All 13 Halloween movies ranked, from worst to best
To honor the 45th anniversary of the release of Halloween, try to guess which of the franchise's 13 installments landed in our top spot
Film Features halloween
Writer/director John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher flick Halloween is celebrating its 45th anniversary today which is one year less amazing than the fact that it took 44 years to definitively concluded the series with 2022's Halloween Ends, where Michael Myers was thrown into an industrial shredder. There’s no amount of retconning that will bring him back from that grisly dispatching. Even if a mad scientist comes along with a wheelbarrow full of Gorilla glue and patches him back together, Jamie Lee Curtis promised that Halloween Ends was the last time she’d appear in the franchise. Sure her character had been killed off twice and still found a way to return, but once you’ve been anointed a Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner (for Everything Everywhere All At Once) maybe it’s best for your career to keep out of Haddonfield. So with one of horror’s all-time top grossing franchises celebrating the 45th anniversary of its knife-wielding launch, let’s take a stab at ranking all baker’s dozen Halloween hits and be thankful that, despite five different timelines to keep track of across 13 films, Michael Myers still never wound up in space.
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It’s a one film list. It ended in ‘78 with Dr. Loomis looking down from a balcony not knowing where the Hell Michael ran off to.And then in ‘82 there came a crazy ass film about a Celtic Pagan Mask company. I ignore that Halloween is in the title and enjoy. But in a perfect world this was Halloween II, not III, and with each additional sequel we got a completely different horror story.
Loving that III made it that high on the list.
My main reason to click through this was to see where Halloween III landed, glad that it landed pretty high as I do agree the premise is so nuts that it works. I had mostly forgotten about Halloween 4 but the ending I recall very vividly. Kinda lost track of what happened to Danielle Harris after she was in Roseanne for a few episodes.
She was in both of Zombie’s Halloween movies, as Annie.
I have mixed feelings about Halloween 3. Any five-minute stretch is going to be a treasure-trove of Tom Atkinson’s glorious mustache (has there ever been a movie about an alcoholic doctor playing at detective work), Nancy Loomis playing the Nancy Loomis type, dapper robots, or people’s heads turning into bugs. But as a whole, the placing is pretty sluggish. Still, the original series basically declined in order from Halloween to (steep drop) Halloween 2 to (small drop) Halloween 3 and onward. The Zombie movies are better than the newer ones or the tail end of the original series.
Apperently part of the reason Halloween 3 became such a cult hit was because it flopped so bad in theaters that the studio sold it dirt cheap for local distribution. So it was a feature of the late night movie on TV throughout the 80s
Not just late night TV, I remember (in the early 90s) it showing up a lot on afternoon weekend TV, back when they’d often show older movies at that slot, around Halloween. That’s why it was the first one I saw…
I really kind of wish the premise behind the premise for Halloween III had succeeded: that Halloween should be an anthology series with a new plot and threat for each movie rather than being Micheal every time (though maybe still having him recur every so often in the series). Maybe it would have worked if they’d tried it with the second one instead of getting the audience to think of it as the Michael Myers series right away with a straight sequel in 2.
Obviously the original was going to be 1st, and 3 & 4 have developed cult followings, so that also checks out. But why the Hell is H2O ranked so low? And that a pretty low ranking for part 2, as well.
Original Halloween II should be higher, yes. Definitely made me scared of being in hospitals for a while.
IMO the Zombie ones are ranked too low, and the 2018 reboot is too high. HalloweenHalloween 2 Halloween 3Halloween (Zombie)Halloween 2 (Zombie) H20Shuffle together the Gordon Greene ones and the rest, or just watch a Friday the 13th movie.
Nah, they are right about Zombie’s first. I remember seeing Carpenter’s cut; and the next night a bunch of us went to see Zombie’s version. And it was a WTF moment as it looked like he lifted scenes right out of the Carpenter one we watched the night before.
“But why the Hell is H2O ranked so low?”
According to the explanation here, partly ranked so low because Laurie isn’t the “mousy” Laurie we know, but rather a kick ass JLC, which… Wha?? Everything is wrong with that criticism.
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The later love for Halloween III: Season of the Witch sometimes confuses me. I feel like sometimes we want to overcompensate for the fact that Carpenter was probably right about trying to move away from Myers for a while — the anthology idea has seemed like a better idea after almost every subsequent movie.But Halloween III is not that good. The story is convoluted and a lot of it is presented really poorly. I’m all for bad films and cult films, but I just do not think this thing holds up.As for Halloween Kills — I was surprised by how little I liked that after Halloween. Myers suddenly posing dead bodies, the horrible “evil” monologue, on and on. My interest in Halloween Ends is almost zero after that.
