Every Halloween Series Timeline Ranked From Worst To Best

6. The Reboot Series

Which Movies? Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009)

Why would you bother with this one? The only timeline to replace the original 1978 classic with an unsubtle reimagining that replaces tension with graphic violence, it's only really for audiences raised on torture porn gore with no patience for 1970s slow burn pacing.

To be fair to director Rob Zombie, he's obviously a fan of classic horror in general and the original Halloween series in particular and this is, for him, a labour of love. The White Zombie frontman has always been a better horror enthusiast, though, than he has been a horror filmmaker.

Halloween has always been at its best when not trying to over-explain Michael Myers, a creature of pure evil instinct and an almost literal boogeyman. Zombie's films take the opposite tack, far more interested in Myers' psychology and his familial connection to sister-cum-perennial-victim Laurie than any film before.

To its credit, Zombie's first Halloween, awkwardly half-prequel, half-remake, handles giving Myers more backstory and personality relatively reasonably. The prequel half, in which Malcolm McDowell (no Donald Pleasance, but a decent choice for a psychiatrist with an obsessive streak barely more sane than his patients) attempts to treat and connect with Michael, works well enough. The second half, a lightweight retread of the original completely disinterested in making us engage with any of the victims, is much worse.

Zombie's Halloween II, meanwhile, is completely disposable, doubling down on the Michael-Laurie family stuff to suggest that she might be prone to the same streak of madness (hardly an original direction to go, as we'll see). It's not worth your time and, to be honest, neither is the reboot timeline as a whole.