Halloween: A Complete Guide to Horror's Weirdest, Most Unpredictable Franchise (2023)

The story of Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois was told and retold: the night in 1963 that an angelic 6-year-old Michael Myers, dressed in a clown suit, brutally murdered his teenage sister, followed by the night 15 years later , again on Halloween, when he broke out of a mental institution in his famously mutilated William Shatner mask to take virgin babysitter Laurie Strode, a.k.a.Jamie Lee Curtisin the role that would make her the ultimate scream queen.

As Laurie, Curtis has battled the immortal, quiet but single-minded Michael Myers in seven of the 13 filmsJohn Carpenter’sHalloweenfranchises - including the latest trilogy, a trio of revamped sequels that launched in 2018 and reimagined Laurie's adult life but still showed her being stalked and pursued by the killer. Directed byDavid Gordon Green, the (supposedly) last part of the trilogy,Halloween ends, coming this weekend.

The new film stars Laurie, now with decades of experience behind her, watching Michael, waiting for him to return for one final round of leisurely, unstoppable violence.

Of all the iconic horror franchises, none quite as quirky and unpredictable as this one. Although the original filmHalloween(1978) is Carpenter's signature film, being the only one in the series he directed. He then co-wrote and produced a sequel with his collaboratorDebra Hill, but her subsequent attempt to keep the series from becoming formulaic would result in it meandering in random, clipped directions.

As a result, most horror franchises stick to their core concept and expand on it over timeHalloweenFranchise keeps getting lost and restarting - hence the shaky continuity of the latest trilogy. The only thing we can say for sure about the entire franchise timeline is that the first two films are paired and will be released back-to-back on the same night. After that, the franchise goes haywire, spinning through one-offs, sequels, and remakes that constantly overwrite each other.

This cyclical quality may also be the reasonHalloweenis so enduringly popular - you definitely don't need to have seen every movie in the franchise to understand what's happening or to enjoy the next one. For the comingHalloween ends, it helps to have seen the previous two films in the revised trilogy, but seeing the rest is certainly not a requirement.

Of course, there's another facet of the series' enduring popularity that can't be overlooked, and that's the game of cat-and-mouse between Laurie and horror's most relentless killer. So if you're a Michael Myers fan, you've come to the right place: let us guide you through the films and tell you which ones are must-haves for casual wearHalloweenFan and which are skippable (most of them, but there's some candy in the Halloween piñata!).

The Rules by Michael Myers

Before we begin: With a franchise this contradictory, it's good to establish which parts of the filmsareconsistent. This way when you refresh yoursHalloweenMovies, it doesn't matter if you skip some. Here are the franchise's main rules - all of which, unsurprisingly, involve its iconic villain.

1) Michael Myers always wears his mask — and he never, ever speaks.

In none of the films is he seen without his mask. The Shatner masks have become clothHorror Movie Legend. As for his voice, he's only heard speaking in one film that explores his childhood - before he became a monster. Furthermore? Nada.

2) Michael is usually referred to as "The Shape" and is always referred to as a boogeyman at some point.

A laudatory tradition that began in the first two films and has been revived intermittently over the years, The Shape is back for the latest trilogy. The boogeyman has remained a constant.

3) Michael is always obsessed with Laurie Strode or her closest relatives.

The reason for this is revealed in the second film, and all subsequent films have retained this explanation for their context.

4) Michael never walks. Healwayswalks slowly behind its victims and is never in a hurry.

Part of what's terrifying about Michael is that he's easily the most laid-back serial killer in history. It never accelerates beyond a leisurely stroll and often seems almost careless in its attempts to fend off its prey. Of course, he almost always gets it in the end.

5) Michael cannot be killed.

This is obvious but worth noting. Throughout the franchise, he will survive multiple gunshots, stabbings, explosions, car crashes, electrocution, being run over, having his skull smashed in, being set on fire multiple times, and (sort of) being decapitated.

do you have all this Big. Let's go trick or treating!

Viewing Guide: Tricks (☠️) are films you should avoid unless you are a franchise completist. treats ()are movies you should watch!

