Best Horror Movies

On Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois, having already shown signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten year old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) murders his sister Judith (Hanna R. Hall), her boyfriend Steve (Adam Weisman), his mother’s boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe), and a school bully (Daryl Sabara). After the longest trial in the state’s history, Michael is found guilty of first degree murder and sent to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell).

Michael initially cooperates with Dr. Loomis, claiming no memory of the killings; his mother, Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie), visits him regularly. After a year, Michael becomes fixated on his papier-mâché masks, closing himself off from everyone, even his mother. When Michael kills a nurse (Sybil Danning) during one of her visits, Deborah can no longer handle the situation and commits suicide. For the next fifteen years, Michael (Tyler Mane) continues making his masks and not speaking to anyone. Dr. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, attempts to move on with his life and closes Michael’s case. Later, while being prepared for transfer to maximum security, Michael escapes Smith’s Grove, killing the sanitarium guards and a truck driver (Ken Foree) for his clothes, and heads to Haddonfield. On Halloween, Michael arrives at his old home, now abandoned, and finds a kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored under the floorboards the night he killed his sister.

The story shifts to Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), and her friends Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Lynda Van Der Klok (Kristina Klebe) on Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. That night, she heads to the Doyle residence to watch their son Tommy (Skyler Gisondo). Meanwhile, Lynda meets with her boyfriend Bob (Nick Mennell) at Michael’s childhood home. Michael appears, murders them, and then heads to the Strode home, where he murders Laurie’s parents. Having been alerted to Michael’s escape, Dr. Loomis comes to Haddonfield looking for Michael. After obtaining a handgun, Loomis attempts to warn Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Brackett and Dr. Loomis head to the Strode home, with Brackett explaining along the way that Laurie is actually Michael Myers’ baby sister.

Meanwhile, Annie convinces Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace (Jenny Gregg Stewart), a girl Annie is supposed to be watching, long enough so she can have sex with her boyfriend Paul (Max Van Ville). Annie and Paul return to the Wallace home; during sex, Michael kills Paul and attacks Annie. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie on the floor, bloodied but alive, and calls 911. She is attacked by Michael, who chases her back to the Doyle home. Sheriff Brackett and Loomis hear the 911 call and head to the Wallace residence. Michael kidnaps Laurie, and takes her back to his home. Michael approaches Laurie and tries to show her that she is his younger sister. Unable to understand, Laurie grabs Michael’s knife and stabs him before escaping the house; Michael chases her, but is repeatedly shot by Dr. Loomis. Laurie and Loomis are just about to leave when Michael grabs Laurie and heads back to the house. Loomis intervenes, but Michael attacks him by squeezing Loomis’s skull with his hands. Laurie takes Loomis’ gun and runs upstairs; she is chased by Michael, who, after cornering her on a balcony, charges her head-on and knocks both of them over the railing. Laurie finds herself on top of a bleeding Michael. Aiming Loomis’ gun at his face, she repeatedly pulls the trigger until the gun finally goes off just as Michael’s hand grips Laurie’s wrist.

The film begins three years after the events of Halloween: H20 where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the main character of the first two installments as well as H20, has been confined to a mental institution on the counts of murder. A retcon is established in which Laurie did not really decapitate Michael Myers at the end of the previous film, but rather a paramedic with whom Myers forcefully switched clothing and his mask. Laurie pretends to be heavily medicated, but in reality dodges her pills and prepares herself for the inevitable confrontation with Michael. When Michael does appear, Laurie lures him into a trap, but before she can kill him for good, he turns the tables on her. In a confrontation on the roof as she reaches over to pull off his mask to make sure it is actually her brother, he grabs her and pulls her over the edge with him, stabbing her in the process. She gives him a kiss, telling him she will see him in hell, and falls off the roof.

A year later, a group of six college students win a competition to appear on a reality show on which they are to spend Halloween night in the childhood home of Michael Myers. Their mission is to find out what led him to kill. The investigation is done in the style of the MTV reality show, Fear and is broadcast live on the internet. The participants think the show is entirely for entertainment purposes and that the stunt will earn them some publicity and scholarship money. While in the house, the event goes horribly wrong as Michael returns home and one by one, kills the students and the crew involved in the broadcast. Soon, all but one of the college students are murdered. Using her PDA and pen pal on the outside, Sara escapes. Ultimately, only Sara Moyer and Freddie Harris, the host of the show, survive. Toward the end Myers is electrocuted and is taken to a morgue, where a pair of male mortician jokes to a female colleague that there is a “celebrity” in the bag. When he explains who it is, she slowly opens his body bag so she can look. The camera angle changes to Michael’s perception from inside the mask as his eyes slide open and he looks around. As the screen goes black a scream is heard as the credits begin to roll^.

