Well this shouldn't be this complicated...

Wow, Halloween, right? I mean the movie series, not the holiday. Because there's another one-another movie in the series, not another holiday. Sorry, I can see where that would be confusing, but not nearly as confusing as the goddamn timeline of the Halloween movies.

If you had trouble following how Biff Tannon became the Donald
 Trump of Hill Valley in Back to the Future II, you might want to bail out now.

How is everyone involved in making
Human Centipede not on a watch list?

Yes, I said timeline, but we'll get to that. First of all, I should be upfront and explain that I'm usually not a big fan of horror movies. At least not recent ones. I can't do all the torture and gore of the latter day Saws and Humans Centipede. I like older horror movies though, like the Universal and Hammer monster movies and even things like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby and sure, even Halloween. The first one that is. I have to specify the first one, because Halloween, as a film title now refers to three, count'em, three different movies.

"So what if that exact
same thing, but again?"

-Movie logic

There's the original one, which is great, and then a 2007 remake which is less great and now this new one which has pretty decent reviews. Oh, and there're also two Halloween II's, the second Halloween and then the sequel to the remake. But that's the least complicated part of the rabbit hole I just went down on Wikipedia and IMBD. Lemme 'splain. So the Halloween series starts off like any other horror movie series. First is the original wherein Micheal Myers, the Shatner-masked serial killer, tries to kill Jamie Lee Curtis's character. Then there's a sequel in which he does the same thing again, which might sound unoriginal, but then that's kind of the functional definition of 'sequel.' Anyway, then part three comes along and it's about witches or something and has no connection to the previous films. It's a weird little detour, but whatever, because we're back to Michael Myers for parts four, five and six.

Kennedy? She runs Lucasfilm and made
the call to remove Expanded Universe
material from the new Star Wars canon.
What? It's a perfectly apt analogy...

Then the preposterously named Halloween H20: 20 Years Later rolls around and is a sequel to the first two movies. Yeah, the screen writers pulled a Kathleen Kennedy and ignored all the other ones; sort of an alternate timeline where the shittier sequels never happened. Oh, and just to show us how unpredictable this new movie is, they even killed off Jamie Lee Curtis's character at the end. The film-what? Spoiler? For real? The movie came out in 1998 and besides, both Curtis and her character would be back in later, though not always the same, movies.

Fun Fact, Zombie turned down directing
'P.S. I Love You' to do 'Halloween' which
I think we can all agree was a better fit.

Confused? Great. I am too. Let's press on. H20, which, again, stupid title, was followed by another sequel before it too was relegated to Legends status as the series was rebooted again. This time from scratch and this time by Rob Zombie. Yes, that Rob Zombie. Apparently he also directs. And just to add befuddlement to bewilderment this new Halloween is called simply Halloween. This is kind of forgivable, since it's a true remake of the original with a new cast playing the characters from the first one.

Pictured: Brian Greene, noted physicist
and author of books which, if you're like me,
you own, but have probably never read.

This movie also got a sequel, the second Halloween II, before it too was de-canon-ed for next month's movie which is the third to be titled simply Halloween. And this one is a sequel to the first movie called Halloween, but not to the other movies. With me? No, of course you're not. I'm not with me. This simple, stupid series of slasher movies about a un-killable serial killer which are in no way about time travel or quantum theory or anything remotely sci-fi somehow needs a Brian Greene book to make sense of it.

Oh, and Jamie Lee Curtis is back, because thanks to the confusing reboot-ery at work here, her character is un-murdered. Got all that?

The Halloween movies make the goddamn
Zelda timeline look downright reasonable.