Halloween(1978): The one who founded an entire genre

Keyword:"The nightIScame home!"

Is it a trick or a treat?Definitely a treat.

Halloweenis famous for many reasons. He single-handedly ushered in the era of the slasher film. It's John Carpenter's breakout film, a low-budget indie that made an astronomical profit and launched his career. It has one of the most famous soundtracks and horror themes in history, written by Carpenter himself. It remains an impossibly chilling film, packed with lingering and now iconic footage of his killer stalking bucolic suburbs, biding his time or casually watching his kills. And, most importantly, it introduced us to one of horror's most iconic villains, destined to be mentioned in the same breath forever as Freddy and Jason.

Halloweenis often credited as the first example of the slasher subgenre of horror and for introducing the world to the concept of the Final Girl: the one girl normally chosen for her virginal qualities and allowed to survive the cinematic massacre of her all counterparts.

Except none of those things are true. The slash-happy giallo genre of Italian noir thrillers is olderHalloweenby about a decade, and two earlier slasher films gave us the prototypical Final Girl: Tobe HoopersTexas Chainsaw Massacreand the Canadian cult classicBlack Christmas, released a few months apart in 1974.

Halloween, however, slashers and Final Girls burst into the mainstream, thanks in large part to the appeal of Jamie Lee Curtis as the wily if mostly helpless Laurie Strode.

Laurie embodied the Final Girl trope from the start: she was "too smart" for boys and dressed like a shabby housewife, in contrast to the other girls with their trendy fashions and sexual exploration; In other words, she embodied the kind of chaste virtue that ensured her survival. But Curtis managed to play that role with a kind of fierce, gleaming slyness beneath the passive exterior — and two decades later, on her return to the franchise after a long hiatus, she would truly shake off the helpless act once and for all.

The other main character ofHalloweenis an unlikely one, but a fan favorite nonetheless: Michael's avid therapist, Dr. Loomis, played by the always crazydonald please, who would remain the heart of the franchise until his death.

Then there's the specter of Michael himself, played primarily by the actor (and later established director).Nik Schloss. As a horror villain, Michael ranks very high on the "too incredible to be effective" gauge, but there's something genuinely and indelibly terrifying about him from the moment he shows up as a kid on his first killing spree in a harlequin costume , at the time he returns to silently stalk Laurie's suburban neighborhoods, dangling a knife and wearing a mask that's dirty, mottled, and still creepy as hell.

Halloween II(1981): The one who sealed the formula

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Keyword:"More of the nightIScame home." (I guess modern horror was still working out how to really market this franchise thing, huh.)

Is it a direct sequel?And.

Is it a trick or a treat?For trueHalloweenFans, it's a treat, albeit an arduous one.

Halloween 2, also written by Carpenter and Hill, picks up immediately after the first film, still on the same Halloween night. Of course, while Loomis leads the police across town looking for Michael, our killer takes it to the hospital where Laurie is recovering from her injuries and proceeds to kill all of the staff to get to her. The film ends with the shocking revelation that Laurie belongs to MichaelMiscellaneousSister who was born too young to know him and has been shielded from the truth all her life - until, of course, on Halloween, her past literally caught up with her.

What makes this film notable among the franchises is that it sets the central conflict between Michael and the town of Haddonfield itself. Haddonfield is the only "character" who appears consistently throughoutHalloweenseries (minus the runaway, which is the third film), and his relationship with Michael changes in interesting ways over the decades.

How movies go, thoughHalloween 2is not very good. Relegated to an even more useless role than in the first film, Laurie spends the film disabled due to her injuries. And even though we're only on the second film, the murders already feel formulaic and superficial; Gone are the creatively displayed corpses and carefully arranged murder tableaus staged to heighten the horror of whoever finds them.

Whether it's because it's the same night and he's been on his feet all day running from the law, or because at some point he apparently took six bullets in his chest and headHalloween IIMichael is pretty "whatever" about how the bodies fall. However, he can fake a really dumb cop by pretending to be dead, and he clearly enjoys that part, so you do it Mikey.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch: The's a whole different story

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Keyword:"The night nobody comes home."

