#13. Curse
Along the broad spectrum of Halloween Franchise variety, Part 6 is tasteless cardboard that's devoid of nutrients. It's tension-free, suspense-free, character-free, gluten-free, low sodium, no carb, low fat, no fun, no sugar, processed Michael Myers food product. The score, the jumpscares, the editing, dialog, ugh...it's all so obnoxious and annoying. Donald Pleasance's presence is the only thing I like. That's how bad it is: Loomis just existing on screen is a comfort. He shows up to walk around what is essentially a Spirit Halloween store with the most cunty staff imaginable. Everyone in it is either paper-thin and forgettable or deeply unlikable - none of them remotely compelling (our Final Girl is WOMAN. Her son is CHILD).
Paul Rudd is always welcome but he's just bad here - not funny-bad, either. Having Tommy Doyle be a shifty little creep is good on paper but turning him into an exposition machine for celtic mythology is fucking YAWN. There have been some awful origin stories/explanations for horror movie villains (like Leatherface's dumb skin disease in TCM '03) but Cult Of Thorn is quite the abortion of mystique.
I hate this movie.
#12. Resurrection
You know it's bad, I know it's bad, I don't need to unpack why for the 297463rd time. So I'm gonna use this slot to defend one major component that gets too much shit: Busta Rhymes' Freddie, with all his one-liners and goofy martial arts, is the only person doing anything remotely fun here.
Seriously, take him out and you still have an awful movie, which means it can't all be on him (the opening is easily the worst part and Freddie hasn't even clocked in yet). I'd even argue that if you take him out, you'd have a much worse movie (final girl is nobody, 'contestants' are despicable, and Decker is beyond lame). And, c'mon, Freddie having a one-sided argument with Michael, while he's dressed as Michael, is a genuinely funny bit; it's the Spider-Man pointing meme but with Micheal Myerses. I don't ever watch this movie, because I hate it, but I revisited it for this ranking and I lit up every time he was on screen; his description of Michael as "a killer shark in baggy-ass overalls" is poetry.
As a character in a movie full of god-awful characters, he's the best of the worst.
"Trick or treat, muthafucka!"
#11. Revenge
The only reason Part 5 is above Resurrection and Part 6 is because of Dr. Sam "Loonie" Loomis. He is so hilariously unhinged and I love it (I also seriously respect Pleasance for committing to the bit for a fourth time; what a camp champ). ...but it's not all fun.
There's also Tina, her friends, those circus clown cops, one of big Mike's worst masks, and deficient filmmaking weighing it down. What it severely lacks in atmosphere, scares, good writing, competent editing, performances, sensible direction, or any spookiness whatsoever, is kinda made up for with Loomis' antics. Him knocking kids' masks off, playing "catch" with Jamie as the ball, holding cops at gunpoint, and of course, "Cookie Woman" (which has stuck with me for decades), is all candy to me.
For most people they love The Room or Troll 2 but Halloween 5 has always been my go-to So Bad It's Good movie. Donald Pleasance hobbled in Halloween 5 so Nic Cage could run in Wicker Man. I enjoy this movie too much to put it any lower.
#10. Return
Part 4 has its moments and the good ones are carried by some pretty effective atmosphere (but we're still far from Carpenter and Cundey 😢). The absolute best part is right up top: this movie has my favorite opening credits sequence in the franchise. There's no typical Halloween Theme, either. All it is is just a skittering, chilly, gusty ambient drone over the most autumnal October imagery this side of Trick 'r Treat and Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. I'll throw it on every October but only for the novelty of that picturesque opening and the overall Spooky Szn mood that reverberates from it. It's more of a moving October advent calendar than a movie to me.
And I'm focusing on all of this because everything else is flatlined: Jamie, Rachel, Grady, Meeker, his Daughter - they're nothing characters with the most benign YA novel dialog. Loomis' scenes are kinda nice, he hasn't completely lost it yet. I like him having a swig and a smile with that kooky priest, it's one of the few times in this franchise where we get to see straight-laced joy on the man's face. I don't know, I don't feel strongly either way. It's north of awful but south of good. It's not funny-bad like 5 nor as offensive as 6 because, after everyone rejected Part III, they played it safe and pandered.
Some feelings I can muster up: I don't like Myers' mask in this one, it looks goofy, they should have kept the bandaged-up look from the gas station sequence, it's the only time he's remotely creepy. I don't like how the actor plays him, either, he's wooden as fuck. The ending would be cool if 5 didn't squander it. The lynchmob murder of Ted Hollister is amusing but nowhere near as funny as Ben Tramer's death in Part II.
