5) Halloween II

Halloween: Resurrection director Rick Rosenthal made his feature debut with this 1981 entry in the series, which picks up exactly where the 1978 original left off: Laurie’s just fended off the boogeyman, and Dr. Loomis is horrified (but not all that surprised) to find that shooting his monstrous patient six times isn’t enough to slow him down, much less kill him. Though Halloween creators Carpenter and Debra Hill returned to co-write and co-produce, and the film has the same general vibe as the first film—same Carpenter music, same streets of Pasadena passing for Haddonfield, Jamie Lee Curtis in peak scream-queen mode—there’s a perceptible drop in quality. The plot doesn’t innovate much; once again, Laurie tries to evade her stalker while Loomis frantically tries to hunt him down. And while levels of gore and luridness are increased (Laurie’s in the hospital, so you know there’ll be a “sexy nurse meets a gruesome end” scene, though the “trick-or-treater vs. razor blade” situation glimpsed in passing is maybe the most shocking thing in the movie), actual frights are harder to come by.

Halloween II is probably best known as the movie that introduced the “Laurie is Michael’s long-lost baby sister” twist—thus giving Michael a motive for his madness. Subsequent installments (until the 2018 reboot) were then obligated to tap into that information for their own plots. But looking back now, keeping him an enigma would’ve been way scarier.