John Carpenter made it pretty simple for horror neophytes of the future: If you want to watch a Halloween-themed movie, check out the one called Halloween! (In fact, there aren’t that many choices for really decent Halloween-set movies that don’t involve Michael Myers.) But what if you’ve done your due diligence and checked out the original 1978 movie and loved it, and want something else to check out on All Hallow’s Eve without committing to a full-series marathon? After all, even hardcore fans would probably admit that as far as Halloween goes, there’s the first movie, and then the rest – a dozen more entries in all, a task for a slasher aficionado or franchise completist more than a casual celebrator of spooky season. But that also doesn’t mean everything else with Halloween in the title is worthless, either! As it happens, there are three distinct paths that the horror-curious-but-not-fanatic can follow if they’re hungering for more of the series and unburdened by compulsive completism. It really just depends on what kind of mood you’re in. Herewith, your best options for continuing the Halloween journey past the unimpeachable original.

1. John Carpenter and Debra Hill did bash out the screenplay for the 1981 sequel to the original Halloween, but they had a more inventive idea that they were allowed to pursue for the third entry: Make the franchise an anthology series, where each installment would be a different and unrelated Halloween-set story from different filmmakers. Unfortunately, putting out a return of Michael Myers just a year earlier did Halloween III: Season of the Witch no favors in the expectations department, and the film found little purchase with fans or critics in 1982. It’s since become a cult favorite, maybe even to the point of becoming sort of overrated in its way; certainly, it’s more of a curiosity than a masterfully executed slice of elemental horror, with an amusingly clunky leading man in the form of character actor Tom Atkins in place of the everygirl Jamie Lee Curtis. But this sci-fi-tinged, Twilight Zone-y story about a company manufacturing nefarious Halloween masks goes pretty hard in its own right, suggesting the anthology project could have been a great creative avenue for the series.

   Recommended for: Twilight Zone fans; jingle aficionados; amateur investigators

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2. The original Halloween did inspire a direct sequel that picks up almost immediately following the events of the first film (despite being made three years later) – and as slasher sequels go, it’s pretty good. The kills are nastier both tonally and in terms of gore, and there’s a major plot twist involving Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode that’s a little cheap, but undeniably fun in a sequel-y sort of way. If you want something close to the experience of the original film, Halloween II is probably the way to go. But to avoid feeling too repetitive, consider double-featuring it with Rob Zombie’s own Halloween II, a sequel to his remake that goes further in an auteurist direction.

   Now, does it really make sense to skip the remake itself and go straight to its follow-up? Maybe not, but Zombie’s remake is an ungainly combination of needlessly elaborated Myers backstory (turns out young Michael’s life resembled… a Rob Zombie movie!) and needlessly faithful recreation of moments from the original film. His sequel has a better handle on how to mix those elements; its extended opening is essentially a lengthy (and impressively intense!) homage to the entirety of Halloween II, after which the movie jumps forward to follow Laurie negotiating her trauma from the events of the first film. It’s not especially hard to follow without seeing Zombie’s first movie, working just as well as a disturbing alt-world sequel to the first film and a more thoughtful (but also more upsetting) alt version of the more mercenary 1981 sequel.

   Recommended for: Gorehounds; goths; hellbillies; disturbed horsegirls

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3. This is more of an undertaking – and a potentially controversial one among Halloween fans, who were increasingly divided by the direction David Gordon Green (known for comedies like Pineapple Express and indies like All the Real Girls) took the series with his sequel trilogy. First, he ignores every sequel, including others that have included Laurie Strode, like Halloween H20, the series’ first stab at a decades-later follow-up. He was right to do so, because H20 is basically one extended marquee chase-and-fight rematch sequence appended to an otherwise terrible CW-grade (or, at the time, WB-grade) baby slasher. Green’s first installment, nonsensically also called Halloween, is really H40: a 40-years-later revisitation of Laurie Strode, now a survivalist grandma on the outskirts of Haddonfield. The first movie in his new trilogy is relatively straightforward in that regard, with Curtis joining two other generations of Strode women in fighting off the newly reinvigorated boogeyman (accidentally spurred back into action by a podcaster, naturally).

   It’s a satisfying riff on the original – and then its sequels go in less immediately crowdpleasing directions. Halloween Kills is yet another version of Halloween II (meaner kill scenes, later-that-same-night setting), only with a surprising and often endearing focus on the citizens of Haddonfield, with funny, affectionate vignettes that often play like bits and pieces out of Green’s indie work – until they’re punctured with horrific slasher violence. Halloween Ends takes just as much inspiration from another Carpenter classic, Christine, as from his Halloween movie, with a feverish doomed-lovers storyline that gives Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) a greater psychological burden to bear. It also features Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), maybe the franchise’s most indelible creation this side of Michael and Laurie themselves. A lot of fans hated this departure from endless Myers rehashing, in that Last Jedi way that should tip you off you’re dealing with something genuinely special in a world of hacky legacy sequels. It probably helps to be on Green’s wavelength, but either way, his trilogy is fascinating, and Halloween Ends may be the best and boldest entry since the very first one.

   Recommended for: Misunderstood nerds; contrarians; Green fans

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This may seem like a lot, but keep in mind: By the time you finish any of these recommendations, there’s a decent chance there will be yet another Halloween playing in a theater near you.