That's all I got.
#9. Kills
Whereas Part 6 was pathologically thin, KILLS is carelessly gluttonous. It's just a delicious, disgusting, unhealthy, intoxicating, nauseating, annoying, hilarious fucking mess. Anytime I watch it I come away feeling so dizzy and tired, just like I do after I leave a buffet. It wins out over 4 simply because there are pockets where great side characters are given some sincerely memorable, funny banter and then die in some of the coldest ways across every timeline in this convoluted franchise.
Seriously, I'd watch a whole Altman-esque hangout movie featuring all the victims in Michael's path (it makes me want to do a whole post ranking the side characters of the DGG Trilogy). I always get invested in the lives of Sondra and her husband, Big John & Little John, and the shitty kids in the Silver Shamrock masks. They're given charming and relatable little details, like the way Sondra's husband gripes about her Mom smoking in his sleep apnea mask, it imbues them with so much interiority and history.
And the same applies to all the other characters who aren't in the Evil Dies Tonight lynchmob (any complaints I have about that shit has already been said ad nauseum so I'm not gonna bore you; none of it works). Get rid of all the mob violence and shit, get rid of Laurie and Hawkins' sedating monologues, just let us luxuriate with the characters who stayed home...until Michael brutally takes them from us. Cameron's death is downright barbaric and Sondra's husband's death, as she watches helplessly, is unnecessarily tragic and cruelly prolonged. The firefighter sequence, on the other hand, is so fucking fun - The Shape has never been cooler.
I love the way it's shot, too, with that great POV of Michael stabbing through the gas mask. Another great POV shot is employed later, in one of the franchise's worst sequences (Tarvoli's death) - I despise the writing of that scene but it's so visually exciting, which describes a lot of this movie. Michael slaughtering the mob looks great but Laurie's speculative voiceover about evil, or whatever, just dampens it. Not all of Green's choices pay off, though: there are some nonsensical zooms and that neck-snapping whip-pan to Allyson shouting "WHAT?!" almost reaches Part 5 levels of camp. The sequence where Marion Chambers and the Doctor/Nurse couple die does bring us to full-on camp. But the sequence with Lindsay is legitimately tense? Carpenter's score is fucking amazing, though, but nothing in this movie ever earns it. And the worst sin of the movie is that, aside from Laurie coming to the realization that Michael is mostly indifferent to her (that remains unexplored), our main characters are lateral and redundant. They walk and talk in circles, saying the same shit over and over.
This movie has everything, for better and worse.
Mostly worse.
#8. H2O
H20 came on the heels of Part 6 and was followed by Resurrection, so it's wedged between the series' worst movies. It has the best act to follow and after easily dropping the mic, the next act to pick it up fucking bombs. It's also refreshing, for this list, to have a movie so uncomplicated on the tail of KILLS. It has occasional atmosphere (not enough) because the photography is kinda flat and the score is equally inconsistent; the opening theme is interpolated with an orchestra and it's surprisingly effective. But...sometimes it's downright shrill and derivative? There are patches where they recycle tracks from Scream and it undercuts the tension.
I like Laurie's new look and life, she's living with PTSD (even though Halloween [2018] does it better) but seems well-adjusted outside of the holiday. Curtis is typically great and the rest of the cast is good to fine (Hartnett, LL Cool J, and Arkin bring more to their characters than what they were given [I hope Ronnie's novel gets published]). The horny teens aren't annoying enough nor charming enough for me to be affected by their deaths one way or another; they die, that's it (the light-bulb decoration kill is neat). The scariest but in the movie is where just the threat of violence is suggested: the rest-stop bathroom scene, with the Mom and her daughter, is very effective. Unfortunately, it happens very early on and I never get close to that feeling again. It's a pretty middling slasher until the ending; the ending is the best! Laurie pulls a Loomis! She takes a cop's gun, orders a paramedic to load Michael's body in the van, drives said van into Michael (after launching him out the windshield) and they both topple off a hillside.
Finally, she decapitates him with an ax and it's extremely satisfying (fuck the retcon: that's Michael's noggin. Her huge sigh of relief will not be undercut). It's a serviceable movie besides HOLY SHIT THAT CGI MASK WHAT THE FUCK!?
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