8) Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

This sixth entry in the series came out in 1995, making it part of the last gasp of first-wave slasher movies before 1996’s Scream revitalized the genre with its self-referential approach. Directed by Joe Chappelle, The Curse of Michael Myers tries in its own way to take the Halloween mythology in a new direction, picking up on something Dr. Loomis (Pleasence, in his final screen appearance) said in Halloween II about Michael’s connection to the ancient festival of Samhain and running amok with it. To boil down a lot of mumbo-jumbo, there’s a cult operating in Haddonfield that believes Michael is the key to unlocking unlimited powers of evil, and they’ve apparently been watching over him—and an aged-up Jamie (J.C. Brandy), who gives birth to an infant the cult intends to sacrifice, then is anticlimactically killed off—waiting for the right cosmic moment for their ritual.

Um, also, relatives of Laurie Strode are somehow now living in the old Myers house, and the kid Laurie was babysitting in the first movie, Tommy Doyle (played by a then-unknown Paul Rudd), lives next door and has become a full-time, Loomis-level Michael obsessive. There are some fleetingly clever elements in The Curse of Michael Myers—Haddonfield’s approach to Halloween shows us how Michael has been elevated from local legend to serial-killer pop culture icon—but mostly it’s a nonsensical mess. Some may find that frustrating, but others may be highly entertained, which is why the entry widely regarded as the worst in the series isn’t rock-bottom on this list. Fortunately for Paul Rudd, Clueless also came out in 1995, ensuring he still had a career after this delicious pile of pumpkin poop.