This new one actually looks really good so it got me interested in the franchise. I've only seen the original (and the Zombie remake) ages ago and I thought that it was just ok, but I really don't remember much about it. Now I wanna see it again and I'm thinking about throwing a Halloween marathon. I didn't even know that there were so many sequels, I was thinking like 3 or 4. Anyway, are the sequels any good?
shareHalloween 3 “Season of the Witch” has nothing to do with the first two.
Just FYI.
Ok, now we're getting somewhere, I think I'm gonna skip at least that one.
shareIt’s a stand-alone film.
And fairly creepy with a stellar soundtrack by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth that heightens the scare.
I used to play it on a boom box during Halloween when kids come trick-or-treating.
Give it a listen here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qsHMnWAjICs
That was pretty awesome. Carpenter knows how to make a striking soundtrack.
shareH2 is a fairly decent sequel, taking place right after the first one. But it introduces that sibling aspect the Rob Zombie remake had, and it’s problematic to most of the sequels in this franchise, and kind of makes Michael look dumb for wasting so much time in the first film.
H3 is better than most of the sequels because it has nothing to do with Michael Myers. (The original film is watched by a few of our characters throughout the movie, showing that this third film is not in the same universe as the first two films). It shows that the franchise could have been an anthology franchise, but everyone likes Michael Myers too damn much, so we got H4.
H4 follows H2, and begins what we call the Thorn trilogy. It is just a 10 year later updated repeat of the first one, but it’s entertaining in some parts.
H5 is a very rushed follow up to H4. So rushed it definitely shows in its execution.
Curse, depending on which version you watch, follows up H5 and introduces a lot of new mythos to the franchise (a mythos that makes no goddamn sense when you stop and think about all the films leading up to this point). It also tries to connect to Halloween 3 in some aspects, despite that film and the Michael Myers storyline being in separate universes. It is also the “kind of” wrap up of the Thorn trilogy, depending which version you watch. Doesn’t really matter which version you watch, because this storyline doesn’t get resolved. Ever.
H20 decides to pretend that only the first and second film happened, and tries to give a conclusion to the franchise. But H20 made a lot of money, so we get....
Resurrection. This one follows on the H20 storyline. The first 10 to 15 minutes are awful. The rest of the movie is just...meh. Everyone hates for many reasons, but the biggest one is that this was the last installment of the original series.
RZ’s H2, regardless of which version you watch, might be a tough watch for you, but I kind of found it ambitious but still messy.
And it is, by leaps and bounds, the best of all the sequels.
shareH1 H2 and H4 are good H20 does the retcon thing, its decent.
H3 is unrelated to Michael Myers
H5 continues h4's story so its worth a watch but its not very good
H6 had production issues, its also watchable and has its good parts including Paul Rudd!Last Appearance of Donald Pleasance, he died i think during production.
H8 is a terrible movie
ZH1 is alright
ZH2 is a terrible film.
Thanks that was helpful. I'm only interested in the ones that are about Michael Myers and the ones that are somehow connected/continue the same story.
I now have H1, H2 and H4. I'm gonna check out those over the weekend and then seek out the rest, but I'll likely skip H3 and H8.
Watch them all. The bad ones will make the rest look awesome.
I love #3, but it is a stand alone.
5, 6, 8, and the zombie flicks are weak.
7 is pretty fun, but a product of the Scream era.
I really love Halloween II. The first is perfect but II is so fun to watch and just as well made. I and II are the only Michael Myers installments you need.
Season of the Witch is interesting and has a cool atmosphere. I would have loved to see the series continue to peel off into new stories each time, perhaps hinting at connections among them. Instead we ended up with the absolute lowest common denominator of imaginatively bankrupt retreads and fanfic level, destinationless elaborations on the mythos. So much was wasted between 4 and H20 doing basically nothing. And then you have Resurrection which is one of the more fetid piles of shit I've ever seen lol. It's just sad how cashing in on a familiar brand wins over creativity every time.
