This review contains the series of film of the Halloween series, and just be aware that spoilers are part of the explanation of the series. The article goes in order by release date and it includes a review of the latest release of the Halloween series, which was released October 19, 2018. The films go in a order from the very first film to the latest. All of the films in between vary in parts of the story line, often retconning (revising) previous films’ continuity.  

Halloween (1978) was directed by John Carpenter and it was a major success to his starting career. The film stars Jamie Lee Curtis debuting as Laurie Strode and Donald Pleasence as Dr. Samuel Loomis. The movie starts off with a first person sequence through the Myers house in Haddonfield with six year old Michael Myers stabbing his older sister, Judith Myers, in 1963 and getting put in a sanitarium. Fast forward fifteen years later with a now older Michael Myers escaping the sanitarium, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, chasing after him once Michael begins to murder people wearing a mechanic outfit and a mask. He eventually arrives at Tommy Doyle’s house, the boy Laurie Strode is baby sitting along with neighbor, Lindsey Wallace, and attacks Laurie. Laurie is able to fight back and manages to stab Michael’s eye with a coat hanger and temporarily knocks him unconscious. Dr. Loomis then arrives and shoots Michael six times, causing him to fall off the balcony. After he looks over the balcony and finds Michael’s body is missing, Laurie says to him, with terror, “It was the boogeyman.” to which Dr. Loomis responds with “As a matter of fact, it was..”

Halloween 2 (1981) started moments after the ending of the first film and was directed by Rick Rosenthal. Laurie is sent to the hospital to be treated and Michael goes of on a killing spree. Moments after these scenes, the police officers of the town mistakenly kill a innocent teen, also known to be Laurie’s crush from the first film. After this incident, it gives Michael the opportunity to finish his first target. Throughout these events, Laurie is told that she is Michael’s younger sister and that might be the reason that she is Michael’s target. After Michael starts to chase Laurie throughout the hospital, Dr. Loomis comes to save Laurie by releasing gas, and setting Michael and himself fire to end the film.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) This installment does not relate to the Michael Myers storyline, but has a brief cameo of the original movie on a tv screen.  

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) This film continues with a previously-dormant Michael now hunting Laurie’s daughter, Jamie, which became a orphan after Laurie’s death in car accident. It’s also revealed that Dr. Loomis survived the fire and just suffered burn marks. Michael, while being transferred to a hospital, overhears the paramedics talking about his niece and it leads to him attacking the paramedics to later hunt his niece, who is with her foster sister. It later leads to the town to try to hunt down Michael. After a serious of minor events, it leads to Michael getting shot down and falling into a well, believing that Michael has died. After Jaime stabs her foster mother and it leads to Dr. Loomis thinking that Jaime is a reflection of Michael as a child.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) starts off directly after the previous movie, now showing that Michael escaped the explosion and drifted in a river to a hermit’s shed. Michael goes to attack the hermit, but passes out and falls into a coma for about a year. Around this time, Jamie is in a hospital and has gone mute due to the traumatic experience of her stabbing her mother. She was having seizures and seemed to have a telepathic connection to Michael as at the same time, he wakes up and kills the hermit. Michael goes back to Jamie’s home and kills her older sister, Rachel and then killing her friends, along with two deputies. Jamie regains her ability to speak when she realizes that they are in danger, and Dr. Loomis convinces Jamie to put herself in danger as bait for Michael. He subdues Michael and after being placed in a jail cell, a mysterious “Man In Black” causes an explosion that helps him escape. The movie ends with Jamie crying as she sees fiery bodies and a empty jail cell.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) fast forwards about six years after the previous movies events with a now-older and pregnant Jamie strapped on a gurney, screaming in pain. She is taken into a cult-like room surrounded with people in dark robes and gives birth to a small baby that actually belongs to Michael himself. Before the cult leader sacrifices Jamie, a midwife helps her escape along with her baby. She stops by a train station and tries to call for help, but Michael reaches her and kills her. Back in Haddonfield, a now older Tommy Doyle (played by Paul Rudd) hears the call and finds the baby, alerting Dr. Loomis and naming the baby Steven. Michael goes on a killing spree and even targets Debra Strode(Aunt of Laurie Strode)’s family since Debra was the babysitter the night Michael killed his sister. Kara Strode (Daughter of Debra) and Danny Strode (Daughter of Kara) are saved by Tommy, but they are shortly taken captive by the cult, along with Steven. Tommy luckily frees the three and fights off Michael by injecting him with corrosive acid. As they all flee the building, Dr. Loomis goes back to Michael, saying he has unfinished business and the film ends with him screaming off screen, leaving both of their fates unknown.

