The ‘Halloween’ Franchise Ranked
Halloween is one of the most famous franchises in horror movie history, and Michael Myers’ mask is recognisable anywhere.
With Blumhouse adding in their own entry to the series in 2018, and quickly releasing two sequels in 2021 and 2022, it was about time to revisit and readjust 2018’s published list to include these latest films.
So, in this edition of Ranked from The Film Magazine, we are ranking all 13 Halloween movies from worst to best in terms of quality, artistic merit, cultural impact and popular consensus. This is: The ‘Halloween’ Franchise Ranked.
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13. Halloween Ends (2022)
The most recent instalment in the Halloween franchise is also its worst. Somehow forgoing Michael Myers for a storyline involving a completely new character, in the third film of a trilogy and fourth in a timeline (the original film, the 2018 film, Halloween Kills, and now this one), Halloween Ends examines a young man’s descent into Haddonfield’s new boogeyman, assuming the mantle of evil from his teacher – an aged, lumbering, distinctly un-threatening Myers – and consequently dragging Laurie and Alyson into a final climactic battle.
This is an abhorrent, ugly film in Halloween clothes, trying to disguise itself as part of the franchise to get more bums on seats. The horror is thin on the ground, the theoretics bland and expositional, the pacing all over the place, and the end we were all promised is dull and incredibly short at best. There’s no entertainment, there’s no depth aside from pseudo-commentary we’ve heard a thousand times before in a thousand better places, and the attempt to make Halloween somehow ‘elevated’ (to use a ridiculous term) overlooks what made Myers, and Halloween, terrifying. Sometimes, evil simply is, without rhyme or reason. To try and analyse this aspect of the concept rids it of its very core idea. Utterly atrocious. This is Hollow-een.
12. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
It’s Halloween night, and there’s a live-streamed challenge to see if several teenagers (read as ‘cannon fodder’) can survive the night in the haunted Myers house. Of course, unknown to them, Michael has returned to get knife-happy once again, and we have our blend of found-footage and campy slasher flick.
I try to find something in every film that gives it a redeemable quality. I think this movie’s might be that Jamie-Lee Curtis is in it for five minutes and that, as the eighth film in the franchise, we just want to see Michael going on a killing. The found-footage style live stream stuff is a nice twist on the slasher film (remember that The Blair Witch Project came out three years before), but it utterly fails to provide any kind of scares.
You don’t care about the characters, the plot is so thin it’s transparent, and suddenly the little house in the middle of the street is a gothic mansion up on the hill, away from everyone where no one can hear you scream. The film finally buried this line of sequels for good, and for good reason. Time to return to the drawing board.
