#1 HALLOWEEN
This franchise has it's fair share of haters as well but for the most part I think we can all agree without Michael there wouldn't be Jason or Freddy even Sean S. Cunningham has said that which is pretty freakin' cool.
Sure this franchise was all over the map with it's story lines and plots but if you watch the movies as two trilogies Halloween, Halloween III and H20 (you can add Resurrection if you want) and Halloween 4, 5, & 6 and ignore Halloween III the series makes alot more sense, if you're not a fan of this series watch then in the order I just wrote and I think it will change your mind on the franchise .
As far as the remake / reimagining and it's sequel go, I loved them both and this is something that most fans and I will disagree on but the 2007 and 2009 films were a complete story in TWO films that hadn't been done in the series and that was what made them great :)
#2 Scream
The complex story, the typical horror characters the way they took al the typical horror stuff and turned it on it's ear was amazing and had never been done before.
Wes Craven made an incredible film series along with the Main writer Kevin Williamson who wrote a beautiful script for the first film.
I watch this series almost as much as I watch the Halloween series and love everything about this series even though some fans don't like it much at allScream changed how we watch and more importantly how we make horror movies now .
Scre4m was a bit of a stretch butcould've meant more to the series if there were going to be scream 5 and 6 but leaving it as it's own film instead of the start of another trilogy only laves fans wanting more and that lead to the TV series on MTV which I am a HUGE fan of :)
#3 Friday The 13th
This franchise being in the #3 spot on my ranking will surely lend itself to some comments from my fellow horror fans, here is why I ranked it third. after the first film when Mrs. Voorhees was the killer they had Jason come back from drowning in the lake almost 30 years prior to the events of the first film to be the killer in the 2nd film okay so if he faked his drowning to spare his mother the pain of raising him I guess I can get behind the idea that adult human Jason would want revenge for his mother's murder.
After Part two when they "kill" Jason he goes on to get his now ICONIC hockey mask in part three and that film sends with Jason taking an ax to the head that should've been it, I mean it gets alot harder to believe that Jason could keep coming back over and over again after the ax to the head and the machete to the head in part IV which was the"Final Chapter" .
2009's remake was interesting in many ways I love that they actually showed Jason getting the hockey mask instead of him just showing up with it . the story was a mash up of the original three or four films all rolled into one and personally I liked the underground tunnel system idea though most fans don't.
#4 A Nightmare On Elm Street
The saving grace of this series is that even though Freddy was "defeated" and sent back to the dream world someone or more important ANYONE could dream him up again, which makes sense.
A Nightmare On Elm Street really bent the rules of slasher films in many ways some good and some bad but the genre was and is better because these films exist.
Now as for the 2010 reboot of the franchise which was an alright film by it's self but where they screwed it up beynd repair is the CHANGED Freddy's story too much and that did and doesn't sit well with life long ANOES fans, while this series isn't my favorite of the genre I still don't like that they tried to change the franchise at it's core which made little to no sense to take such huge risk, I know they were attempting to create new fans from the reboot but you killed the franchise for MILLIONS of fnas of the original series by catering to a small select portion of the audience.
#5 Childs Play
This franchise although ranked last in my top five is one that I watch often. I watch this franchise when I want a laugh not when I want to be motivated to write and not to be scared but to laugh and to me that's not what I put a horror movie in my DVD / Blu Ray player for ....
The first 2 films were scary as hell and hell even three had it's moments of fright but then you get to the WTF were they thinking movies of Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky which were both just out of this world in that they mad little to no sense in terms of the original plot of the series .
Then in 2013 Curse of Chucky SAVED this franchise and made it 100% less funny and 100% more scary like the original film did back in 1988. Curse brought us all the way back to before the beginning of the events of Childs Play which was amazing to see Charles Lee Ray before he was the doll and it showed how dark he was as a human.
These ranking blogs are mine and mine alone and my honest opinion of them. I welcome people with the same opinion as well as welcome those with a DIFFERENT opinion because we are ALL passionate about Horror and that's what I love about this genre we are passionate and loyal about our genre unlike any other genre of film .