasn’t that I loved them at first, it just made sense to finally watch them all since the series was relevant at the moment. I liked the 2018 (hereafter just referred to as Halloween) film well enough, but Kills didn’t impress me at first. Then I watched them all and revisited those two films along with the newest entry, Halloween Ends, and something clicked with me.

The general consensus is that Halloween was a great return to form for the series, Kills destroyed that goodwill, and Ends was head-scratchingly bad. But as I rewatch these films, I feel nearly the opposite. Ends is my favorite with Kills a close second, and I find Halloween to be the most boring entry (though I really like that one, too). After watching Ends the first time, it made me reflect on what Green and McBride may have been trying to do with this trilogy.

To be clear, I didn’t do any research as far as watching interviews about this or any other behind the scenes material. In all likelihood, there was not much of a plan when it came to this trilogy, especially since the pandemic messed with their original release schedule. Much like the most recent Star Wars trilogy, each film seems to be its own thing, adding and dropping ideas from film to film. That didn’t work for me with Star Wars, but with a sloppy-ass series like Halloween, it didn’t bother me at all.

With Halloween, it seemed like this was the attempt to make a classic Halloween film. Every sequel was ignored, and Jamie Lee Curtis was brought back once again, this time sticking with the original plotline that did not have her revealed as Michael Myers’s sister. John Carpenter was brought on to do the music (and as a name-only producer), and it generally felt like it belonged in the same world as the first film. It did well critically and commercially (a rarity for the series), and people were excited about the series for the first time in a long time. I like it, but upon a rewatch I find it a bit boring and too safe. We all know Michael is going to escape and get his mask, yet we still have to go through the motions we’ve seen multiple times. I wish the film had moved a bit faster. 

Kills directly addresses my issues as it lives up to its title. Michael is a true killing machine in this from the get-go, and we don’t have to waste time with him finding his mask or any nonsense like that. The first film took its time setting up his return, so Kills gets to unleash him. In this way, the film felt like Green and McBride doing their best version of an ‘80s slasher movie. Goofy characters are introduced seemingly just to be killed, and the kills are much more brutal this time around. Critics, and some audiences, were put off by this, for some reason. I’ve read comments along the lines of feeling “betrayed” by the setup of the first film to then take this turn. 

But this is exactly what I want from a Halloween movie. I want to get introduced to Lenny Clarke playing with a drone, only to have Michael using Lenny’s back as a knife block moments later as Lenny’s wife watches as she fights for her life. I feel like Gordon and McBride found that elusive sweet spot of goofy and horrific with Kills. 

The only thing that holds it back for me is the “Evil dies tonight!” nonsense, and the tacked on idea that the anger of the townspeople somehow powers Michael. Yes, the mob forming and forcing a mental patient to kill himself makes a bit of a point of how Michael and fear in general has messed up the town. But the mob then attacking the actual Michael being presented as something wrong that inadvertently powers Michael didn’t work for me. What were they supposed to do, forgive him? It just felt like an afterthought tacked on to this otherwise gloriously gnarly film.

And then Ends comes out and Michael spends a lot of it hanging out in a sewer while a dude named Corey sort of becomes the new Michael while trying to date Jamie Lee Curtis’s granddaughter. This movie should suck, but it’s my favorite of the trilogy and nearly my favorite in the entire series. 

By leaving Michael and Laurie on the sidelines for much of the film, Ends is able to finally present Haddonfield as an actual town. More people are introduced, but not just to be killed (but yeah, almost all of them end up dead). They are there to show how ugly this town has become and how Corey and Allyson are products of the town’s response to Michael. My main issue with the commentary about the townspeople in Kills is that it just doesn’t make sense that Michael’s actions in the 1978 original are enough to alter a town so much. (One of Allyson’s friends mentions this in the first film, but that doesn’t excuse it.) It simply isn’t plausible to me that the town would be able to be this riled up so quickly, but it’s a movie, so who cares? It just didn’t work for me. 

