Whatever it is, Green and co. believe that Myers must be more than a stabbing machine. (Hell, he might not even exist. More on this in a sec.) Each of the Green iterations has felt progressively more “elevated horror” to abuse an overused term. It is too occupied with ideas and literary devices to make us properly shit our pants.

The damnedest thing is that I think Green kind of has a point, or at least a kernel of a good idea. Michael Myers is not very interesting as a villain, and, in 1978, that was by design. A villain who is “pure evil,” to quote Dr. Loomis, is not really a sustaining storytelling device. It gets old, and if a movie throws everything but the thrill ride out the window (a la Resurrection), the viewers get restless.

I also think that Gordon and his bevy of writers and producers actually settled on an intriguing premise to spice things up: What does it take for someone to “put on the mask”? How does a person lose their humanity enough to become The Shape? I’ve been wanting to see this in action since the shocking finale of Halloween 4, which gave us another potential killer. Whether Michael is a mentor or conduit or just an inspiration, I think following a new Myers-adjacent killer has promise.

The problem is in the storytelling, which is pretty damn broken. The first hour-or-so of Halloween Ends suggest that Michael Myers is a metaphor or hallucination for our new main character, Corey (Rohan Campbell). I find this to be a fascinating hook – Myers as personal demon and manifestation of insanity rather than actual physical killer.

And yet there’s no follow through. Certain scenes, especially in the last act, state pretty explicitly that Myers is a real person doing stabbing, which kind of breaks down the thematic objective.

There are basically no characters served well by the direction the story has taken. Laurie has been reinvented once again, and her relationship with Haddonfield and her trauma has been severely rewritten. I don’t entirely mind the lack of continuity across the Green Halloweens, but positive-thinking pariah Laurie tries to illuminate some concept of victim-blaming or destructive fame that never crystallizes.

Allyson, meanwhile, remains a total cipher of a character with no real character traits; I was neither surprised nor interested in any of her choices in the way the movie wants us to be. When she spurns Laurie, the movie wants it to feel like a gut punch heel turn, but both Laurie and Allyson are so poorly calibrated that it doesn’t feel like anything.

And then there’s Corey. Rohan Campbell out of nowhere playing the biggest role in the supposed last Halloween movie. (Fun fact: it is at least the fourth time a Halloween movie has qualified as the “last” in the series.) I like the idea of Corey much more than the execution, and a lot of that is because the previously mentioned storytelling problems on just how metaphorical this evil is supposed to be. For example: If Myers is a mental manifestation of evil, why do Corey’s interactions with him have homoerotic vibes? When we see the “Shape” that’s in Corey’s eyes, is it a literal curse, or metaphorical societal sin bringing the man down, a la Joker? These questions have no answers, and their ambiguity is not especially compelling, just confusing and discordant.

Even if the film had nailed everything in the thematic and storytelling component, the nuts-and-bolts horror stuff is thoroughly mediocre. The movie takes a step towards grittier violence, but the sense of dread isn’t there. None of the kills other than the accidental one from the prologue really stuck with me. Even Myers’ death feels kind of dull despite the gruesomeness. Myers supposedly dies every other film in the series, so it has no special impact. (And nothing can top the decapitation in H20.)

There’s some fun stuff on the fringes. I find it hilarious that the marching band geeks are the bullies. And there’s some intriguing subversion in making nu-Michael and nu-Laurie (Allyson and Corey) lovers. I felt a sense of relief the film paid off on the Chekhov’s metal grinder, though to far less violent ends than expected.

But the fringes aren’t enough. We’re thirteen movies in. Swing for the damn fences. Make it weirder and gnarlier and more apocalyptic. Maybe even coherent, if you’re feeling ambitious. Oh well.

Kills picks up moments after the ending of the 2018 timeline re-re-reboot (simply entitled Halloween). This will remind keen franchise devotees — and how many watching this movie are NOT devotees? — of the continuity between the 1978 Halloween and the 1981 Halloween II as well as the 2007 Halloween and the 2009 Halloween II. And that’s not where the similarities end. Just like the ‘81 and ‘09 Halloween II movies, Kills spends a significant percentage of its runtime in a hospital where Laurie is recovering. You may as well call this one Halloween II 3.

I swear at some point I’ll stop comparing Kills to other films, but that’s what happens when a series that’s twelve movies deep reinvents itself in the name of modern horror aesthetics every ten years with only minor variations on a few themes.

