Halloween Movies in Order: Every Timeline, From 1978 to Halloween Ends
All 13 Halloween movies in release order, plus the five timelines: the original run, H20, Rob Zombie's remakes, the 2018 trilogy and Season of the Witch.
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Watch them in release order, from Halloween (1978) to Halloween Ends (2022), and know that it is not one story. There are thirteen films, and they sit in five timelines: the original run, the H20 pair, Rob Zombie’s two remakes, the 2018 trilogy, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which stands alone. Pick the timeline you want and you can skip the rest.
Halloween is Saturday, October 31, so there is time for one of them, or all of it. The table is the whole series in release order. The sections after it say which films belong together.
All 13 films in release order
| # | Film | Year | Director | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halloween | 1978 | John Carpenter | Original |
| 2 | Halloween II | 1981 | Rick Rosenthal | Original, and H20 |
| 3 | Halloween III: Season of the Witch | 1982 | Tommy Lee Wallace | Stand-alone |
| 4 | Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers | 1988 | Dwight H. Little | Original |
| 5 | Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers | 1989 | Dominique Othenin-Girard | Original |
| 6 | Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers | 1995 | Joe Chappelle | Original |
| 7 | Halloween H20: 20 Years Later | 1998 | Steve Miner | H20 |
| 8 | Halloween: Resurrection | 2002 | Rick Rosenthal | H20 |
| 9 | Halloween | 2007 | Rob Zombie | Rob Zombie |
| 10 | Halloween II | 2009 | Rob Zombie | Rob Zombie |
| 11 | Halloween | 2018 | David Gordon Green | 2018 trilogy, after 1978 |
| 12 | Halloween Kills | 2021 | David Gordon Green | 2018 trilogy |
| 13 | Halloween Ends | 2022 | David Gordon Green | 2018 trilogy |
Release years, directors and continuity checked October 22, 2026 against Wikipedia’s pages for the franchise and each film.
The original run: 1978 to 1995
Watch these if you want the long, tangled version: the one where Michael has a family tree. Five films, and it is the only timeline that includes Halloween 4, 5 and The Curse of Michael Myers.
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s film, which he also scored. In 1963 six-year-old Michael Myers kills his sister Judith. Fifteen years later he escapes the sanitarium and comes home to Haddonfield, where he stalks the babysitter Laurie Strode while Dr. Loomis chases him. It runs 91 minutes, and four of the five timelines start from it (Season of the Witch has nothing to do with it). Find it on Achriom.
Halloween II (1981)
Rick Rosenthal directs, and it starts the moment the first film ends. Michael follows Laurie to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. This is where the twist arrives that Laurie is his younger sister, an idea Carpenter came up with while working on the sequel and later called silly. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Dwight H. Little’s film follows Halloween II and skips Season of the Witch entirely. Michael wakes from a ten-year coma on a prison transfer when he learns he has a niece, Jamie Lloyd, Laurie’s orphaned daughter. It opens the story line that runs through the next two films. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Dominique Othenin-Girard directs. Michael survives being shot down a mine shaft, and Jamie, now mute and linked to him, becomes the bait for Loomis’s trap. It ends on the Man in Black, a figure who frees Michael from the police station and is not explained in this film. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
Joe Chappelle’s film answers the Man in Black: a cult uses the rune of Thorn to curse Michael to kill his own bloodline. It is Paul Rudd’s feature debut, as the grown-up Tommy Doyle, and one of Donald Pleasence’s last roles as Loomis (he died seven months before release). The “Producer’s Cut,” the test-screening version with a different ending, had its first official release in 2014. Find it on Achriom.
The H20 timeline: 1978, II, H20 and Resurrection
Watch these if you want Laurie Strode’s story as a story: she gets a sequel in which she is the lead. It keeps the first two films and ignores the three before it, 4, 5 and The Curse of Michael Myers.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Steve Miner’s film is 86 minutes. Laurie has faked her death and runs a California boarding school as Keri Tate, drinking too much and waiting for Michael to find her. He does, on Halloween night. Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie, and the film drops the Jamie Lloyd and Thorn story entirely. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Rick Rosenthal returns to direct. It picks up three years after H20, with Laurie in a sanitarium, and settles what happened at the end of that film: she killed a paramedic in a Michael costume, not Michael. Then it jumps to a group of students broadcasting live from his childhood house for an internet reality show. This is the end of this timeline. Find it on Achriom.
Rob Zombie’s remakes: 2007 and 2009
Watch these if you want something harsher and less polite than Carpenter. They share no story with any other timeline.
