13 Best Movies From Otherwise Terrible Franchises
2. Halloween - Halloween Franchise
Other Films: Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween (2007 remake), Halloween II (2009) and Halloween (2018).
Halloween, over forty years after its release, is still a timeless horror classic.
Thanks to great performances from Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence as well as John Carpenter's pitch-perfect direction and stunning musical score, this is a near-flawless horror film but it did spawn a very annoying franchise. Nearly all of the follow-ups piled on the gore and dialled back on the atmosphere and mystery, showing a woeful misunderstanding of what made the original work.
The franchise also has a strange history of being repeatedly rebooted and tragically, this behind-the-scenes history is more interesting than most of the films.
Halloween (2018) is excellent, while Halloween II (1981) and Halloween (2007) are OK, but all of the other films are either mediocre or terrible. In particular, The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection are absolutely hideous.
Thankfully, the 2018 sequel retconned All of these films, so we can just pretend that they never happened.