The plot, inasmuch as it exists: Myers escapes the inferno at the conclusion of Halloween and does some more stabbing. Then, a vigilante mob forms to hunt him down. And… that’s about it. Everything else is filler. One thing that stands out: Laurie Strode plays essentially no role in the plot this time around! She’s bed-bound and wounded; when she tries to join the mob, her pesky internal bleeding halts her. Perhaps Laurie’s lack of agency and plot centrality is connected to the sense that not much happens here; more likely, they’re both symptoms of an overall storytelling aimlessness.

More generously, you might call this a Halloween that focuses on flavor ahead of narrative. Certainly there are some moments that give color to the town of Haddonfield and its various residents. I enjoyed, in particular, a feud between an adult homeowner couple and some prankster trick-or-treating teens. It inevitably turns violent, as things tend to do in a slasher (though this makes me curious if there are any good hangout movies set at Halloween), but I at least felt a little bit of sadness when the couple, Big John and Little John, died. They had some personality.

At the thematic center of the film is Anthony Michael Hall playing Tommy Doyle, the little kid that Laurie babysat in the 1978 film. (You may recall that Hall is not the first actor to play a grown up Doyle — Paul Rudd played him in The Curse of Michael Myers.) I found Hall’s presence darkly comic and enjoyable. I was rooting for him as he stirred up a torch-and-pitchfork mob with an “evil dies tonight!” chant.

The whole vigilante subplot is another borrow from the 1981 Halloween II. David Gordon Green and team apparently thought this deserved a bit more exploration, and I agree; I definitely think the concept of Haddonfield’s collective reaction to Myers’ violence is a lot more interesting than yet another investigation of Laurie’s trauma. I actually think the film’s deliberate decision sever the connection between Laurie and Michael is one of the smarter things the movie does, since this reboot timeline retconned the ideas that they’re siblings.

On the other hand, if there’s no special link between Laurie and Michael, he becomes a generic embodiment of evil. A superhuman killing force. This worked in 1978, but in 2022 it feels like the Halloween franchise taking a few more steps down the “elevated horror” route — evil is a metaphor. This is backed up by the way the way the mob bloodlust is treated as a shared mental illness rather than anything cathartic. It’s not exactly pretentious, but it certainly wants to be meaningful in a way that doesn’t really work.

I ultimately feel quite warmly towards Kills, much more than I expected, but I can’t say it’s good, or even particularly close to good. It suffers from the same overall pointlessness of its precursor. And though I found some modest pleasures in the film’s discursive story, it is still a whole lot of nothing packed into 105 minutes, never quite clever enough or funny enough or scary enough or anything enough to be worth paying attention to. I like it more than the 2018 Halloween, but only barely.

I guess the “big idea,” to the extent there is one, is to remake Halloween in the modern day image of prestige “elevated” horror. This franchise has been a true chameleon in mimicking the modern trends, dating back to the very first sequel, which brought in the heightened gore popularized by Friday the 13th — which itself was a part of big slasher wave that the original Halloween kicked off. The first timeline retcon, H20 and Resurrection, took clear cues from Scream; the latter even brought in some moments of found footage aesthetics. Then Rob Zombie brought the series to the gritty, torture porn-flavored mid ‘00s. Oddly, Zombie’s Halloween II obsession with the psychological fallout of a murder spree feels like a precursor to the A24/Blumhouse brand of horror as big, artful metaphor, which has subsequently influenced this new outing. (Which slashed first, the chicken or the egg?)

I wouldn’t care about the lack of direction or originality if the end-product was good, which it isn’t especially. The production values are solid enough — in fact, they’re among the best in the series’ history; it’s not as flavorful as the Zombie outings, but it has prettier nighttime footage and a better, Carpenter-co-penned soundtrack (highlighted by “The Shape Hunts Allyson” which is probably the best music cue since Carpenter’s original theme). The thrills constructed by David Gordon Green are fairly effective; probably moreso than any of the post-Cundey, pre-Zombie iterations. But it lacks any surprise or oomph. Maybe I’m just desensitized to Michael Myers at this point.

Halloween 2018 also throws in some “legacy sequel” fan service and callbacks, which is something else in vogue at time of the film’s production. There are plenty of Easter eggs and reflections of the 1978 original both big and little — the best probably being a recreation of the shot where Myers appears outside a school window, except this time it’s Laurie. For me, these little hidden bits are cute fluff and do nothing, but I understand others might be more nostalgic than me.