Zephyr--I agree 100%.
H1 is a masterpiece.
H2 is good....(kinda the way Jaws is a masterpiece, and Jaws II is good, mainly because it's not far removed from the original, in tone, style, storyline, etc...).
H3 is it's own thing. Whatever.
Anything after H2, IMO.....is awful. You lose Hill and Carpenter's involvement altogether. Similar to the Jaws comparison....the producers figure as long as they can repurpose that Jaws theme and use the name "Jaws" in the title, fans of the original will remain loyal. We got succkered....in both franchises.
Where to begin? Part of the charm and mystique of the original (H1) was that there was virtually NO blood n' guts. And there was no goofy backstory regarding MM. As Loomis so masterfully put it in that brilliant monologue, what was behind those eyes was pure evil. The scares came from our childhood fear of what lurks in the shadows. That Boogeyman under the bed. He was relentless and he was unstoppable (and we didn't need to know why). The style and production techniques of H1 had Carpenter's touch at every turn. Once the movies lost that touch--they lost their soul. And, the producers lost the WHOLE...POINT....of what made H1 (and H2 to a lesser degree) so perfect.
Even the actor who played MM....his mannerisms, perfect. The mask....perfect. The actors...the sounds, the music (Don't Fear the Reaper--are you kidding me?? Perfect). With each sequel, we'd get bad imitation masks and actors BEHIND the mask that just couldn't duplicate what Castle mastered. And really, it just got silly....the contrived plots that were created just to, once again, set up a scenario where MM would come calling. What's more, he'd be in the same coveralls...and the same mask, which got silly after a while. It lost the unique spookiness we felt when we FIRST experienced it all in H1.
The Halloween sequels are the epitome of diminishing returns. And don't get me started on the Zombie versions. They were AWFUL. Zombie just didn't get what was at the heart of what made Halloween so fun and spooky. The original was a scary story around a campfire--about the Boogeyman. Good, old-school scares without the cheap use of blood and gore. Everything about Zombie's take was just wrong. Once I saw Malcolm MacDowell doing Loomis, after knowing just how perfectly Donald Pleasance played him, I was done.
Skip everything after H2. The rest of the sequels are so bad, they're an absolute insult to John Carpenter.
But see H1....every Halloween. Make it a tradition.
Right on. I'm pretty confused as to why people seem to be expecting this this new one to be good, seeing as there hasn't been a good Halloween movie since 1981? Dear anyone who's pumped about this, how does your level of pump compare to how you felt when H20 was coming out and h-why?
shareRight. If Jamie Lee Curtis (and Carpenter, to a degree?) are involved, it has a remote chance at being decent. But nothing more. It's like when Jaws: The Revenge came out. People got fired-up because they got one original cast member back (and, there was a flashback of Roy Scheider). But in the end, it was just awful.
Part of the magic of H1 was the timing. It came out in a great era for this genre. And it's set...in the 70's. Perfect. It's like....Halloween Resurrection was the antithesis of H1. Resurrection tried to bring the Halloween franchise up to modern times (reality TV, cell phones, young hip stars, etc...), and whiffed badly. H1 was a small little film, set in a sleepy, tree-lined town, in the Fall, in the 70's, in October. It was a time where you could indeed expect to hear Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" playing on a radio in the background of your day. It was a time before selfies and easy hook-ups, where a high school babysitter would be nervous about how to speak to Ben Tramer, and a masked stalker wouldn't be filmed by camera phones and broadcast on CNN and TMZ. The whole thing was perfect because of the simplicity of time, place, era, story and characters. This can't be replicated, no matter how many times they try. At least we have the original. It's a classic and a masterpiece.
The first 2 are the best.3 while a decent movie IMO can be skipped.It's it's own movie and has nothing to do with the story.I thought 4 was pretty good.5,6,7,and H20 have their flaws but are a fun watch.Hated Resurrection and Zombies films.
share