But the amount of kills in…um…Kills coupled with Michael’s supernatural ability to survive and disappear legitimizes the darkness of Haddonfield in Ends. This makes for a disjointed experience which is why it’s probably true that these guys had no idea this is what the third film would be like, but it somehow works. Corey’s transformation from unlucky babysitter to new Michael is compelling because you can understand how the town did this to him. There’s still some supernatural stuff happening with him and Michael (he stares at him and makes some connection, and he appears to heal faster when he kills later on), but in general he seems to be more the product of Haddonfield than Michael’s evil puppet or something. Michael is just a gateway for him. 

There’s a lot about Ends that I love, like the score and soundtrack or the brutality of the kills once Corey goes full Michael, but what sticks out the most to me is that they were able to replace Michael with some angsty dude, and it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care who had the mask on when that blow torch kill happened because it was awesomely brutal. This may be called Ends because of the literal destruction of Michael at the end (though this feels more like fan service than where the story was naturally going), but it was the end for me because it made Michael irrelevant for most of the movie. And if Michael doesn’t matter, then Halloween can finally end.

Random Thoughts

It made sense for Jamie Lee Curtis to be back for the first film, but it seemed like they were forced to include her in the sequels. This is why you have that mob nonsense in Kills at the hospital because Laurie was stuck at the hospital, so there had to be some reason for something to happen there. But the point of the first film was that she was actually irrelevant to Michael. She was just in his way, and this is confirmed by having the doctor lead Michael to Laurie’s compound. It would have been much more satisfying if the rest of Laurie’s story arc was her dealing with the fact that her whole life of prepping was for this made up idea in her head that Michael was after her. But then they have Michael kill Karen, and it justifies Laurie’s mission. And by having Michael come back at the end of Ends it adds even more fuel to her made up narrative. He was just there to get the mask from Corey. It had nothing to do with Laurie. Once again, she was just in the way. And these films never explore that idea because fans want to see Jamie Lee Curtis vs. The Shape. It doesn’t ruin any of these movies for me, but it does make me wonder how much better Kills and Ends could’ve been with less or even no Laurie at all.

I like to think the repeated mention of cherry blossoms is a McBride reference to Stevie from Eastbound and Down, who went by Cherry Blossom when Ashley Schaefer made him dress up as a Japanese geisha.

Poor Ronnie. Dude was just hiding from his wife in his junkyard office trying to watch a Van Damme movie (Hard Target), and he ends up catching friendly fire from the douchiest character in the movie. His is the only tragic death in the film.

That is one nasty little three-way Michael, Corey, and Officer Doug Mulaney have in that sewer.

The diner in Ends claims it had Banh Mi Sandwiches. Good for you, Haddonfield.

The mythology of Michael was all over the place in this trilogy. In the first film, he’s just a man. In Kills, the hatred of the town makes him supernatural. But in Ends, he’s a wheezing, seemingly dying shell living in the sewer even though the town is as fucked up as it’s ever been. Why isn’t the hatred and death in Haddonfield fueling him anymore? Instead, he gets power from killing. Then why hasn’t he been killing more. The homeless dude mentions that Michael has been dragging people into the sewer over the years, but why not kill a bunch and be super powerful? It’s all a little confusing. But I just go with whatever each individual film decides Michael is. As a complete story in three parts, however, it’s messy as fuck. But at least it’s not the Cult of Thorn.

Officer Mulaney is at the diner with his buddies celebrating one of their birthdays. He made a cake for the guy. They have a balloon at the table. No wonder Ally doesn’t want to fuck this dorky dildo.

I rewatched this again right before I wrote this. But at first I just wanted to watch the part with “Come 2 Me” by Johnny Goth playing as Corey and Allyson ride on the motorcycle. I got sucked in and watched the whole thing again. This is a very close second in the entire series.