One unexpected wrinkle that probably would have been more expected if I had looked at Green’s filmography: This is occasionally a funny movie! Moreso than most other Halloween movies. (There are too many for me to think through to categorically say this is the funniest in the franchise, but it’s certainly in the running.) The movie pauses for 90 seconds to let two cops argue about banh mi, and it might have been the only time I smiled in the film.

The performances are almost universally a disappointment, or maybe that’s more on the writing. I’m not wild about Curtis in grumpy, paranoid mode — H20 did a much better job balancing the various facets of Laurie’s personality. But Judy Greer’s performance as Laurie’s daughter is a catastrophe; what we’re supposed to take away from her character is unclear. Andi Matichak is thoroughly forgettable as Laurie’s granddaughter. The only performance I legitimately like is the return of Nick Castle as Myers aka The Shape; he lends the murderer an eerie, unsettling stillness that only magnifies the sense of danger.

I can’t believe that there are two follow-ups to this. I have no concept of what Green and co. have in mind to follow up this bland reboot. I’m close enough to the franchises finish line that I’ll see this thing through, though.

So Halloween II taunts us by using its opening 20 minutes to show Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) chasing down and horrifically attacking Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) in a hospital as she recovers from his initial attacks as seen in the previous film… which, you’ll recall, is exactly the premise of the original Halloween II from 1981. Are we due for another beat-by-beat retread? Nope! Poof, it was all a dream! We’re actually two years in the future, and Laurie has PTSD nightmares! (Note: I watched the Director’s Cut of this film, whereas the Theatrical Cut reportedly fudges the timeline to make it one year.)

I tend to think that dream sequences used as rug pulls to trick the viewers are stupid, and this is no exception. I wish this opening wasn’t a mere figment of Laurie’s imagination. But it at least has purpose; the sequence does three really important things: The first is that its sheer brutality serves as a warning to the audience that this is going to be the cruellest, most bone-crunching, flesh-ripping, viscerally violent Halloween film yet — the opening is gruesomely gory. The second purpose of the intro is that it sets up one of the film’s key themes: Her hospital room is invaded, as is her restful slumber; throughout Halloween II, all the places that Laurie holds safe will be literally and figuratively a danger to her — hospital, dream, and otherwise. Of course, this is not the first Halloween to plumb dread and irony from safe spaces turned inside out, but its especially potent. And the third purpose of this intro is for us to meet, full throttle from the outset, the most daunting and terrifying Michael Myers that has or will ever be put to film. Mane’s towering, brutish frame makes it genuinely plausible that this man can crush humans with his bare hands and survive bullets and stabs.

The last outcome of this intro, I suppose, is to remind us of the less pleasant features of Zombie’s vision of Haddonfield. The town, as envisioned by Zombie, is an outright miserable rats den populated by cartoonish white trash. One of the opening scenes of the film features blue collar workers making casual necrophilia and anal sex jokes. And speaking of Zombie reminding us of his unpleasant aesthetics and style here… dear God, the incessant screaming; it’s so damn shrill: a ringing scourge on the eardrums.

So I still very much dislike this torture porn aesthetic of horror. But credit where it is due: Halloween II comes as close to earning that aesthetic as any film I’ve seen. There is some skin-crawling, stomach-turning thematic value in emphasizing the brutality of the violence in a murky, fucked-up world. But this persistent dourness and gore doesn’t make these films necessarily more scary or thrilling; rather, I just feel kinda bummed out I spent two hours in a nihilistic shithole.

Nonetheless, I find it admirable the way that Halloween II brings the series to one of its philosophical endpoints. In addition to being the most harrowing Halloween movie, this is the most psychologically devastating film in the franchise by a mile. It is the polar opposite of the carefree Halloween: Resurrection, which is a satiric thrill ride; each victim little more than a fleshy prop to be stabbed in some darkly comic way. Here, the suffering clings to you and debilitates you like food poisoning or a bad hangover.

The Halloween series has had its share of unforgettable final scenes: the original, Halloween II (1981), Halloween 4, and Halloween H20 all have some claim on the series best ending. You can add this film to that list. The final showdown between Myers and Laurie is unexpectedly hallucinatory and perfectly constructed. It has so much gravity and finality to it: it’s tragic and anti-cathartic in a way that caps the Zombie films perfectly.