Ultimately, eleven people die in the film. This is also the only film in the Halloween series in which Michael trying to kill one of his relatives is not part of the main storyline.

The movie features the return of Curtis’s character from the first two Halloween films, Laurie Strode, now revealed to be living under the assumed name “Keri Tate”. As Tate, Laurie has a seemingly perfect life with an intelligent son and a boyfriend, a great career (as a head mistress at a private boarding school in Northern California); however, Laurie is far from happy. The tragic events from 20 years previous still haunt her mind, and strongly take effect on her parental capabilities. To everyone, this is “just another Halloween,” however Laurie still lives in constant fear.

But this year is different. Marion Chambers and her neighbours are murdered by Michael after he steals a file on Laurie Strode. Michael leaves to find Laurie. To mark the 20th anniversary of the happenings of 1978, her psychotic brother, serial killer Michael Myers, appears, and starts killing off her co-workers and students one by one. And for the first time in two decades, they meet again. Laurie manages to escape, but instead of leaving, chooses to go back, in an attempt to restore her life, to the school to challenge Michael in a fight to the death. She finds him and attempts killing him several times. She finally pushes him off a balcony, causing him to apparently fall to his death, similar to the first film.

The police come and clean the mess and put Michael’s corpse in a body bag, and in an ambulance. Laurie steals the ambulance with Michael’s body in the back, but Michael is still alive and escapes the body bag, and again tries to kill her. She slams on the brakes, throwing him through the windshield. She then tries unsuccessfully to run him over. The vehicle tumbles down a cliff but she escapes, while Michael is trapped between it and a tree. He reaches out to her. She reaches for his hand, but then remembers everything he’s done to her. She then pulls back and chops his head off with an axe, finally killing him. Michael’s head rolls down the hill. Sirens are then heard approaching. In the television edited version the ending is very similar except the sceen goes black the moment Laurie/Keri chops his head off.

Michael Myers, his niece Jamie Lloyd, and the mysterious Man in Black have all been in hiding for six years. It is revealed that the Man in Black is the leader of a Druid like cult, and that after the fiery climax of Halloween 5 the Man in Black kidnapped Jamie and had her impregnated (although viewers are never told who the father is). The baby is born on Halloween Eve and is carried away by the Man in Black. Later that night, however, a nurse helps Jamie and her baby escape. Michael Myers, in pursuit of Jamie and her newborn, kills the nurse by impaling the back of her head to a metal spike in the wall. Jamie, meanwhile, steals the truck of an angry motorist (who quickly becomes Michael’s next victim) and flees to a dark and empty bus station where she calls in to a radio show that happens to be doing a broadcast about the Haddonfield murders. Jamie gets on the air, begging for help and warning of Michael’s imminent return. Trapped, she proceeds to hide in the bathroom where Michael nearly catches her. She narrowly makes it out alive and again drives away. Jamie is still not safe, as she is forced off the road by a presumably stolen van driven by Michael Myers. Beaten and exhausted, she makes her way inside of an old barn where Michael is waiting for her. He kills Jamie by pushing her into a corn thresher, only to find that Jamie does not have the baby.

Meanwhile, Tommy Doyle (the child Laurie Strode babysat in the first film) has his eye on a family who’s moved into the old Myers house across the street from the boarding house where he lives. The boarding house is run by a mysterious old woman named Minnie Blankenship. For seventeen years, Tommy has been obsessed with finding the truth behind the murderous motives of Michael Myers. After hearing Jamie begging for help on a local radio show, Tommy finds her baby at the bus station and takes him into hiding. The people living in the Myers house are relatives of the Strode family (Laurie Strode’s adoptive parents), and among the current residents are Kara Strode and her son Danny, Kara’s teenage brother Tim, and her parents, the doting mother Debra and her abusive husband and Kara’s father John. One by one, Michael stalks each of the Strodes, trying to get to Jamie’s baby. Across the street, Tommy reveals to Kara that Michael has been marked with a runic symbol called Thorn or Thurisaz, an ancient Druid curse that drives a young man to wipe out his entire family for the good of civilization. The plot takes a turn when the Man in Black finally reveals himself as Dr. Wynn from the original Halloween. Wynn has been experimenting with pure evil and has kept his work secret within the bowels of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium (where Michael was held for most of his youth). After a terrifying showdown between Kara and Michael Myers, Tommy and Loomis follow Wynn to the mental hospital where a final bloody conflict erupts, ending with the death of Dr. Wynn and the other 12 doctors and, presumably, Michael Myers himself. The film concludes with the protagonists getting out safely, except for Dr. Loomis, who walks back inside the hospital to take care of “unfinished business.” Inside Wynn’s secret medical lab, however, Michael’s mask has been left on the floor while off-screen we hear the sound of Loomis’s final, fateful scream.