Halloween (2007)
Rob Zombie remakes the 1978 film and adds an origin: ten-year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) kills his family and is sent to Smith’s Grove under Dr. Loomis, played by Malcolm McDowell. Fifteen years later he escapes and heads for Haddonfield. Laurie is his sister again here. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween II (2009)
Not a remake of the 1981 film but a sequel to Zombie’s own. A year after Haddonfield, Laurie is in therapy and Michael has drifted across the country, guided by visions of his mother. Zombie turned it toward what the first film did to its survivors, and it is grittier and more violent. It runs 105 minutes. Find it on Achriom.
The 2018 trilogy: 2018, Kills and Ends
Watch these if you only have the time or patience for one thing. They need nothing but the 1978 film, and you can start with Halloween (2018) cold, though the 1978 film makes it land harder.
Halloween (2018)
David Gordon Green’s film is a direct sequel to Carpenter’s and ignores every other sequel. It drops the sibling twist: a character says it was something people made up. Forty years on, Michael escapes a prison transfer, and Laurie, who has spent decades preparing, faces him with her daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween Kills (2021)
Picks up on the same night. Laurie is in hospital after surgery, and Tommy Doyle leads a mob through Haddonfield to hunt Michael. It also flashes back to the events of 1978. It opened in US theaters on October 15, 2021, after a COVID-19 delay, and runs 105 minutes. Find it on Achriom.
Halloween Ends (2022)
The finish, released October 14, 2022. It opens on Halloween 2019 with a babysitter named Corey Cunningham, and then jumps ahead three years to a Haddonfield still living with what happened. It runs 111 minutes and closes the trilogy. Find it on Achriom.
Season of the Witch, on its own
Watch this if you want a Halloween movie with no Michael Myers.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Tommy Lee Wallace’s film is about Silver Shamrock Novelties and its jack-o’-lantern masks, which are wired to kill children when a TV commercial plays. Carpenter and Debra Hill meant the series to be an anthology, with a new Halloween story every year, and this was meant to be the first. It did poorly at the box office, and Halloween 4 brought Michael back. It has no characters from the others. Find it on Achriom.
Which path to take
If you want the shortest good marathon
Watch Halloween (1978), then Halloween (2018), Kills and Ends. Four films, one continuous story, and no explaining required.
If you want Laurie’s whole arc
Go 1978, II, H20. That is three films, ending on the 86-minute one. Stop there unless you want Resurrection, which closes her story.
If you want everything in order
Release order from the table, all thirteen. Expect the plot to contradict itself: the sequels were never written to fit together, and the 2018 trilogy rewrites half of it.
Keep a thirteen-film marathon on one shelf
Thirteen films across five timelines is enough to lose your place, especially when three of them are called Halloween and two are called Halloween II. Achriom lets you mark each as watched, paused or dropped, with start and finish dates and a rewatch count, and the free plan has no item limit. Your shelf is private unless you turn on a public profile.
You can also ask it about your own shelf in plain words, such as “which Halloween films haven’t I watched?”, and it answers from what you have logged. The free plan includes 10 librarian messages a month. If you are choosing an app first, the best movie tracking apps compares the options, and how to track movies across streaming services helps when the films are spread over several of them.
The other slasher series has its own guide: Friday the 13th movies in order. And for the reading side of October, horror books that are better than the movie is a good next shelf.
Questions people ask
What order should I watch the Halloween movies in?
Release order is the simplest: Halloween (1978), II, III: Season of the Witch, 4, 5, The Curse of Michael Myers, H20, Resurrection, Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009), then Halloween (2018), Kills and Ends. It is not one story, though, so if you want a single continuous plot, pick one of the timelines above and watch only those films.
How many Halloween movies are there?
Thirteen, from Halloween in 1978 to Halloween Ends in 2022. They split into an original run of five, the H20 pair, Rob Zombie’s two films, the 2018 trilogy and the stand-alone Season of the Witch.
Do I need to watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch?
No. It has no Michael Myers and no shared characters, because the series was meant to become an anthology with a new story each year. Halloween 4 skips it and brings Michael back.
Which Halloween movies do the 2018 films ignore?
All of them except the 1978 original. Halloween (2018) is a direct sequel to the first film and drops every other sequel, including the idea that Laurie is Michael’s sister. Kills and Ends then continue straight from 2018.
Is Laurie Strode Michael Myers’s sister?
It depends on the timeline. Halloween II (1981) introduced the twist, so the original run, the H20 pair and Rob Zombie’s films keep it. The 2018 trilogy throws it out, and a character in Halloween (2018) says it was something people made up.
Is Rob Zombie’s Halloween a remake or a sequel?
A remake. Halloween (2007) retells the 1978 story with an origin for young Michael, and Halloween II (2009) continues that remake, not the 1981 film of the same name.
Is Halloween Ends the last Halloween movie?
It is the third and final film of the 2018 trilogy. Jason Blum has said it is the last Halloween film under Blumhouse, but not necessarily the last in the franchise.