Halloween Movie Marathon: 3 Lineups Timed to the Minute

The easiest Halloween movie marathon to pull off is a fixed lineup with a start time worked back from when you want it to end. Here are three, timed to the minute with 10-minute breaks: a PG family afternoon (4 h 43 min), the Michael Myers 2018 timeline (7 h 23 min) and a modern horror night (5 h 48 min).

Halloween 2026 falls on Saturday, October 31, so an afternoon lineup and a night lineup can share the same day. Every runtime below comes from TMDB, The Movie Database, and every rating is the US one, all checked on October 23, 2026.¹ We make Omniphile, a tracking app for iPhone and iPad, and the last section shows how we plan a marathon in it. Everything before that works with a pen and paper.

Three Halloween movie marathon lineups at a glance

To finish at a different time, move every start time by the same amount. We haven’t listed where each film streams, because streaming rights change often; check each film’s page on the day, in Omniphile or on a streaming guide such as JustWatch.

How to time a movie marathon

1. Add up the runtimes

   Use one source for every film, because runtimes differ by a minute or two between sites and between cuts of a film. Keep a few spare minutes for that.

2. Add the breaks

   You need one break fewer than you have films. Ten minutes covers a refill and a bathroom stop; plan a longer one if dinner falls inside the marathon.

3. Count back from the finish

   Subtract the total from the time you want to end. Four films running 6 h 53 min, plus three 10-minute breaks, take 7 h 23 min, so a midnight finish means pressing play at 4:37 p.m.

4. Write down every start time

   A printed schedule shows how far behind you are when a break runs long, and whether the last film still fits.

A family Halloween movie marathon for kids

Three PG films, ending at 5:30 p.m. so the marathon is over before trick-or-treating. If your neighborhood heads out sooner, start every film earlier by the same amount.

• Hotel Transylvania (Genndy Tartakovsky, 2012). Dracula, voiced by Adam Sandler, runs a hotel where monsters can rest from humans, until a human traveler finds it. An animated comedy is a gentle start for the youngest viewers.
• Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993). A teenage boy accidentally brings three witches, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, back to life in Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween night.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993). Jack Skellington of Halloween Town stumbles on Christmas Town. The stop-motion musical grew out of a poem by Tim Burton, and as the shortest film it goes last, when children are tired.

For older children, swap Hotel Transylvania for Coraline (PG, 1 h 40 min), Henry Selick’s stop-motion film of Neil Gaiman’s novella about a girl who finds a door to another version of her home. TMDB lists it as horror as well as family. The lineup grows by 9 minutes, so start at 12:38 p.m.

Michael Myers night: the Halloween movies in timeline order

The four films of the 2018 timeline tell one story: John Carpenter’s original, then David Gordon Green’s trilogy, which ignores every other sequel.² Jamie Lee Curtis plays Laurie Strode in all four.

Halloween (2018) is set forty years after the original, as a direct sequel to it.² Halloween Kills begins on the same night the 2018 film ends,³ and Halloween Ends is set four years after that.⁴ If you only have time for two, watch the 1978 and 2018 films: 3 h 17 min, or 3 h 27 min with a break.

Modern horror night

Three R-rated films from the last ten years, ending at midnight.

• Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017). A young Black man spends a weekend with his white girlfriend’s family.
• Talk to Me (Danny and Michael Philippou, 2023). Teenagers find they can reach spirits through an embalmed hand. The Australian film premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2022 and reached US theaters through A24 in July 2023.⁶
• Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025). Seventeen children from one third-grade class run out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. on the same night.⁷ At 2 h 9 min it is the longest film of the three, and it ends the night exactly at midnight.

For a PG-13 start, swap Get Out for A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018), which runs 1 h 35 min. The night gets 9 minutes shorter, so start at 6:21 p.m.

All the Halloween movies in order of release

The Halloween series has 13 films, but release order mixes five separate timelines. Later sequels ignore some or all of the earlier ones, so watching all 13 in a row means Michael Myers’s story restarts several times.⁸

Halloween movies in timeline order

Each timeline makes its own marathon. Runtimes are without breaks:

• The original timeline: Halloween (1978), Halloween II, Halloween 4, Halloween 5 and The Curse of Michael Myers. 7 h 35 min.
• The H20 timeline: Halloween (1978), Halloween II, H20 and Resurrection. H20 ignores the fourth, fifth and sixth films.⁸ 6 h 7 min.
• The 2018 timeline: Halloween (1978), Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. 6 h 53 min.
• Rob Zombie’s remakes: Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009). 3 h 34 min.
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch stands alone. 1 h 38 min.

The whole series runs 21 h 13 min. Spread over three nights, that is about 7 hours of film a night, before breaks.

More Halloween movie marathon ideas

• A Henry Selick double bill. The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, both PG and both stop-motion: 2 h 56 min, or 3 h 6 min with a break.
• The original against the remake. Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007): 3 h 20 min, or 3 h 30 min with a break.
• Finish a 31 days of horror list. From October 23, there are nine days left including Halloween itself. The Michael Myers and modern horror lineups add seven films in two nights.

Plan and track your Halloween movie marathon in Omniphile

Omniphile is our app for tracking movies, TV shows, books, audiobooks and games on iPhone and iPad. This is how we would set up any of the lineups above in it, with the version that added each feature in the changelog:

• Make the lineup a collection. Add the films in order. Since version 4.5, every collection card shows how much of it you have watched. Free accounts can make two collections, and Premium removes the limit.
• Queue it on Home. The Up Next group of the movies queue shows the total runtime of the films in it (version 3.13). With Premium, a whole collection can sit on Home as its own queue (version 3.11).
• Press Start Watching on each film. It starts a timer set to the film’s runtime, with a Live Activity (version 3.9).
• Check where each film streams. Every film’s page lists where to watch it, separating free, paid and subscription options. With Premium, Omniphile also notifies you when a movie becomes available to stream (version 4.1).
• Count it toward a horror challenge. Since version 4.3, a custom challenge can count the horror films you watch in October; custom challenges are part of Premium. The Michael Myers and modern lineups add seven films that TMDB lists as horror. The family films are listed under family and fantasy, so a horror-only challenge won’t count them.

Omniphile runs only on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and it is free to download with an optional Premium subscription. If you plan on Android or a computer, a Trakt list can hold a lineup: as of October 2026, free Trakt accounts get five personal lists of up to 250 items each.⁹ Our guide to TV show tracker apps compares Trakt and the other options.

Pick a lineup, decide when it should end, and count back. If one night isn’t enough, the timelines above give you a ready-made order for the next one.