The film begins with a recap of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, in which Michael Myers is shown being shot at and falling into a mine shaft. Michael, however, finds a way out and stumbles into a nearby river. He makes his way into a small shack by the river owned by a local hermit. Once there, Michael collapses and remains in a comatose state for a full year. On October 30, 1989, Michael awakens, kills the hermit, and returns to terrorize Haddonfield, where his young niece, Jamie Lloyd (played by Danielle Harris) continues to live after nearly being killed by Michael the year before.

Jamie has been mute since attacking her foster mother at the end of part four, but exhibits signs of a telepathic link with her evil uncle. Dr. Sam Loomis realizes that this link exists, and plans to use it to put an end to Michael’s reign of terror. Michael begins stalking Rachel (Jamie’s foster sister) and her friend Tina (played by Wendy Kaplan). After both are killed Jamie agrees to put herself in danger to help Loomis stop Michael for good. With Jamie’s help, Loomis lures Michael back to the old Myers house.

Michael makes many attempts at killing Jamie, finally getting the chance to in the attic. In a desperate move, Jamie tries appealing to Michael’s humanity by calling him “Uncle”. Myers pauses, prompting Jamie to ask to see his face. He takes off his mask, and a lone tear runs down his face. Jamie reaches up to wipe it away, and Michael is thrown into a rage. The killer pursues Jamie, who runs into Loomis. The doctor seems to turn on the girl as he shouts for Michael to come and take her. It turns out that he has used the girl as bait, thus leading Michael to walk beneath a heavy chain net. Once the net falls, Dr. Loomis fires two ineffectual shots from a tranquilizer gun, causing him to violently beat Michael with a wooden plank. They take Michael to the local sheriff’s station, while it is explained because Michael is too violent and insane, the sheriff’s department contacted the US National Guard to escort Michael to a maximum-security military prison. However, a mysterious stranger dressed in all black, has come to Haddonfield, and while Jamie sits in a patrol car outside, he causes an explosion. Jamie walks through the station finding the bodies of the dead officers. She goes over to Michael’s holding cell to discover that it’s empty, with the bars bent open. As Jamie sobs realizing Myers is once again able to get her, she says “No… No!” The scene then goes black.

Michael Myers has been in a coma for ten years, when his massacre was stopped by Dr. Samuel J. Loomis and Laurie Strode. At the beginning of this film, Myers is being transferred from Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. He awakens when he hears that Laurie Strode, his sister, is deceased, but her daughter, Jamie Lloyd is alive and well in Haddonfield. He kills the ambulance crew and escapes. Dr. Loomis races to Haddonfield in an attempt to bring Myers’ killing spree to an end once and for all.

In Haddonfield, his niece Jamie Lloyd, has been adopted by the Carruthers family. She has frequent nightmares about Michael, though she does not know who he is. On Halloween night, Jamie goes out trick-or-treating dressed as a clown (a costume that is very similar to the one worn by young Michael Myers at the beginning of the first Halloween film) with her teenage foster sister Rachel Carruthers (played by Ellie Cornell). Her uncle, Michael, follows them.