On the other hand, I could have done without the broad satire of exploitative true crime media via Malcolm McDowell’s Sam Loomis. McDowell is even more theatrical here than he was in the first Zombie Halloween, and given that this film is even grittier than the first, McDowell sticks out like a sore thumb. Loomis is written and acted as if he’s in a totally different genre, let alone movie. Laurie’s PTSD, too, is a bit overbearing and on the nose, but it at least aligns with the rest of the movie that’s so dark and weighty.

Certainly, this is one of the most visually effective Halloween films. Zombie brings a diverse lighting schema that contrasts grungy browns with silvery-white hallucinations. Some of his compositions are sensational: terrifically-lit and full of a disorienting, trippy glare. Long stretches of the film are over-dark and tough to follow, but that feels intentional, both for thematic purposes and to add contrast to the brighter segments.

Halloween II is not my favorite in the series. I’m not even 100% sure it’s a better movie than its cheesy 1981 namesake. But I can see why it has become the most cultishly adored film in the Halloween series among hardcore horror-heads. It swings for the fences and takes the film to daring, challenging places the series had never been before and would never go again. To offer that much payoff in the tenth movie in a series is a hell of an accomplishment.

Unlike the series’ other timeline reset, H20, this Halloween is a full on reboot: It tells approximately the same story as the original Halloween, but from scratch and in a narrative and visual style more in line with audience expectations three decades later. You can sum up the deviations in this retelling into two categories: textural and structural. Let’s start with the textural.

The big thing in horror circa the mid-2000s was dousing everything in misanthropy and visceral, queasy gore. “Torture porn” we called it — filled with largely unlikeable characters suffering gruesome fates in slow-motion. A slightly brownish aura of filth covers these movies, though some of that is psychological projection on my part. I simply have no taste for the subgenre, and so it was with some trepidation that I approached this Halloween reboot. It was one of a decent wave of modern reboots of classic horror films, including Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th.

Now, Halloween ’07 is not a “torture porn” film, but it definitely borrows the aesthetics and the spirit. It has a sludginess to its visuals, a grimy sort of inkiness, that carries through most of the scenes. That’s not to say that it’s poorly shot or even “ugly” per se. I actually think this is one of the best-shot films in the series; certainly since cinematographer Dean Cundey departed after Season of the Witch.

There’s also a bone-deep cynicism and depravity in this Halloween ’07. So many of its characters are nasty white trash; and even the more sympathetic people say insensitive or lewd things. An early rant from a leering step-father is particularly cringey (“Man, that bitch got herself a nice little dumper!”). We meet this universe’s teenaged Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) as she makes a penetration joke with her finger and a bagel. The nudity is ramped up compared to previous Halloween entries, and the violence is harsh and blunt, as if taking for granted that depravity and suffering are the point of horror movies.

I have an aversion to this horror mindset. If I’m watching a teen die, I’d much rather it be something intrinsically ridiculous and heightened and artificial; imagine a recently-decapitated head rolling down a creaking set of stairs like a bowling ball (a la Resurrection) as opposed to a graphic shot of someone getting suffocated (multiple deaths here). Give me something that feels like a campfire yarn, not a true crime documentary.

Much more interesting to me about this reboot is the storytelling structure. It has some original narrative ideas that set it apart from all the past Halloweens. Clearly Zombie had a vision for giving a genuine arc to Michael Myers, a laughably dismissed idea in any of the previous outings. At over two hours, this is a punishingly long slasher film, and it’s due to the fact that there’s a whole prequel grafted onto this story (or conversely, a slasher grafted onto this prequel). This opening is frankly far more interesting than the film’s second hour, which replicates the events of original, but uglier.

The prequel part of this film — everything prior to the “Haddonfield, October 31” title card — is not only the best part of the film, it’s the most interesting stretch in the franchise since the original outing. If Zombie had ended the movie just as Myers broke out of his mental hospital, maybe titling the film “The First Halloween” or just “Michael Myers,” it would be not only the best Halloween sequel but a legitimately good hourlong film. Rogue One but for Halloween instead of Star Wars. (Though I should dampen my praise by saying I still find this part of the film to be gratuitous and dour; there’s a wholly unnecessary rape scene and endless shrill screaming.)

The opening follows young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) and interrogates the various impulses bringing out his latent psychopathy, a nature-vs.-nurture pendulum — until he finally snaps one Halloween night in a truly haunting sequence. Zombie makes terrific use of masks as not only a creepy, dehumanizing visage, but an emblem of Michael’s dissociation from empathetic reality.

