(Photo by Dimension Films/ Courtesy: Everett Collection.)

Every Halloween Movie Ranked

For Laurie Strode, it’s been a long road back to Haddonfield. After surviving the original night of terror against Michael Myers in the original 1977 Halloween, she has entered the slipstream of alternate timelines, at points lighting him on fire, decapitating him, or getting thrown off a roof by him. Meanwhile, other Halloween movies have her institutionalized, or shot dead by the police. One even ignores her existence completely, offering annoying TV commercial jingles and magic Stonehenge rocks in her place. (That was Halloween III: Season of the Witch by the way.)

2018’s reboot-continuation Halloween was Certified Fresh, so of course Myers returned Halloween Kills before the trilogy ended with, er, Halloween Ends. No matter which style or version your prefer in the franchise, we’re ranking every Halloween movie made and sorting them by Tomatometer! Alex Vo

#1

Halloween (1978)
96%

#1
Adjusted Score: 105152%
Critics Consensus: Scary, suspenseful, and viscerally thrilling, Halloween set the standard for modern horror films.
Synopsis: On a cold Halloween night in 1963, six year old Michael Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith. He was... [More]
Directed By: John Carpenter

#2

Halloween (2018)
79%

#2
Adjusted Score: 100491%
Critics Consensus: Halloween largely wipes the slate clean after decades of disappointing sequels, ignoring increasingly elaborate mythology in favor of basic - yet still effective - ingredients.
Synopsis: It's been 40 years since Laurie Strode survived a vicious attack from crazed killer Michael Myers on Halloween night. Locked... [More]
Directed By: David Gordon Green

#3
Adjusted Score: 58764%
Critics Consensus: Halloween: H2O is the best of the many sequels, yet still pales in comparison to the original Halloween.
Synopsis: Two decades after surviving a massacre on October 31, 1978, former baby sitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) finds herself... [More]
Directed By: Steve Miner

#4
Adjusted Score: 53058%
Critics Consensus: Its laudable deviation from series formula not withstanding, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch offers paltry thrills and dubious plotting.
Synopsis: Hospital emergency room Dr. Daniel "Dan" Challis (Tom Atkins) and Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin), the daughter of a murder victim,... [More]
Directed By: Tommy Lee Wallace

#5

Halloween Ends (2022)
40%

#5
Adjusted Score: 53807%
Critics Consensus: Halloween Ends -- for now, anyway -- with a frequently befuddling installment that's stabbed, slashed, and beaten by a series of frustrating missed opportunities.
Synopsis: This is Laurie Strode's last stand. After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its... [More]
Directed By: David Gordon Green

#6

Halloween Kills (2021)
39%

#6
Adjusted Score: 52752%
Critics Consensus: Halloween Kills should satisfy fans in search of brute slasher thrills, but in terms of advancing the franchise, it's a bit less than the sum of its bloody parts.
Synopsis: Minutes after Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) left masked monster... [More]
Directed By: David Gordon Green

#7
Adjusted Score: 41103%
Critics Consensus: Halloween 4: The Return Of Michaels Myers may bring the series' masked killer back into the fold, but fails to offer the visceral scares and inventiveness of the original.
Synopsis: The apparently comatose Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) is being transferred from one hospital to another, but he wakes up... [More]
Directed By: Dwight H. Little

#8

Halloween II (1981)
33%

#8
Adjusted Score: 37205%
Critics Consensus: Halloween II picks up where its predecessor left off - and quickly wanders into a dead end that the franchise would spend decades struggling to find its way out of.
Synopsis: After failing to kill stubborn survivor Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) and taking a bullet or six from former psychiatrist Dr.... [More]
Directed By: Rick Rosenthal

#9

Halloween (2007)
28%

#9
Adjusted Score: 32416%
Critics Consensus: Rob Zombie doesn't bring many new ideas to the table in Halloween, making it another bloody disappointment for fans of the franchise.
Synopsis: Nearly two decades after being committed to a mental institution for killing his stepfather and older sister, Michael Myers breaks... [More]
Directed By: Rob Zombie

#10

Halloween II (2009)
25%

#10
Adjusted Score: 27736%
Critics Consensus: Zombie shows flashes of vision in the follow-up to his Halloween reboot, but they're smothered by mountains of gore and hackneyed, brutal violence.
Synopsis: A year after narrowly escaping death at the hands of Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), Laurie Strode is at the breaking... [More]
Directed By: Rob Zombie

#11
Adjusted Score: 13682%
Critics Consensus: Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers finds the series embracing crude slasher conventions with pedestrian scares, disposable characters, and aimless plotting.
Synopsis: After lying in a coma for a year, Michael Myers (Donald L. Shanks) awakens and stalks his way back to... [More]

#12
#12
Adjusted Score: 11703%
Critics Consensus: The only thing this tired slasher flick may resurrect is nostalgia for when the genre was still fresh and scary.
Synopsis: He's back for more... When a group of teens win a contest to spend a night in Michael Myers' childhood... [More]
Directed By: Rick Rosenthal

#13
Adjusted Score: 10117%
Critics Consensus: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers trades the simple, brutal effectiveness of the original for convoluted mysticism, with disastrously dull results.
Synopsis: This installment marks the return of the seemingly indestructible masked murderer Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur), who is targeting Tommy... [More]
Directed By: Joe Chappelle