Dr. Loomis (Having severe facial and bodily scars from burns he received attempting to kill Michael in Halloween II), meanwhile, arrives in Haddonfield after an exhausting journey, and contacts the police department to inform them of Myers’ escape. He and Haddonfield’s new Sheriff Ben Meeker (played by Beau Starr) begin to search the town for Michael and Jamie. They find that Myers has singlehandedly annihilated the entire police force. The girls hide in the Sheriff’s house, where Michael follows them. Michael kills the sheriff’s daughter Kelly by impaling her with the dead deputy’s shotgun, and he kills Rachel’s boyfriend Brady by crushing his cheek bones. Jamie and Rachel escape onto the roof, where Rachel tries to lower Jamie down the chimney, but Myers almost stabs Rachel and she falls off the roof, but hangs onto the rain gutter. When Michael swipes at her with the knife she loses her grip and falls off the roof. Jamie gets down and pleads for Rachel not to be dead. She sees Myers and runs off screaming for help and encounters Loomis. They break into the school, but somehow Myers gets in as well. Myers throws Loomis through the door. Jamie looks around the school for help. She sees Myers again but falls down the stairs and she cannot get up, Myers slowly walks down the stairs to murder his niece. But Rachel is still alive and sprays Michael with the fire extinguisher. They escape and leave Haddonfield but Myers hides in the back of the truck that they use to escape. He murders the men who drive the trucks which forces Rachel to drive. She manages to throw Michael off the truck then she runs him down. The sheriff’s deputies catch up to them and shoot Michael relentlessly. He falls into an abandoned mine shaft which collapses on him.

Back at the Carruthers house, Jamie puts on her clown mask and stabs her foster mother. It turns out that she was possessed by Myers’ rage. Dr. Loomis attempts to shoot her but Sheriff Meeker prevents it. The film ends with a shot of Jamie, wearing the clown mask, holding bloody scissors. This shot is very similar to the shot near the beginning of the original Halloween, where young Michael Myers is seen holding a bloody knife after killing his older sister, Judith.

On Saturday, October 23, shop owner Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is chased by mysterious figures wearing business suits. He collapses at a gas station clutching a Silver Shamrock jack-o’-lantern mask and is driven to the hospital by the filling station attendant (Essex Smith) all the while ranting, “They’re gonna kill us. All of us.” Grimbridge is placed under the care of Dr. Daniel “Dan” Challis. While Grimbridge is hospitalized, another man in a suit enters his room and pulls his skull apart, killing him instantly. The man then returns to his vehicle, douses himself with gasoline and lights himself on fire, causing the car to explode.

Challis, together with Grimbridge’s daughter, Ellie, begins an investigation that leads them to the small town of Santa Mira, California, home of the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory. They learn from a hotel manager, Mr. Rafferty (Michael Currie), that the source of the town’s prosperity is Irishman Conal Cochran and his factory and that the majority of the town’s population is made up of descendants of Irish immigrants. Challis learns that Ellie’s father had stayed at the same hotel. Other guests of the hotel included shop owners Marge Guttman (Garn Stephens) and the Kupfer family: Buddy (Ralph Strait), Betty (Jadeen Barbor) and their son “Little” Buddy (Bradley Schacter). All have business at the factory and eventually meet gruesome ends because of the Silver Shamrock masks.

A day after arriving in Santa Mira, Challis and Ellie tour the Silver Shamrock factory with the Kupfers and are alarmed to discover Grimbridge’s car in a storage building guarded by more men dressed in suits. They return to their hotel but find that they cannot contact anyone outside Santa Mira. Ellie is kidnapped by the men in suits from the factory, and in an attempt to locate her, Challis breaks into the factory. There he discovers that the men in suits are actually androids created by Cochran. Although Challis succeeds in neutralizing one of the androids (Dick Warlock), he is captured by the others, and Cochran reveals his plan to kill children on Halloween night. He explains that the Silver Shamrock trademark on the masks contains a computer chip embedded with a small fragment of a five-ton sacrificial stone stolen from Stonehenge. When the Silver Shamrock television commercial airs on Halloween night, the chip will activate, discharging energy which will cause the wearers’ heads to dissolve and spew insects and snakes. Cochran further explains that he is attempting to resurrect the more macabre aspects of the Celtic festival, Samhain, which he connects to witchcraft.

Challis escapes from the cell Cochran leaves him in, rescues an unusually passive Ellie, and manages to sabotage Cochran’s computers so that the commercial is played into the factory’s control room. He then releases a shower of computer chips, which explode in front of the TV monitors and destroy Cochran’s androids. The computers and the standing stone form a magic circle; Cochran politely applauds his opponent before the circle’s energy discharges through him and vaporizes him. Challis flees as the factory is consumed in the chain reaction, but discovers that the “Ellie” he has saved is another android. He destroys it and makes his way to the same filling station where Ellie’s father had come eight days earlier. Challis contacts the television stations and convinces all but one of the station managers to remove the commercial. The film ends with Challis screaming into the telephone, “Turn it off! Stop it! STOP IT!!” It is implied that all the children (including Challis’s) watching the commercial at that moment are killed, even though Cochran did not survive.