Halloween and Halloween II - The Zombies

 

When Rob Zombie was handed the keys to the Halloween franchise, I was excited. I thought House of 1000 Corpses was a promising start, and I flat out loved The Devil’s Rejects (and I still feel the same about those movies). I just knew Zombie would bring something brutal and interesting to a franchise I wasn’t a big fan of (at the time). I was half right.

Zombie’s Halloween is brutal and ugly, but I never find it interesting. In the first film, Michael Myers’s backstory is completely fleshed out. Michael has a terrible home life thanks to an all-time shitty stepdad who gives the dickhead dad from Curse of Michael Myers a run for his money and an older sister who doesn’t seem to care about him. He’s bullied. He mutilates animals. With no one seeking real help, despite a mom who seems to truly care about him, he does what we all knew he was going to do and kills his sister, his stepdad, and his sister’s boyfriend (and he killed a bully earlier, for good measure).

With that bummer of a beginning out of the way, we can get to the Halloween-type stuff now, right? Nope. Now we get a lengthy sequence of Loomis trying to get through to Michael. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t. Finally, there’s a time jump and adult Michael escapes, and the movie can really begin.

But we’re forty minutes in at that point, and I’m just exhausted. What follows is the fairly standard version of the first film, but much more brutal than we’ve ever seen. At the time, I thought this was just okay, but I would rather have seen an original film from Zombie. Watching it now, it’s one of my least favorite entries in the series because there’s no fun to be had, and it simply fleshes out shit I didn’t need or care to know about.

But what could Zombie do? Fleshing out Michael’s origin was the only way he could put his stamp on this story, so that’s not his fault. This just should not have been a remake. If they had gone the same route David Gordon Green went in 2018, then this would probably be a much more interesting and entertaining entry without all the backstory baggage. But I’m still glad this version exists. If you wanted a Halloween movie that went all in on the brutality, you couldn’t ask for a better movie. I just don’t want it, but for all you sick fucks out there: enjoy.

Zombie’s Halloween II, especially the director’s cut, is a whole new ballgame. Zombie has said in interviews since that they were going to make these movies no matter what, so he might as well be the one to make them, but the experience overall was a negative one for him due to constant studio interference. So for the second film, it seemed like he decided to say, “Fuck it,” and make the most batshit entry he could. Mission accomplished.

Once again, this is not an easy watch. Right off the bat, you get EMTs talking about having sex with dead bodies, who then slam into a cow in the middle of the road leading to Michael escaping and murdering them. Myers disappears into the countryside becoming a mythic creature following his ghost mom and a white horse. But his impact on the survivors never leaves. Laurie is a broken person, and this film more than any other in the series, attempts to show what trauma can do to a person. (It’s not that the other films don’t address it, but this film makes it a much more debilitating condition.)

This is all interesting, but it’s just not a fun watch. That’s not what Zombie is going for, though. I want a little bit of fun with these movies, so Zombie’s entries aren’t for me. But just like the first one, I’m glad this exists because it is different. In that way, this is much better than the first film because Zombie was able to tell a complete story of his own without having to stay within the bounds of the original storyline. Here, Michael can be a roided up Manson-looking motherfucker who rarely even wears the iconic mask and even talks at one point. I cannot get behind the talking part, though, especially since it’s just him yelling, “Die!” Isn’t Michael always implying “Die!” when he stabs people and shit? Anyway, this is a wholly unique take on Michael and Laurie.

In the end, I still wish Rob Zombie had kept making his own movies at this time rather than falling down the franchise rabbit hole. But Halloween is a more interesting series because of his involvement. These movies may not be for me, but at least they’re distinguishably different from the rest. You could show me scenes from the fourth, fifth, or sixth film and it would be a blind guess which one it came from. If I see a single shot from one of these, I will immediately recognize it as a Zombie film. In a series this long and rehashed, that’s an accomplishment.