The scene where Michael murders most of his family is blood-curdling as we witness in near real-time the darkness win out in Michael’s soul, punishing his cruel step-father and shameless step sister, pardoning only that beacon of innocence, tiny baby Laurie. (Apparently Zombie liked this brother-sister character dynamic from Halloween II enough to make it the cornerstone of his story.)

The second half of the film is not nearly as rich or interesting as the first, though it has a few strengths. Zombie composes shots highlighting the eyes behind the Myers’ iconic mask, and for once in the series’ history the glinting eyes under the mask have purpose, even poignance; they are a symbol of a broken human who is trapped in an overwhelming darkness. (In this regard, it couldn’t better separate itself from Resurrection.) When Michael and Laurie finally reunite, it is surprisingly tragic, especially as Laurie turns on Myers and severs his last thread of connection to the compassionate part of his soul.

One noteworthy curveball in the film is Malcolm McDowell as Sam Loomis, inheriting the role from Sam Pleasence. McDowell is, of course, charismatic, though he brings an odd energy; he’s much more theatrical than anything else in the otherwise gritty film.

Although I don’t think Halloween ’07 ultimately holds together on balance because of its over-reliance on a dour, grimy tone, it makes enough interesting choices in centering on Michael Myers himself, a stark contrast to Carpenter’s soulless “Shape,” that I’m curious what he’d do next with the franchise.

After this false start, the movie pivots to an entirely different story and tone, and it’s one I like a lot, though I understand why plenty of others might not. In fact, the rest of Halloween: Resurrection is fun enough that I nearly forgot how grumpy I was after the opening. (Nearly.)

What Resurrection is from the 17 minute point onwards is a goofy, early 2000’s time capsule that fairly effectively grapples with the rapid technological and media changes going on circa ‘02. All of that is rendered as an escape room-style slasher. It’s Scream without being so directly meta, which at least removes the smugness of that film. There’s also a sprinkling of Blair Witch Project in here — the use of camcorder-style shots simulate, for moments at a time, found footage horror, a rising trend in ’02.

The premise is borderline clever, though I seem to be the only one who thinks so: A reality show set in the crumbling old Myers house. A group of teens must endure one spooky night in the house, but the producers plan a fake Myers ambush, only for the real Myers to pop in and spoil the party.

The border between constructed narrative and dangerous reality blurs as the night wears on and the teens are murdered, one by one. The movie plays up the ambiguity of the danger and its artifice for unsettling juxtaposition: the in-film audience of the fake reality show laughs when it should be screaming. It offers some tonal subversion that takes critical aim at the desensitized horror fans who worship movies like Halloween. The premise also offers a prescient, albeit thin, slice of satire on our obsession with violent media — one that feels more prominent in the Dahmer-obsessed 2022 than ever.

On the flip side, Halloween has never been cornier than this. There’s a  Busta Rhymes kung fu kick (”trick or treat, motherfucker!”) and an inexplicable sex scene and lots of emphasis on hilariously dated technology like “phone mail.” Tyra Banks appears for a scene or two mostly to shake her ass. The tone of the whole thing is midnight screening popcorn fun, which belies and obfuscates the film’s thoughtful (perhaps unintentional) underbelly which questions the evolving ways we consume prurient, exploitative media.

The film is certainly a shoddy construction in many ways. The characters are the blandest quip-creatures I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. The editing is not up to the task of assembling the ambitious blend of footage angles and styles into a pleasing and coherent whole. And there’s no arc or story to speak of. Just flesh to be slashed. But as a playful little one-act-play thrill ride, it steamrolls its flaws by just being damn fun.

The ending is a downer because the final girl Sara needs to get rescued by a man — twice! — rather than escaping by her own mettle. And there’s a smirk of a final scene — the real titular resurrection happens in the film’s quarter-second-long final shot. Unlike most of the previous Halloweens, there’s no attempt at gravity in the closing moments.

Halloween: Resurrection is a fun blend of mildly clever satire and Twinkie-level junk food to keep the slasher format engaging and watchable. At least after that downright offensive opening bit.

