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Culture · October 1, 2026 · 6 min read

Top 10 Halloween Movies, Ranked (The Michael Myers Franchise)

Editorial illustration: a jack-o'-lantern beside a stack of film reels, with a pale mask shape in the shadows.
On this page · 6 sections
  1. The franchise is not one story. It is four.
  2. The ranking
  3. Where to start, if you have not seen any of them
  4. Watch it ranked
  5. Gear Up for Halloween
  6. A note on the ranking

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Quick answer: Start with the original Halloween (1978) — it is the best of the thirteen and the only film the modern trilogy treats as canon. Then jump to the new trilogy (2018 → Halloween Kills → Halloween Ends). Everything from 1981 to 2009 is optional, and the timeline forks, so watching order matters less than most lists admit.

The franchise is not one story. It is four.

This is the thing that trips people up, and it is worth saying before the ranking: the Halloween films do not form a single line. They form four overlapping timelines that keep throwing out what the last one did.

  • The original line (1978–1981): Halloween and its same-night continuation, Halloween II.
  • The “Thorn” years (1988–1995): parts 4, 5 and 6, which invented a cult-curse mythology of their own.
  • The first reset (1998–2002): H20 threw out 4–6, and Resurrection threw out H20 about twenty minutes into its own runtime.
  • The modern line (2018–2022): a new trilogy that ignores everything except the 1978 original.
  • The outliers: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (an anthology with no Michael Myers) and Rob Zombie’s two remakes.

So any “watch in order” answer has to pick a thread. This list ranks the films as films, then says which thread each one belongs to.

The ranking

  1. Halloween (1978). John Carpenter’s original, made for about $300,000, and still the scariest thing in the series. It invented the shape every slasher copied: the quiet suburb, the babysitter, the shape in the doorway, and a theme tune in an unusual time signature that does half the work by itself. Nothing later touches it.

  2. Halloween (2018). The reset that earned its place. It is a direct sequel to 1978, discards forty years of sequels in one line of dialogue, and gives Laurie Strode a reason to exist again. Jamie Lee Curtis returns, and so does the dread.

  3. Halloween II (1981). The kitchen-sink sequel: same night, same characters, hospital corridors. It is grislier and cheaper than the original, but it is a real continuation rather than a reboot, and it closes the loop on the 1978 film.

  4. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). The Scream-era attempt to make Laurie the hero, set in a boarding school. It throws out parts 4–6 to bring Curtis back, and it mostly works.

  5. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988). The best of the “Thorn” sequels, and the only one with a genuinely good ending. It follows Laurie’s daughter, Jamie, and earns its title.

  6. Halloween Kills (2021). The middle chapter of the new trilogy, and the most divisive. It turns Haddonfield into a mob and ends on one of the best shots in the series. Loud, angry, uneven, and worth it.

  7. Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007). A remake that spends its first hour explaining Michael, which the original deliberately never did. Whether that helps is the entire argument about the film. Brutal and well-made; mileage varies.

  8. Halloween Ends (2022). The boldest swing the franchise ever took: a film that is mostly a small-town character drama about a different young man. Fans split hard on it. As a film it is more interesting than it is scary.

  9. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989). The “Thorn” sequels falling apart in real time. It has one genuinely eerie idea — a child’s psychic link to the killer — and no idea what to do with it.

  10. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). The cult-curse film, and famously available in two versions: the theatrical cut and a 2014 “Producer’s Cut” that most fans prefer. The lore it invents is exactly why the 2018 film throws all of it away.

Left off on purpose: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) has no Michael Myers and is a stand-alone “killer Halloween masks” story — odd, but not a Michael Myers film, and beloved by the people who like it. Halloween: Resurrection (2002) kills off its best character early and puts the rest in a reality-TV house. And Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) is even further from the original than his first.

type: bar
title: The Halloween films by release year
x: Halloween, Halloween II, Season of the Witch, Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Curse, H20, Resurrection, RZ Halloween, RZ Halloween II, 2018, Kills, Ends
Year: 1978, 1981, 1982, 1988, 1989, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2018, 2021, 2022

Thirteen films across forty-four years, and the gaps tell the story: a burst at the start, a long stumble, then a nine-year silence before the 2018 reset that finally worked.

Where to start, if you have not seen any of them

The honest answer depends on how much time you have, so pick the thread that fits rather than watching thirteen films in release order.

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Watch it ranked

This video ranks the whole franchise worst-to-best and covers the same timeline forks, which is a fast way to see where its list disagrees with ours.

All Halloween Films Ranked Worst to Best — Let's B Reel with Brad, on YouTube.

Gear Up for Halloween

The films are the fun, but the costumes and decor are the reality. Here are the pieces that actually hold up — tested by the same “last-minute from your closet” standard as the guide.

Halloween Costumes & Accessories

The costumes and props that actually hold up past midnight — tested by the same "last-minute from your closet" standard as the guide.

Halloween Decor That Survives the Weather

The pieces that still look good on November 1st — because buying new every year is the real horror story.

As an Amazon Associate, Eric Varney earns from qualifying purchases. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not change which products I recommend or what I say about them.

A note on the ranking

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