Random Thoughts 

I'm a pretty vulgar person, but the amount of cussing in Zombie's films has just become annoying over the years. Nearly every character cusses like an elementary school kid who just discovered cuss words. As someone who uses profane language in articles and Letterboxd entries, this has caused me to reevaluate the amount of cussing I do. I'll still use it when I find it necessary and/or funny, but I have been deleting a lot of it when I proofread these days. Thank you, Zombie.

I did like Malcolm McDowell's dirtbag version of Loomis, mainly in the second film. He gets to go full asshole, and he seems to be enjoying himself. I'm glad someone is in these movies. 

I love that Zombie included a scene of Loomis buying a gun. It always cracked me up how trigger happy of a therapist Loomis was l, especially in the sequels. To see him buy the gun was a fun nod to that.

There's a lot of hate towards the casting of Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob's wife) in nearly every movie he makes. I don't hate her as a performer, but her characters are typically screeching, foul-mouthed annoyance machines. So it was nice to see her as a calm angel of death type character in the second movie.

Speaking of which, she may have been a loving mother to Michael, but she was painfully oblivious. Her response to the school finding a dead cat in Michael’s backpack: "Come on. Big deal. He found a dead cat." Yeah, people come across dead animals in the road and whatnot all the time, but we don't pick them up and keep them as toys! So it might be a "big deal."

Halloween & Halloween II - The Originals

After burning through the entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, I originally planned to take a break from horror films, especially long franchises. Then I realized Halloween Ends was coming out, and someone asked me what I thought about H20, a movie I had never seen. Rather than being sensible and planning on tackling the Halloween series next year, I decided to watch every one of these stupid fucking movies in one week. And I did it, but I’m not writing a full article on each film. Instead, I decided to break it down into segments:

• Halloween and Halloween II - The Originals

• Halloween III: Season of the Witch - The Outlier

• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers - The Thorn Trilogy

• Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection - The Copycats

• Halloween and Halloween II - The Zombie Movies

• Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends - The New Trilogy

I learned from writing about the Massacre movies that there were going to be entries in this series that I just didn’t have much to say about, but thankfully the series is easily broken up, aside from the third movie. But before I get into the first two films, I wanted to comment on the series as a whole a bit.

This series isn’t sacred to me, so I’m not going to dwell on what a Michael Myers movie should be or anything like that. This is all going to be about my personal enjoyment of these movies, even if I might consider the vast majority of them to be technically “bad” movies. Even though I hadn’t seen a lot of this series before I started this, I still knew these were going to be easy watches (aside from the Zombie movies) because I find the slasher genre to be almost relaxing at this point. In other words, these articles are just my personal ramblings, and I’m going to be way too forgiving of some of these films, and I might be too harsh on others, but it’s all going to be my honest response based on what I want from these movies. Enough vague nonsense, here are my thoughts on the first two movies.

After watching all of these movies, I can safely consider myself a fan of the Halloween series, but before that, I truly did not care for these movies. And that goes for the sacred first film, as well. I kind of viewed it the same way I think about Citizen Kane, acknowledging that this was a groundbreaking film that changed future films for decades, but I personally wasn’t all that impressed with it. 

So this has always been a movie I knew I should love, but just didn’t. On top of that, I’ve become a huge John Carpenter fan over the years. How could I not love his most famous film? Because of this, I have watched the first film many times, and I’ve always just thought it was okay.

This time around, I appreciated how easy it was to rewatch this movie, and how creepy it is without being gory or going for cheap scares. I learned that I fucking love seeing Michael Myers in daylight. It’s so much creepier to see him standing behind some sheets or by a hedge than it is to see his face appear in the dark. It’s not that seeing his face in the dark is not scary, it’s just expected. Slashers are typically nighttime monsters. You might think seeing them during the day would lessen the effect or, worse, make them look downright goofy. But it works for Myers, and this is one of the main reasons why I’m not crazy about the second film, which takes place entirely at night. 