Before Curtis got involved, one writer had pitched ramping up the government agency element of The Curse of Michael Myers to create a full-on conspiracy thriller/slasher hybrid, with all of Haddonfield a part of the conspiracy. It sounds like a wild and nonsensical film that’s fascinating on paper but, based on the last two entries, a film likely to have crashed and burned in execution. The idea shifted to a boarding school murder spree — a much more manageable logline for a slasher — and that idea stuck around as Curtis joined and reworked the material.

I’d read multiple places that H20 retcons the previous few Halloween films, which is not entirely accurate, by my reading. It doesn’t toss those films to the bin so much as it places them gently to the side and pretends they aren’t there. What we see is not, on the surface, incompatible with the other films (though I should caveat that I’m horrible at remembering continuity details, so there might be something I’m missing). In fact, Laurie’s off-screen car crash alluded to in Halloween 4 is transformed into a faked death as part of a victim protection program, and apparently some script drafts included references to Jamie, Laurie’s lost daughter. But H20 sure feels nothing like any of Halloween 4-6, with their curses and spiraling lore and grim austerity. If it’s not a true timeline reboot, it’s certainly a spiritual reboot.

All this change is for the better, in my eyes. This is the best Halloween movie since the original. Curtis’s appearance is an immediate adrenaline injection into the formula. She is so charismatic and badass, but also a flat-out good actress. The violence and character drama mirror each other, with real human stakes — Laurie is afraid to let her adolescent son out into the scary world because of her own PTSD, only for that trauma to rear its masked head. Take away the bloody butcher knives, swap in some other demon that wreaks havoc (alcoholism, abuse, etc.) and it’s the skeleton for a decent drama.

The rest of the cast is fairly talented and charismatic, too. Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears briefly as a teen who gets killed with an ice skate. Josh Hartnett is solid enough as Laurie’s son. LL Cool J and a young Michelle Williams play supporting roles, and Janet Leigh makes a cameo. It’s simply the most talent that Halloween has ever had in front of the camera, and it makes a difference. Scene-to-scene, the movie is more watchable than any since the original.

The dialogue is crisp and bantery in a way that the series never had been before. It feels very much of-its-era, but works in the movie’s favor: After five movies of Donald Pleasence’s ominous ravings, I’ll happily take some goofy teen quips.

The aesthetic reboot extends to the film’s visuals, which are competent but unremarkable. This is clean and crisp late-90’s cinematography; never murky and smudgy like Dean Cundey’s work in the first three films, but also less dreary than the following three films.

One significant mark against the film is that it leans far too heavily on fake-out scares. The ratio of fake jump scares to real jump scares is pretty perilous, to the point that I started expecting each creaky noise or lurking shadow to be LL Cool J or Michelle Williams rather than Michael Myers. And, speaking of Myers, his mask has never looked worse than it does here. His eye sockets are supposed to be gaping holes of death, not just some dude’s confused eyes.

The story itself is also slight, to the point that there isn’t really a story. Just a scenario that rapidly unfolds; the runtime is listed at 86 minutes, but that includes credits. This film moves briskly.

The ending of H20 supplants Halloween 4 as my favorite closing scene of the whole series. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect capper on the Halloween series than this film’s final shot, which is practically sequel-proof. But, as we know, many sequels would come — one directly following this, and plenty more on different timelines. I’m grateful to see the ship righted after a couple of dreadful outings, and I hope the series can keep the momentum, though I admit my optimism is not too high.

Below, I’ve organized my reviews by release date, by my ranking (to be updated as I watch and review), and by narrative timeline.

Halloween Movies By Release Date

1. Halloween (1978) (Exceptionally Good)
2. Halloween II (1981) (Good)
3. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) (Good)
4. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) (Nearly Good)
5. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) (Not Good)
6. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) (Very Not Good)
7. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) (Good)
8. Halloween: Resurrection (2002) (Nearly Good)
9. Halloween (2007) (Nearly Good)
10. Halloween II (2009) (Good)
11. Halloween (2018) (Not Very Good)
12. Halloween Kills (2021) (Not Very Good)
13. Halloween Ends (2022) (Not Good)

Halloween Movies, Ranked

1. Halloween (1978) (Exceptionally Good)
2. Halloween II (2009) (Good)
3. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) (Good)
4. Halloween II (1981) (Good)
5. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) (Good)
6. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) (Nearly Good)
7. Halloween: Resurrection (2002) (Nearly Good)
8. Halloween (2007) (Nearly Good)
9. Halloween Kills (2021) (Not Very Good)
10. Halloween (2018) (Not Very Good)
11. Halloween Ends (2022) (Not Good)
12. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) (Not Good)
13. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) (Very Not Good)