After the film replays the last scene of Halloween, it moves on to Dr. Sam Loomis warning Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) that although he has shot Myers six times in the heart, Myers still lives. Meanwhile, Laurie Strode is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital and Myers wanders around Haddonfield in search of her. One of the EMS attendants, Jimmy (Lance Guest) begins to show an interest in her.

Jimmy tells Laurie that the man who attacked her was Michael Myers, infamous for murdering his older sister fifteen years earlier on Halloween night. After this, Laurie drifts in and out of consciousness, having strange flashbacks about her adoption by the Strodes and visiting a boy in an institution. Myers learns that she is at the hospital. He goes there and murders the hospital’s staff one by one. Laurie manages to elude him, but she is limping badly and sedated and is thus unable to move very quickly.

Dr. Loomis and the Haddonfield police continue to search the town for Myers. At the local elementary school they discover that Myers has broken into a classroom and scrawled the word “Samhain” in blood on the chalkboard. Loomis explains that it is a Celtic word that means “lord of the dead”, the “end of summer”, and “October 31″ (Samhain’s symbolic importance is not elaborated on until later films). Nurse Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Loomis’ assistant, arrives and tells Loomis that she has discovered a secret file on Myers to which he was not privy. The file reveals that Laurie is actually Myers’s sister, adopted by the Strodes after Myers killed his older sister, Judith. Chambers also informs Loomis that he has strict orders to return to Smith’s Grove.

Instead, Loomis forces the Marshall (John Zenda) and Chambers to drive to the hospital, knowing that Myers will have already tracked Laurie there. When they arrive at the hospital they find that Jimmy and Laurie are the only one left alive (Jimmy is unconscious in a car). Once again, Loomis shoots Myers several times, but to no avail. After Myers kills the Marshall, Loomis and Laurie retreat into an operating room, and Laurie shoots Myers in the eyes after Loomis is stabbed. Loomis is able to turn on the oxygen and ether tanks in the operating room, utters the line “It’s time, Michael”, then lights his cigarette lighter, causing an explosion that engulfs him and Myers. A shocked Laurie watches as Michael still pursues her while he is engulfed in flames. Nonetheless, he collapses finally and the film ends as Laurie is transferred to another hospital.

On Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) stabs his seventeen-year-old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) to death with a large kitchen knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. Almost immediately after, his mother and father arrive home and find him in a trance-like state. They send him to Smith’s Grove – Warren County Sanitarium and he is placed under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).

Eight years of treatment lead Loomis to suspect that Michael is nothing more than pure evil. Seven years of trying to keep Myers locked up ends upon the arrival of Myers for his transfer to be prosecuted as an adult. Myers escapes from Smith’s Grove, steals the institution’s car, and returns to Haddonfield.

Loomis knows where he is going and pursues him. In Haddonfield, Myers stalks teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and some of her friends. At various points throughout the day Laurie sees a man in a white mask (Michael Myers) (from her classroom window, behind a bush while she walks home, and in the clothesline from her bedroom window).

Later in the evening, Laurie meets her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). After arranging to pick up her boyfriend, Annie sends Lindsey to stay with Laurie at the Doyle house before being murdered by Myers (who had followed them). Tommy sees him carrying Annie’s body into the Wallace house and thinks Myers is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses the boy’s terror and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Myers later murders Laurie’s other friend Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles) and Lynda’s boyfriend, Robert “Bob” Simms (John Michael Graham) after they have sex in the empty Wallace house.

Laurie worries for her friends’ safety after receiving a strange phone call from Lynda at the Wallace house. She walks across the street and discovers the three bodies plus Judith Myers’ missing tombstone. She is attacked by Michael Myers but escapes back to the Doyle house. Laurie stabs Myers in the neck with a knitting needle, in the eye with a clothes hanger, and with a knife in the torso, but he continues to pursue her. Eventually, Loomis spots Tommy and Lindsey running from the house and finds Myers in the upstairs hallway. Loomis rescues Laurie from being strangled by Myers, shooting him six times and causing him to fall from the house’s second-story balcony. Upon looking out the window for Myers’ body, however, Loomis discovers that he is nowhere to be found.