20 Serial Killer Movies You Must See Before You Die

9. Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter's iconic horror/slasher flick is one of the most famous pictures of its kind, and for good reason. It's also a fantastically tense serial killer movie, which sees a relentless force of psychopathic evil - the terrifying Michael Myers - out to murder the babysitter (before that was ever "a thing"), played memorably by Jamie Lee Curtis. Everything from the look of the film's central serial killer to its memorably synth-driven musical score has rendered Halloween as a true staple of horror cinema, but Halloween is also one of the cinema's most successfully unnerving serial killer pictures because it brilliantly depicts the emotionless drive to kill that sums up the serial killer type in all its simplicity. Michael Myers kills because he has to; there's no rhyme or reason. Countless inferior sequels exposed Michael Myers as a supernatural entity of sorts, but the original Halloween embraced a more realistic tone; it's a genuinely frightening experience.