Timeline 1 – The Original Timeline

a.k.a. “The Loomis Timeline” in honor of Donald Pleasence

1. Halloween (1978) (Exceptionally Good)
2. Halloween II (1981) (Good)
3. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) (Nearly Good)
4. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) (Not Good)
5. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) (Very Not Good)

Timeline 2 – The H20 Timeline

1. Halloween (1978) (Exceptionally Good)
2. Halloween II (1981) (Good)
3. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) (Good)
4. Halloween: Resurrection (2002) (Nearly Good)

Timeline 3 – The Rob Zombie Timeline

1. Halloween (2007) (Nearly Good)
2. Halloween II (2009) (Good)

Timeline 4 – The DGG Timeline

1. Halloween (1978) (Exceptionally Good)
2. Halloween (2018) (Not Very Good)
3. Halloween Kills (2021) (Not Very Good)
4. Halloween Ends (2022) (Not Good)

The Wacky Standalone

1. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) (Good)

Review Index

Anyways, as bad as the movie is, I get at a base level the instinct to try and unify the Halloween story into a single, comprehensive, lore-rich sendoff that ties up loose ends. This results in an attempt at a grand supernatural explanation of all the Myers murders. But slashers are very much not a genre of film that require narrative cohesion or benefit from exposition: give me jump scares, gnarly deaths, a kickass heroine, and a few moments of black comedy. That’s all I need. The Halloween series, especially, crumples under added lore: Much of the appeal of the spectacularly perfect and elegant 1978 original film is that it is so pure and simple and unburdened. No complicated mythology needed for “The Shape” — he’s just a murderous void of empathy.

The gist of The Curse of Michael Myers — so much as can be understood from the impenetrable theatrical cut — is that Myers is the victim of some curse called “Thorn,” and various characters we’ve met through the franchise to this point are connected to the curse, and now the government is getting involved (or something), but Myers wants to finish his murder spree before he’s stopped. It’s all dogshit that went in one ear and out the other.

The movie is dire from the start — this film suffers immensely from having a cheap mid-90’s ugly look and spastic editing. Filmmakers were just starting to figure out computers, and I suspect this distinct pre-Scream tenor of heightened horror drama is at least in part attributable to the old-heads using computers to amplify their worst instincts.

Then we get the biggest jump scare of the film, when Paul Rudd’s voice then face appear. Yes, Paul Rudd! You can tell he’s itching to ham up his material as a slightly creepy and horny but good-hearted Myers obsessive — who is also apparently the toddler that Laurie Strode babysat in the first film, now a young adult, because this is the kind of fan-servicey movie that brings in connections like that. Rudd restrains himself just enough to be boring on screen (and discordant to those who know him as a comedian), though admittedly still charismatic.

The film’s most promising idea is rushed through in the film’s first half: taking the toxic, curdled resentment of an unhappy suburban family and literalizing it into physical violence. There’s a spectacularly douchey dad (Bradford English) and a submissive mom (Kim Darby) and every associated hoary cliche you can guess for a domestic satire, so there’s something cathartic seeing the unhappy family drama turned into a bloodbath. (Also, the family’s last name is Strode, like Laurie, but they live in the old Myers house, which was not really explained in the theatrical cut; or if it was, it came as part of a stream of pointless exposition that did not register.) Alas, the family is killed off real quick, and this idea is ditched by the halfway point to pore deeper into the “Thorn curse” slog.

The other semi-interesting but deeply botched idea in the film is setting the climax in a weird sci-fi underground lab. It’s totally out of place from the Halloween vibe, and not in a particularly fun or playful way. Myers is wandering around the lab as if he’s an employee; I assume that is given some explanation in the Producers Cut.

Everything about the character work and plot is remarkably boring, but the real disappointment is the execution of the scares. The jump scares are so half-assed. There’s no menace to Myers’ lumbering this time around. And there’s lots of lazy tricks: for example, we get multiple POV-style shots where the surprise is that nobody’s standing where the camera had been making us think someone was. It’s the stupidest kind of fake out. (There is at least noticeably more gore and visceral violence than the past couple outings, which adds a little bit of unexpected crunch to some of the kill scenes.)