Is it a direct sequel?No, it has nothing to do with anything elseHalloweenFilm.

Is it a trick or a treat?☠️ This movie is a dirty prank for everyoneHalloweenFans, but it's worth checking out just for the weirdness - especially for John Carpenter completists.

ToHalloween 2, Carpenter and Hill shared a vision for the future ofHalloween: Turn it into a series of anthology films instead of continuing the Michael Myers story. As such,Season of the Witch, directing and screenplayHalloweenProduktionsdesigner Tommy Lee Wallace, has nothing to do with the previous two films, apart from recalling a single vague line in the second film about how Samhain, October 31st, was a Druidic holiday often accompanied by ritual sacrifices.

Today we are used to horror franchises expanding from their original storylines and thanks to more recent series likeParanormal ActivityandThe incantation. butSeason of the Witchlacked any connective tissue compared to its predecessors and strayed too far from the formula fans had expected. As a matter of fact,Season of the Witchactually made the originalHalloweena film that exists within its plot that has utterly destroyed any semblance of continuity.

Season of the WitchInstead, he walks a fine line between Lovecraftian horror and corporate sci-fi dystopia, planting himself in California rather than Illinois and foreshadowing a horrifying global Halloween Night conspiracy, all originating in a tiny rural areacompany city. Frequent carpenter employeeTom AtkinsStars as a middle-aged doctor who is driven insane after a patient dies at the hands of mysterious suits for a company that sells Halloween masks. Yes, that's a real sentence I just wrote.

The film meanders between Atkins' often far-fetched investigations and sinister events surrounding the factory and her town, while the company owner is a cross between an evil Willy Wonka andHerr Summerisle, monitors everything. The whole ridiculous plot comes to a head with about as much coherence as you would expect based on everything I just wrote.

predictable,Season of the Witchwas a box office flop, ending Carpenter and Hill's hopes of turning the franchise into an anthology series. But then it gradually became a cult classic among horror fans; You can see his influence on modern horror films likecottage in the forest, and its fans argue if it had been a standalone film calledSeason of the Witch, his reception would have been very different.

Also the soundtrack to itSeason of the Witch, again composed by Carpenter, has a theme entitled "Chariots of Pumpkins," and it isFantastic.

Movies No. 4–6 (1988–1995): Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,Halloween 5: Revenge of Michael Myers, andHalloween: The Curse by Michael Myers— the ones who deserted Laurie for cute kids and evil druids

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Headlines: "This evening,HE IS BACK!"; "Michael is alive. AND THIS TIME THEY ARE READY!”; "Terror never rests in peace."

Are they direct sequels?Yes, easy.

Are they tricks or treats?☠️ TRICKS, don't be fooled - we checked out these movies so you don't have to.

I have to say for the record that Donald Pleasence is a really great actor. His appearance in Outback HorrorWake up in shockis unforgettable. He was a perfectBond villain. He's been nominated for four Tony Awards! But he toolovedchewing the landscape, and the middle period of theHalloweenFranchise,Iin the dr. Loomis becomes the unlikely main character, gave him enough to grit his teeth.

The fourth and fifth films, produced in 1988 and 1989 respectively, attempt to continue the saga of the Strodes and Michael Myers without Jamie Lee Curtis. A bunch of new writers and directors came into the franchise and killed Laurie Strode in an offscreen car crash, replacing her as the focal point of the story with her reinvented 8-year-old daughter, an annoyingly angelic little girl named Jamie. All three films are generic teen slashers with little Spielberg kids and a raging Pleasence in the middle.

In the end nothing happensHalloweenHowever, 4 or 5 is really important because the sixth movie kills Jamie outright to make room for a new set of victims (includingclueless-era Paul Rudd) and a whole lot of crazy new storyline: Michael apparently fathered a son by his niece Jamie (wtf) while she was still a part of a full fledged goth cult (wtf!!) for about a decade (wtf!).Anothervast druidic conspiracy orchestrated by the head of Michael's sanatorium to mystically implant Michael with superhuman sociopathy becauseHALLOWEEN. WTF!!!

