He Came Home: How to Watch the Halloween Movies in Order

In what order should I watch the Halloween movies?

Do you love the Halloween movies and their masked mascot Michael Myers? So do we. Not just John Carpenter’s original 1978 film and 1981 sequel, but all of them—even you, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

With Michael’s special day comin’ up, we wanna watch all of the Halloween films in order. If you like the idea, here’s where to stream, rent, or buy all 13 films in the series.

What are the Halloween movies?

After, at age 6, murdering his sister and her boyfriend on Halloween 1963, Michael Myers busted outta Smith’s Grove Sanitarium on Halloween 1978 to continue his slow-mo stalking, slicing, and stabbing ways. Quality and lore fluctuate throughout the series, but after 46 years and 13 films, Michael is a horror icon worthy of immortalization on Mount Slashmore (if there were such a monument).

• Halloween (1978)
• Halloween II (1981)
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
• Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)

• Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
• Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)
• Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009)
• Halloween (2018)
• Halloween Kills (2021)
• Halloween Ends (2022)

Halloween movies in chronological order

Watching the Halloween movies in chronological order is complicated thanks to there being 13 films—one of which, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, doesn’t fit the series—plus reboots/remakes/re-quels, and retconning that further muck up the timeline. That doesn’t have to be such a bad thing, though.

We’ve broken it down into four timelines below, plus this recommendation: Don’t skip Halloween III even though it skipped Michael Myers. If you leave your expectations on the sanitarium floor before pressing “play,” you’ll probably still dig it.

Halloween movies: The main timeline

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween II (1981)
3. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
4. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
5. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Halloween movies: The H20 timeline

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween II (1981)
3. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)
4. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Halloween movies: The Zombie timeline

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)
3. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009)

Halloween movies: The H40 timeline

• Halloween (1978)
• Halloween (2018)
• Halloween Kills (2021)
• Halloween Ends (2022)

John Carpenter’s original Halloween helped spark the slasher movie boom of 1978–1984 and remains freaky today. And let’s give it up for Jamie Lee Curtis, forever our favorite scream queen, as Michael Myers’ mystery fixation Laurie Strode.

A continuation of The Night He Came Home, Halloween II is where we discover a reason for Michael’s pursuit of Laurie. No spoilers, though.

John Carpenter wanted to get away from telling Michael Myers stories and make Halloween an anthology series with other directors at the helm. So instead of more stalk-n’-chop action, we got a sci-fi flavored horror story (directed by Tommy Lee Wallace) about three Halloween masks that kill you and shoot creepy crawlies at everyone else.

Michael Myers, back by popular demand after his disappointing exclusion from the franchise’s third film, chops it up with a new pint-sized scream queen, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), if the first film of what Halloween fans call The Thorn Trilogy.

Michael’s out for revenge against Jamie Lloyd, but instead of a scorched-earth rampage, the big, bad slasher sheds a tear while boring us to tears. Also, what was up with the pennywhistle sound effect?

What’s scarier than a psycho-killer with four movies worth of body count behind him? The same guy in league with Satanic druids. Features Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle in his very first film role. The last film in The Thorn Trilogy.

The Halloween series comes to its senses and returns to the canon, bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode—and returns the story to the original thread that started with Halloween and Halloween II.

Laurie returns again, but for how long? And will that impact the overall quality of, or derail, this entry in the Halloween franchise? Hmmmm . . .

Were we just complaining about retroactive continuity and the Halloween canon? Yeah, this remake by horror-head/rocker Rob Zombie is super retconned, not canon, and totally brutal. Zombie adds character depth to Michael and digs deeper into what’s up with the slasher and Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton in the Zombie Halloweens).

Zombie doubles down on the brutality and grue, and digs even deeper into what’s up with Michael and Laurie.

The first film in David Gordon Green’s now-complete new Halloween trilogy is a sequel to the original Night He Came Home from 1978, and sees Curtis return as Laurie Strode. But instead of occurring on the same night as with the original sequel, Halloween II, this 2018 film takes place 40 years later. (That’d make Michael, like, 61 years old—a Boomer. Shriiiiiiieeeek!)

The second film in the David Gordon Green trilogy does, in fact, start where the previous film left off (as with the first two films in the series) and the mayhem continues.

As the title suggests, this film caps off the trilogy and supposedly ends the saga. We say “supposedly” for two reasons: First, to avoid spoilers. The second reason? Miramax has acquired the series rights and there’s nothing stopping anyone from continuing to milk sweet, sweet blood from this moneymaker franchise. And that works for us, ‘cause even with all the continuity problems, one thing is true throughout the series: Every time you think Michael Myers is dead, he gets back up.