Donald Pleasence is the only returning cast member of note, and there’s something slightly elegaic about his performance as Dr. Sam Loomis. It’s a diminished role, almost stately compared to his Ahab frenzy of the previous two films, and tinted with sadness… even before we see the title card dedicating the film to his passing as it fades to black. (He died shortly before the film’s debut.) His performances were always fully invested and moderately interesting, the one unifying thread across this first Halloween timeline. We may as well call it “The Loomis Timeline” (in fact, I think I will).

I’m glad to know that the series changes directions after this, bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back and ditching most of the accrued mythology and convoluted narrative. Because if the series were to go on like this, I’m not sure I could make it much further.

Halloween 4 has an absolute banger of a final scene, which I’m about to spoil, so click away if you haven’t seen it and want to go in blind (which I recommend, at least to the extent I recommend watching Halloween 4 at all). After Laurie Strode’s seven-year-old daughter, Jamie (Danielle Harris), survives her encounter with the lumbering mass of evil that is Michael Myers, she’s recuperating at home. We get some POV shots mirroring the opening of the first Halloween suggesting Michael has snuck back into Jamie’s house and stabbed Jamie’s foster mom. But when the killer we assume to be Michael appears on the stairwell and the family turns and gapes in horror, it’s not Myers, but little Jamie holding a bloody blade. This is not only a great reflection of the series’ opening scene, when a six-year-old Myers commits a brutal murder, but pays off on Jamie’s paranoia and hallucinations throughout that film. Plus, a little girl in a clown costume holding a bloody butcher’s knife is just a striking image.

Thus, it was with some very mild anticipation that I approached Halloween 5, curious if the film would explore inherited trauma and psychological burden or the cycle of abuse and violence. Unfortunately, the film goes the stupidest possible direction with the material: It hints at a telekinetic connection between Myers and Jamie, who remains a protagonist rather than an blossoming psychopath. Myers is hunting down Jamie once again, meaning we are basically recreating Halloween 4 with very little changed, and worse. Come the fuck on.

Halloween 5 makes things worse for itself by killing off the heroine of its predecessor, Rachel (Ellie Cornell), in an early scene, leaving yet another hole in the Final Girl role. Instead we get Tina, one of Rachel’s friends, in the role of protecting Jamie. Thus, we’re not only reenacting the previous film, but sans a crucial character.

One of the film’s key set pieces is a big, boozy costume party at a barn. To call this stretch insufferable would be an understatement. It’s a mess. Because it’s a costume party, one in three attendees is dressed in a Myers mask, allowing the movie to play the fake-out beat about seven times. It goes on for what feels like a half hour until someone finally dies with an underwhelming payoff. It just taxes the viewer’s patience, since there’s not even mystery who is going to die, just when.

I mentioned in my review of Halloween 4 the ookiness about having the murder target in a slasher, a film genre so thematically tied to teen sexuality, be a seven-year-old girl. If Halloween 4 poked that hornets nest without much thought, Halloween 5 leans into the stings. Myers’ obsession with Jamie has very strong pedophilic undertones, especially in the film’s climax in which Myers hunts Jamie through a house with simultaneous murderous and curious gentleness, as if he’s battling competing urges (equal parts “blood” and “lust” in his bloodlust). It’s adds a horrifying and unexpected edge to an otherwise tame finale.

There’s also the matter of a mysterious man in black who is hunting down Myers. This new character is shot enigmatically and, frankly, I had no idea what we were supposed to take away from his appearances for most of the movie. I guess we’re supposed to be intrigued, but I was mostly confused as to who or what he was, and why I might care. Given the backstory we have for Michael, it makes little sense that he’d be involved in some deeper mystery, but I suppose it will be some sort of supernatural malarkey. Halloween 6 will undoubtedly botch it, but at least this time I have no high hopes to get dashed.

I’ve gone this far without describing perhaps the film’s most interesting element: Sam Loomis’s (Donald Pleasence) unhinged obsession with Myers, to the point that he’s harassing and manipulating Jamie to lure Myers out, consequences be damned. It sends Loomis down a dark path, and I wish the movie had done even more with it. Mostly it manifests as Loomis shouting a lot. I can imagine a better film turning Loomis into a full-fledged anti-hero who commits his own murders in the name of stopping Myers.

But Halloween 5 is not that movie. It’s a stinker that has spoiled my mood enough that it has me wondering if maybe I was too generous to the previous entries. Any sort of goodwill I might have had has evaporated, and I approach Halloween 6 — the last film before the first timeline reboot — with great trepidation.