But none oftheno matter becauseHalloween 6was widely hated, flopped at the box office, and then its absurd plot was also completely ignored by every other film that followed.

One interesting thing about these films is Haddonfield's increasing self-awareness as an unspoken figure in the Michael Myers story. The police become an overzealous, hapless army opposed to Michael's eventual return, while the townsfolk believe he's finally gone, turning him into a veritable urban legend. The latest trilogy returns to that idea and expands on these three films in a way most others doHalloweenfilms do not.

The main attraction of this wayward middle part of theHalloweenSaga is Dr. Loomis from Pleasence. Armed only with a pathetic and flimsy pistol, Loomis seems to be the only character who can keep facing Michael and survive to tell the story. And Pleasence always manages to walk a fine line between stone cold sanity and madness that makes Loomis vulnerable and lovable even when he's at his most aggressive.

Unfortunately, Pleasence died after filming but before the release of the sixth film dedicated to him. And without him, there was really only one other person who could hold itHalloweenflame burns.

Halloween H20: 20 years later(1998): The one where Laurie’s back

Headlines:"The nightYOUhit back!"; "Terror isn't going on vacation this summer." (This one makes sense considering the film was released in August.)

Is it a direct sequel?Yes, as the title says.

Is it a trick or a treat?Honestly, this is a treat!

Director Steve Miner wisely brought Jamie Lee Curtis back into the franchiseH20completely ignoring everything that happened in films 3 through 6 aside from the barely mentioned car accident that initially killed Laurie Strode. Here we learn that she faked her own death, moved to California, and became the principal of a private school under an assumed identity. Michael tracks her down anyway, just in time for her son's 17th birthday, and the madness begins again.

Two things stand out when you look at itH20.The first is how much the '90s helped push the treatment of women in horror films, and how starkly different the grown-up Laurie is from her tepid, frightened younger self. While she's still clearly traumatized by what happened to her, she's also built an amazing life as an academic and a mother — and now she's ready to fight to keep that life.H20is the first film in which one of the women targeted by Michael, or indeed any of the victims, actually tries to fight back, rather than just walking around in fear for most of the film. And the film takes it a step further by having Laurie decide to stay and confront Michael even if she has the chance to escape.

The second is how much ofScream had an immediate impact on horror films. (At one point the film shows his group of teenagers watchingscream 2on Halloween night.)H20is much more character-driven than any of its predecessors and revolves around Laurie and her relationship with her son (Josh Hartnett). This is the moment when you can see thatHalloweenProducers have finally figured out that horror franchises can be about more than just horror.

Halloween: Resurrection(2001): The one in which Michael kills Laurie

Keyword:"Evil finds its way home."

Is it a direct sequel?Apparently it's a loose sequelH20, but we reject this premise.

Is it a trick or a treat?☠️ WORST TRICK, stay away unless you like cheesy early internet nostalgia and loads of fuzzy found footage tricks.

Halloween: Resurrectionis so trending for summer 2001 that it isfastWorth watching for the cheesy aspects of The Time Capsule: the impact of early reality television, the advent of online relationships, and of course the way it both worksScreamandBlair Witch Projecthad led to a trend of so-meta-it-hurt horror films that experimented with found footage and shaky cameras. Here you can see a bunch of college students watching and cheering on a bunchMiscellaneousCollege students — and for some reason Busta Rhymes — as they invade the old Myers house for a live reality show on TV, which of course turns into a house of horrors as Michael does a slice-and-dice shows up.

Where is Laurie during all this you ask? Gone is the assertive survivalist Laurie fromH20. The film robs her of her new life and puts her in an institution as a result of the ending of that previous film. Then it kills her within the first 10 minutes and rocks the show as she kisses Michael on the mouth and promises "see you in hell".