It’s hard to believe David Gordon Green made both the 2018 Halloween & Halloween Kills. It’s like if Donald Kaufman made the sequel to a Charlie Kaufman movie.
He posed bodies in 1978 (Annie’s) and 2018 (the cops, one of whom he took the time to carve their head into a jack o lantern). “He’s still doing the thing he’s done in the others” is a weird critique.
Fair enough, I just don’t recall him doing anything that felt quite the same as that. It was done sheerly for the view of whoever finds them, whereas the others felt like there was some sort of interest on his own part.
Yep, to everything you say about Halloween 3. It’s a fascinating curio and the anthology idea was a good one, but the movie itself?
Halloween 3 was one of the first horror movies I ever saw as a little kid and it scared the living crap out of me and haunted me for years, as first-horror-movies-as-a-kid are wont to do, so it has a special place in my heart for that. But watching it now… it’s certainly silly fun? Also “if you watch this video you will die horrifically” is not exactly a trope to scoff at!
Yeah, Halloween III was crap at the time and no amount of retro-fitting will make it anything other than that.
I really enjoyed it for what it tried to do by attempting to change the trajectory of these films, and the mask scene is pretty fucking horrifying, but yeah, it’s not good.
With all due respect, how dare you, sir? Halloween H20 is right behind the original for me.
How old are you? I dont know where I put it, but it’s high on my list, but it also came out when I was in high school and I feel like that cements it as meaning more to me than some of the others.
I’m 36 in about a week. Some of my affection for it is definitely nostalgia-based, since I saw it in theaters when I was 11. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but I prefer it over the new trilogy and the Rob Zombie ones.
Pleasantly surprised by this list, as the top 4 is actually my top 4, in order. I did not think 4 got much love, but I thought it was by far the most enjoyable of the sequels. 3 was also surprisingly good but other than slapping Halloween on the front, it was just so different from the other ones that it seems like it should not even really count. But it does and I agree its the third best.
H20 this low is insane. you’re gonna put it below Kills, one of the worst movies anyone’s seen in the past few years?props for the high 4 placement, I guess, but I’m confused what anyone finds to like in 5. it’s a thoroughly unpleasant slog, weirdly mean-sprited from the moment Rachel dies, and just ugly to look at. Danielle Harris is fantastic in it but that’s really about it
This list is in random order except #1
And 13 if only just for the bad faith with Laurie…
Should rank the Meyers masks but lets be honest, really only the first one is great. I look at that screen shot of 4 and man does it look awful.
Even if this is somewhat different from my own ranking, I’m glad this list is made by someone who gets these movies, or who can appreciate what they’re doing. Also, yes. 4 is 100% the best sequel. Just damn good direction.
There is little scarier in this life than Anthony Michael Hall, and when he quipped the classic line, “Evil Dies Tonight!”, perhaps he was referencing himself all along? Good day, gentlemen.
Here’s their list, best to worst:Halloween ‘78Halloween 4Halloween 3Halloween 2018Halloween 2 ‘81Halloween 5Halloween KillsHalloween EndsHalloween II ‘09Halloween 6Halloween H20Halloween ‘07ResurrectionHere’s how I’d rank them, but there are some huge quality gulfs between some entries on the list.—-GreatHalloween ‘78—-GoodHalloween 2 ‘09Halloween 3 (somewhat ironically, but I’ve watched it the most besides the original)Halloween 2018Halloween 4—-AlrightHalloween 2 ‘81Halloween ‘07 (theatrical cut, i hate the director’s cut with the added rape)——Fairly badHalloween Kills —-Outright awful Halloween Resurrection (at least it’s funny)Halloween H20
Halloween 6Halloween 5So, given I have very little in common with their list, I dunno what I’ll think about Ends. Guessing it will be like Kills, in that it will be quite bad but still better than all the utter trash from 5 through Resurrection.
My non-spoilery review: it’s better than “Kills” which would be last on my personal list even though there’s some of these I only half-watched once years ago. It’s not particularly-good, and it’s got a really odd story. They tried to be different, so points for trying.
How can I not love Halloween Kills? Easily. It’s just a bad movie that should have never been made.
Halloween Ends is utter garbage and anything higher than last place is giving this movie too much credit.
Am I the only person who thinks IV is a disaster? Except for the first minute-and-a-half? Which, by the way, is the best 90 seconds of film in the whole franchise.