More than seeing a daytime monster, the original Halloween, and the series as a whole, is defined by its music. Carpenter’s score is iconic, at this point, and it still works. Usually, an effective score shouldn’t be noticed, but that’s not the case here as I find the score to be the star of the film. It does such an amazing job of taking what could be boring, long scenes and turning them into extremely tense moments.

Appreciating the atmosphere and pace of the film this time around also made me realize something that opened up my enjoyment of the entire series: I don’t give a fuck about Michael Myers. Don’t get me wrong, the outfit and ever-changing mask is synonymous with slasher films, but The Shape is really just a shell of a character. Later films, starting with the second, would attempt to expand on this character, and it’s been downhill ever since. 

I don’t care who’s under that mask. I’m fine with Loomis just telling me he’s pure evil at this point and must be stopped. Good enough for me. I need no motivation. There’s a killer out there, and he must be stopped. That’s the fucking movie. 

In defense of the films that followed, what else could they do? You can’t just have this dead-eyed fucker showing up for no fucking reason other than its Halloween and the local insane asylum has atrocious security and transport personnel. 

I’m not naive enough to say they should have stopped after the first film, but they truly had nowhere else to go with Myers as a character, which is why they added the Laurie-is-his-secret-sister element. Once I accepted that I would never like The Shape more than I did in the first film, it was easy to accept the increasingly goofy sequels. 

Speaking of sequels, the first sequel, Halloween II, is…okay. I already mentioned that I don’t dig the constant night of the movie, and the sister reveal isn’t great, but the story had to go somewhere. Aside from that, there’s another pet peeve I have with the setting: the abandoned hospital. Maybe things were different in the late ‘70s, but in my experience, hospitals are constantly well-lit and populated by more than three people. But maybe the ‘70s were different. Anyway, I just don’t like the setting of the sequel.

Beside that, Michael gets some fun kills (the crazy hot sauna comes to mind) and Loomis gets to run around spouting off cryptic nonsense (“You don’t know what death is!”), so it has its moments. 

By having Michael survive and seem fine soon after the events of the first film, Halloween II also reveals Michael to be so evil that he’s supernatural and possibly cannot be killed. I’m actually fine with this. If you don’t make these slasher villains supernatural, then these movies get too dumb. Because, come on, what normal guy can walk through a hospital door like Michael does at the end?

This brings up one of the common problems with this franchise: is Michael supernatural or just a really strong, evil fucker? The first film made it seem like it was the latter. Yes, he survived some seeming unsurvivable shit, but for all we knew, he was crawling in some bushes, barely alive after he disappeared. Halloween II, however, presents Michael as completely fine. In fact, he’s stronger now. Even though they do try to make it clear that he dies at the end, his ability to bounce back from his injuries in the first film make it clear that he is supernatural. 

This isn’t a problem in general, but the series either went too goofy explaining that he was supernatural (hello, Thorn trilogy), or he’s simply supernaturally strong because slasher villains are supposed to be (H20, Halloween: Resurrection). It’s just uneven. And this applies to the new trilogy, as well, with Michael going from man to supernatural evil killing machine back to man (which I’m actually okay with, as I’ll explain when I get to those movies). This is why I’m a bigger fan of the Friday the 13th series, which finally said, “Fuck it, just Frankenstein Jason’s ass and make him unkillable. Hell, make his evil into a butt worm that travels from person to person, who cares? Just keep making these fucking things!” The Halloween franchise never had that definitive moment because of the messy timelines and multiple reboots, making Michael Myers the most inconsistent villain in slasherdom.

I still kind of love these movies, which is a testament to the first film. Perhaps that’s the problem; the first film was too good to live up to, and the harder filmmakers tried to one-up the original, the more it became apparent that that was impossible. This is why John Carpenter was right about this series all along. After reluctantly writing the script for the second film, he decided the series should move on from Michael Myers all together. Season of the Witch is coming up next.