Wasresurrectionthis is completely missedHalloweenit just isn'tHalloweenwithout Michael fighting a specific group of characters. As far as thatHalloween 4-6worked, they worked because Michael was still following the Strode family and Dr. Loomix fought. Take away that connection and you have a formulaic slasher film that no amount of clever stylization can cover.

Halloween(2007) andHalloween II(2009), also known as Rob Zombie'sHalloween

Headlines:"Evil has a destiny"; "Family is forever."

Are they direct sequels?No, these are spiritually faithful remakes of the first two films.

Are they tricks or treats?Very spicy treats.

From the emotionally charged opening scene, where we begin to realize we're looking at a picture of Michael Myers' deeply dysfunctional personal life before he snapped and continued his childhood rampage, Rob Zombie takes it onHalloweenannounces itself as something different, a cut above all other films in the franchise bar der Erste.

By giving Michael a backstory similar to those that often spawn real-life serial killers, the film humanizes him and belies the idyllic "terror comes to the suburbs" aspect of all previous films. The film also delves into an aspect of his story that has so far only been described in hindsight: his psychotherapy sessions with Dr. Loomis, played here byMalcolm McDowell. zombies second movie,Halloween II, extends this interest in psychology to Laurie Strode (played this time byScout Taylor-Compton), exploring the emotional and psychological connection between her and Michael.

Like all Rob Zombie films, these are steeped in violence and profanity, but the deranged atmosphere helps make Michael feel more interesting than any previous films - he's both a superhuman killer and a boy who's clearly affected by the sociological factors is driven to turn people into sociopaths. As far as horror movies go, these are among the better offerings of the 2000s crop of gritty slashers.And because it's still about Michael Myers, it all feels epic and larger than life in a way few of these other films do.

Halloween(2018): The one in which Laurie is a paranoid survivor

Keyword:"40 years later, evil returns home."

Is it a direct sequel?Yes, they are direct sequels to the first two films.

Trick or treat?A treat!

The 2018 film should feel very familiarHalloweenfans. Curtis' Laurie is back in full survival (and survivor) mode. Her family, particularly her adult daughter Karen, has spent most of her life mistaking Laurie for a paranoid renegade conspiracy nut, hoarding guns, and rhapsodizing about the day Michael Myers will return. Their tune changes quickly once Michael actually returns to Haddonfield.

This version ofHalloweenis a direct homage to the originalHalloweenin many ways. It expects its viewers to know and love the original film and respond to its echo years later. Especially thisHalloweenis fully aware of whatHalloweenMovies Do It Best: Let Michael Myers terrify viewers as he carries out his regularly scheduled sinister rampage through Haddonfield.

Halloween-Kills(2021): The one in which Haddonfield is the star

Keyword:"Evil dies tonight."

Is it a direct sequel?Yes, it's a direct sequel to the 2018 film.

Trick or treat? ☠️A skippable slog.

For a franchise that includes a surprise incest baby and two separate druid conspiracies, it speaks volumes that this film is one of the most boring of the series. Pick up after the 2018 movie,Halloween-Kills, according to the originalHalloween II, zooms out to focus equally on Laurie and the town of Haddonfield. It's 20 percent formulaic killings and 80 percent random crowds of townsfolk chanting, "Evil dies tonight! Evil dies tonight!” ad nauseam. Spoiler alert: Evil doesn't die tonight, but someone else dies in the final brutal moments - and the ramifications of that death will likely carry over into the latest film.

Halloween ends(2022): Could it be the very last Halloween movie? (Dubious.)

The upcoming film jumps five years into the future after the events of the previous two films and promises us one final (??) showdown between Laurie and Michael. In that film, Laurie has vowed to kill herself if it means take down Michael once and for all — but we've seen her attempt that before, only to be brought back from death for another franchise reboot.

However, this is theHalloween13th film of the franchise – andWe know what they say about number 13. Is that Laurie's lucky or unlucky number? We'll find out soon.

Halloween endshits theaters and streams on Peacock on October 14th.

Update, October 13, 2022, 11:00 a.m.:This story was originally published in 2018 and has been updated to include the latest entries in theHalloweenFranchise.