Halloween 7: H2O (1998) retcons the films 3-6 and continues off of the second film. The films starts off with Laurie and her new life in Northern California twenty years after the events of the second film and after faking her death in a car accident in order to escape Michael should he ever wake up from his coma. Michael once again starts his hunt of his sister after invading the home of nurse Marion Chambers. Once he kills her and two neighbors, he steals documents involving Laurie’s new identity. Laurie, being the headmistress of a private school to which her teenage son John goes to, is being hunted inside of the empty school after the rest of the students left for a field trip. There is a battle between Michael and Laurie that eventually ends with her stabbing Michael multiple times, with his body falling down lifeless. Laurie still not convinced that he is truly dead tries to argue with the police that they need to make sure he stays dead and when they refuse to listen to her, she hijacks the vehicle that contains Michael’s body who moments later wakes up and causes Laurie to crash. After Michael is flung out of the van and pinned against a tree by Laurie, he reaches his hand out, seeming to plead for mercy, to which Laurie chops his head off with an axe, ending Michael’s reign of terror.

Halloween 8: Resurrection (2002) continues off the previous film three years after Michael’s presumed death with Laurie in a sanitarium after accidentally killing a security guard that Michael switched clothes with, revealing that Michael is still out there. Michael finds Laurie and attacks her, but Laurie gets the upper hand after she traps him. After the incident from before, Laurie attempts to remove the mask to make sure that it’s Michael, but is fatally stabbed by Michael and thrown off the balcony. After completing his many year long goal, he goes back to his childhood home to find out it was created into a webcam reality show. Michael goes to kill all celebrities that were in the house who ends up being stopped by one of the celebrities. But then again after autopsy he comes back to life.

Halloween (2007) is the Rob Zombie reboot of the series and is its own timeline, ignoring all the events of the previous films, showing the origins of his murderous tendencies. He’s shown young with a bad home-life and a bad school-life, such as having an abusive father and bullies berading him until he murders them along with his older sister and her boyfriend. The mom returns home to find Michael with his baby sister, covered in blood. He’s ultimately put in a sanitarium and is looked over by Dr. Loomis in hopes he will be helped, but hope is lost when he stabs a nurse with a plastic spork. This causes Michael’s mother to commit suicide and leave behind her baby daughter, Angel, who is later found by authorities. The film then jump cuts about 15 years later with Angel now going by the name, Laurie Strode, after being adopted. Michael, while being transferred, kills security guards and escapes the sanitarium. As usual, he goes on a murder spree and tracks down Laurie’s home, but her friend, Anne was staying there with her boyfriend paul, who Michael kills. When Laurie returns with Lindsey, who she was babysitting, she finds an injured Anne, but she is attacked by Michael and taken to the old Myers house.

Halloween 2 (2009) is the sequel to the Rob Zombie reboot, Laurie now knowing that Michael is her brother and Michael comes back to hunt her down. Michael later brutally killed Laurie’s friend from the first Rob Zombie first film. There is a series of killings by Michael who killed Laurie’s friends were killed in the home that they were. Michael then chase Laurie into the woods. Laurie is then knocked unconscious and dragged by Michael into a shed, where there is a “family reunion”. Dr. Loomis then goes into the shed to convince Michael and Laurie to reconcile, Michael later kills Dr. Loomis by shoving his thumbs into his eyes. Laurie then kills Michael and wears Michael’s mask and walks out the shed.

[SPOILER WARNING]

The newest installation, Halloween (2018) is a direct sequel to the original 1978 film, thus causing all other previous films to be non-canon, taking place forty years after the events of the first film. This adaptation was overall well-received by critics and fans alike, and for good reason too. The film portrays how badly the night Michael first attacked affected her and her mental state. Due to this constant paranoia, or even PTSD in some form, Laurie has been divorced twice and lost all custody of her child, Karen, who is now an adult and has a daughter of her own, Allyson. Meanwhile, Michael, after being captured in 1978, is in a high security rehab, and is watched over by Dr. Ranbir Sartain, a student of the late Dr. Loomis. While being transferred to a maximum security prison, the bus that is transferring Michael crashes and he begins his killing spree once again, even killing a young child. The entire ambience of this film is more serious and feels more like a suspense film than a typical horror film, which isn’t a bad thing since the film does a very well job of maintaining this feeling throughout the entirety. The gore was far more gorier, and the fear that Michael induces is far greater than in any other film, and overall, the movie pulls the best parts out of the other sequels, polishes them up, and uses them to great effect. A sequel seems to be hinted at too since at the very last few seconds after the credits are finished, heavy breathing is heard.