You’ve carved a pumpkin – looks great, top work – you’ve stocked up on candy and decked out the front porch like it’s the set of a Tim Burton movie. But there may be one variable still lingering over your Halloween: what to watch with the little ones? What’s needed is something that offers kids a frisson of spookiness and some gentle scares, but nothing that’s going to freak them out and require you to spend three hours sitting by their bedside reassuring them that Pazuzu isn’t real. Oh, and something that’s genuinely fun for grown-ups too. Here’s our pick of ten Halloween faves that hit that ghoulish sweet spot. (Oh, and grown-ups should head for this more R-rated list.)
The top Halloween movies for kids
1. Coco (Disney+)
Give your Halloween a celebratory vibe with an effervescent Pixar animation that sends its young musical hero into the afterlife for a race-against-the-clock adventure featuring skeletons as far as the eyeball can see. No culture does death with as much vibrancy and joy as Mexico, and this riff on the Day of the Dead celebrations is a suitably kaleidoscopic treatment of the great beyond. The actual Día de Muerto falls on Saturday, November 2, so what better time to cue it up?
2. Frankenweenie (Disney+)
Nothing’s worse than the loss of a beloved family pet. Enter Tim Burton’s stop motion animation to raise the spooky possibility of reincarnating the little guy with the help of a massive electrical charge. Grieving dog owner Victor does just that, summoning his deceased pooch, Sparky, from the dead and unleashing serious chaos in the goth maestro’s family-friendly homage to Universal monster movies.
3. The Boy and the Heron (Netflix)
In the spirit of Studio Ghibli’s greatest ever film, Spirited Away, this more recent gem makes a fantastical kind of Halloween watch full of transforming creatures, visual poetry and spooky, hand-drawn worlds. It’s not jump-scary in the usual sense, but we’d still give it the thumbs up for a late October family movie night. Trust Hayao Miyazaki and his unique kind of magic to take you down the rabbit hole.
4. The Imaginary (Netflix)
Another 2024 anime to consider this Halloween is this scary fantasy-adventure that’s based on an A F Harrold children’s book about imaginary friends and the freaky beings that pursue them through a modern-day but Peter Pan-ish London. The villain here is a relentless Imaginary-hunter whose own wraithlike sidekick makes a handy YA gateway to seminal J-horror The Ring (although give it a decade or so.)
5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Disney+)
The bag of bones who launched a million Halloween costumes, Jack Skellington is your guide to the ooky, spooky world of Halloween Town in this stop-motion classic. A rare mix of charming and macabre, with Danny Elfman’s catchy tunes and a host of fun-yet-freaky characters, Tim Burton’s creation (directed by Henry Selick) could be the most rewatchable Halloween movie on Disney+. Altogether now: ‘This is Halloween, this is Halloween…’
6. Ghostbusters (Hulu, AMC+, Sling TV)
7. Hocus Pocus (Disney+)
At a loose end this Halloween? Try summoning three Salem witches from the great beyond and unleashing some kitschy fun in the spirit of this Disney cult classic. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy are musical sorceresses the Sanderson sisters, who deliver a unique brand of 17th century mayhem when a teenager unwittingly summons them. It was a flop when it came out back in 1993, but has since spawned a sequel. Some things are just meant to rise from the grave.
8. The Addams Family (Hulu, AMC+, Sling TV)
The ooky-spooky brood, initially of '60s TV fame, received its first modern makeover in the early 1990s, and for many, this is the definitive version of the fam. Everyone fully commits to their roles, from Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston as Gomez and Morticia Addams to Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester (or so he claims) to Christina Ricci — the Jenna Ortega of Gen X — as sullen pre-teen Wednesday. Sure, it may be hard to convince the Wednesday generation that this is actually the best take on the franchise, but if you can get them to stay off their phones long enough, they're certain to get sucked in.
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