It is the most spooktacular time of the year, ghosts and ghouls. During a time full of clowns, hockey-masked serial killers, and monsters haunting your dreams, is any couch safe from these horrors? Can you even celebrate Halloween cinema without needing to leave the lights all on while you hold a knife under your pillow? Yes. Put down the knife and dim those lights, because I am here to help you.
Below is a list of the best Halloween movies of all time that aren’t defined by gore and fear.
Hocus Pocus
This is the best Halloween movie of any genre.
It follows the journey of Max, a young virgin who resurrects Salem’s Sanderson Sisters: three witches who survive and maintain their vanity from ingesting the lives of children. Max, his little sister Dani, and his love interest Allison have to survive zombies, graveyards, spells, hypnotic music, and their own teenage stupidity. This movie has action, drama, music, and a talking cat, as well Sarah Jessica Parker and Bette Midler.
Watch this.
Halloweentown (1–4)
These movies follow a young witch named Marnie through her training to become a witch, and her travels between the mortal world and Halloweentown. The movies have everything you could want from a Disney made-for-TV movie: teen romance, monsters, villains, high school drama, magic, and some early-2000s fashion.
If you don’t have time to watch them all (but you should make the time): The third is the best as it shows how monsters would manage in the human world. The fourth has all the drama and struggles of witch college. The second shows the hardships of young love and magic. But if you’re looking for some classic cheese, go with the first.
Twitches, and Twitches Too
The series follows twins separated at birth and their very different lifestyles. The two meet and at every touch something goes magically wrong. Guardians — who were responsible for separating them at birth — identify themselves and notify the twin witches that their magical dimension is in dire peril and they need to save it. The witches, while trying to balance their style and regular human lives, are also balancing banishing an evil smoky force called the Darkness. The movies feature sass, class conflict, and the struggles of bi-dimensional travel.
Casper Meets Wendy
Hilary Duff and a ghost — need I say more?
It is a comedic look at the usually hostile relationship between witches and ghosts. A lot of adult humour is interspersed with the joyful antics of a young Duff and her ectoplasmic friend as the two races come together to overthrow an evil warlock.
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
If you are a child of the ’90s, this is the movie for you. It follows the young Olsen twins who are fighting to find their good witch aunt. Goblins, clowns, a dog, and magicians help them on their way. The two discover their own powers as they take on an evil witch to release their aunt from a looking glass.
Now grab your candy corn, caramel apples, a gummy spider or two, and have a marathon. Halloween does not have to fill you with fear, though it does have to fill you with fun. Be safe, check your candy, and don’t talk to clowns.