Season of the Witch had that awesome cover that scared the shit out of me in Jumbo Video when I was a kid.
Whenever something like this comes up, I wonder which one is gonna be “JUSTICE FOR…”’d harder – H3:SOTW or RZ’s Halloween 2. I kinda get the love behind H3, it’s different and weird and hits an old-school sweet spot enough of the time to always be diverting, but the second H2, whatever it has to say about “It’s about trauma!” other than that being a final girl would suck actually, is constantly undercut by being stone-stupid beyond any other Halloween sequel.
13 movies? As in Friday the 13th? Even the Jason films haven’t gotten to that level yet, lol. Intriguing.And just think. in 5-6 years or so, there’s going to be another push for yet another reboot, presumably with all new actors again.For H20, I appreciated that film. I’m glad that LL Cool J’s character got to survive the carnage.
Maybe it’s blasphemous to admit, but I prefer Season of the Witch over even the original Halloween. The slow lumbering killer just isn’t my favorite horror genre.
Well this instantly lost me with H20 ranked *third worst*. I know not everyone shares my love and affection for it (I think it handles Laurie’s “TROMA” much better than the later Halloween) but, “It doesn’t help that Laurie seems to be a different character entirely,
coming off more like the no-bullshit version of Curtis herself than the
mousy Laurie we know and love.”
Wha? Laurie is meant to be “mousy?” Is she mousy in the later Halloween that’s ranked higher? And, while I don’t think she was ever mousy, why would she still be mousy after going through the events of Halloween (original) and Halloween II?
Not sure. Ask the version who still nervously twirls her hair (in ENDS) when talking to a crush.
This handy chart for your convenience!https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3503950/handy-chart-lays-halloween-franchises-choose-adventure-timeline/
Halloween III is not a proper Halloween film and should have been left off of the list.It gets contrarian love but it’s actually a pretty silly and convoluted horror flick.Having said that, I think the series would have potentially been much stronger had they gone the anthology direction Carpenter envisioned.
I was watching Mark Kermode’s review of this and you could see his anger and disappointment that they keep stringing this nonsense out over and over again.
14. Fucking Slideshows on a Website in 2022. Eat ass, Jim.
Halloween Kills better than H20? No chance. Kills fails on almost every level.
All I can say to seeing the title of this article is….Thirteen? GODDAMN? THIRTEEN?!?!!
Halloween Resurrection will always be at the bottom of the barrel, but I never would have thought we’d see another Halloween terrible enough to join Resurrection. After all these years it has found a partner in Halloween Ends. The kills in the movie are interesting, but the story is so meandering and at times just boring. It often conjured images of a crying Milhouse “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?!” Also, some of the decisions they decided to make with their key characters and their development made me say “No, that’s not something they’ve ever shown that character would be prone to do. That’s totally against character!”Reminds me of how Mark Hamill felt when he found out Rian Johnson’s intentions for Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.
I’ve watched all 13 and in general I love horror. There are 5 “decent to great movies” 5 “meh to bad movies” and 3 “shit this is friday the 13th part 3 and 8 bad”.1. Halloween 782. Halloween 183. H20 (I was in a theater in Queens NYC when the place went crazy when she locked herself in with Michael.) one of the best “lets go” moments in horror in awhile.4. Halloween 4 (I cut school to see this in 1988 when I was in high school) it’s fine but after part 3 making alot of us kids mad, this movie was great back then.5. Hallowen 2 (1981) Meh……
6. Hallowen Ends (not good but I’m not mad about it)7. Halloween (Zombie) 8. Hallowen Kills ( this movie was such a huge drop off from 18)9. Halloween 5 (why the fuck didn’t they bring up Jamie killing her step mom or why did they kill Rachel off so fast!Shit!10. Halloween 3 (I saw it as a kid in 83 and it was terrible to a 10 year old)11. Halloween 2 (Zombie)12. Halloween 6 (how the fuck isn’t this the worst!)13. Halloween Resurrection (the theater in queens I was in booed this fucking movie after Jamie lee was killed and when Busta broke out the kicks).Anyway to each’s own but I’m laughing at horror twitter being so mad at the last movie. I didn’t need non stop killing like in Kills or Zombie 1 or 2 for this movie.
Halloween 5 is one of the worst films ever made (the genuinely-tense laundry chute scene is the only good thing about it), shocked at its placement here.The original is a masterpiece, 4 and 2018 are legitimately good, 2 and H20 are fine, and SOTW is an intriguing mess with has a fantastic ending. The rest are varying degrees of terrible, with occasional good scenes and/or interesting ideas sprinkled in.