Spooky season is here and we've got the perfect Halloween movies for you - from family friendly choices to films you should only put on once the kids are tucked up in bed!
Hocus Pocus - Disney + (PG)
Halloween just wouldn't be the same without an annual viewing of this cult classic. Originally planned as a straight-to-TV project titled Disney's Haunted House, the horror-comedy centres on three witches, played with aplomb by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, who are resurrected in Salem, Massachusetts on Halloween night. Their mission: to steal as many kids as possible. A spooktacular movie for all the family, that won't have you looking underneath your bed in fear of the Boogeyman.
Hotel Transylvania - Netflix (PG)
Hotel Transylvania is Dracula's lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up and no humans are allowed. One special weekend, Dracula (Adam Sandler) has invited all his best friends – Frankenstein and his wife, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Werewolf family, and more – to celebrate his beloved daughter Mavis's (Selena Gomez) 118th birthday. For Dracula catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem but the party really starts when one ordinary guy stumbles into the hotel and changes everything! With giggles, jumps and life lessons about tolerance and prejudice throughout, this is a fun, where-did-the-time-go? hour-and-a-half.
The Nightmare Before Christmas - Disney + (PG)
Bored with doing the same thing every year for Halloween, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington longs to spread the joy of Christmas. He is so taken with the idea of Christmas that he tries to get the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins of Halloween Town to help him put on Christmas instead of Halloween - but his merry mission puts Santa in jeopardy and creates a nightmare for boys and girls everywhere. Young and old alike will be riveted by Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion classic.
Ghostbusters - Netflix (12)
It's four wisecracking New Yorkers versus a marshmallow apocalypse. They're nobody's first choice to save the world but, hey, who else you gonna call? The wonderful Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson play four scientists who team up to fight ghosts and hold off the apocalypse in this 1984 comedy classic that is always worth a rewatch.
Monsters, Inc. - Disney + (G)
Lovable Sulley (John Goodman) and his wisecracking sidekick Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) are the top scare team at Monsters, Inc, the scream-processing factory in Monstropolis. When a little girl named Boo (Mary Gibbs) wanders into their world, it's the monsters who are scared silly, and it's up to Sulley and Mike to keep her out of sight and get her back home. This Pixar classic works on numerous levels: sit back and enjoy the laughs or wonder if there's really much of a difference between the travails of a gigantic blue monster and the dilemmas you face in your own 9-5.
Coco - Disney + (PG)
Coco may not be Halloween film per say, but it does take place in the Land of the Dead on the Day of the Dead, which is pretty close. This intricately detailed, highly imaginative and endlessly enthralling film manages to achieve the seemingly impossible – to make a joyous and hopeful film that has death as a central theme. The Pixar film follows Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), who dreams of becoming a successful artist despite his family's ban on music. In order to prove his talent, Miguel stumbles into the Land of the Dead and meets a charming trickster named Héctor, and they embark on a journey to learn all about Miguel's family history.
Beetlejuice - Netflix (15)
With the well-received, long-awaited sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice currently in cinemas, there's never been a better time to rewatch Tim Burton's 1988 cult classic. Beetlejuice follows a young couple (Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis) who are stuck haunting their own house after an untimely accident. They turn to the titular troublemaking spirit (Michael Keaton) to help drive away the obnoxious new owners of their home.
The Omen - Disney + (18)
This supernatural horror film has garnered countless fans over the years, and inspired a spin-off franchise, and it remains just as hair-raising and disturbing now as it was when it was released in 1976. The film's plot follows Damien Thorn (Harvey Spencer Stephens), a young child replaced at birth by his father (Gregory Peck), unbeknownst to his wife (Lee Remick), after their biological child dies shortly after birth. As a series of mysterious events and violent deaths occur around the family and Damien enters childhood, they come to learn he is in fact the spawn of the Devil.
Carrie - Prime Video (18)
When acclaimed filmmaker Brian de Palma does scary, there are no shades of grey. Sissy Spacek was Oscar nominated for the privilege of terrifying audiences across the globe in this unforgettable adaptation of Stephen King's novel. She plays an abused girl with telekenetic powers who gets revenge on Prom night.
Halloween - Netflix (18)
2018's slasher movie Halloween is the perfect companion piece to John Carpenter's 1978 classic, with a boundary-pushing script offering fans something truly cutting. Set 40 years after the Oct. 31 murder spree, this follow-up makes a shrewd call to press delete on the string of post-1978 sequels and follows the masked killer targeting the victim who got away - and her family. The real effectiveness of this film doesn't come from the jump-scares, but from the handling of Laurie Strode's (Jamie Lee Curtis) trauma and the exploration of empowerment across three generations of women.
A Quiet Place - Prime Video (15A)
This terrifyingly suspenseful horror film is directed by John Krasinski. He stars alongside his wife Emily Blunt as a couple struggling to survive and protect their children (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) in a a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. This foot-to-the-floor four-hander is proper old school when it comes to scares, but also makes sure that your emotional investment in the characters - mum, dad, kids - is huge. Get ready for an almighty cardiac workout.
Get Out - Netflix (15A)
Jordan Peele's razor-sharp directorial debut Get Out is both an edge-of-your-seat horror and cutting social satire about race relations in the US. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is anxious about meeting his girlfriend Rose's (Allison Williams) parents Dean (Bradley Whitford), a neurosurgeon, and Missy (Catherine Keener), a psychiatrist, in upstate New York. It's not long before hints of a dark underbelly to her parents' country pile bubble to the surface, from the vacant-behind-the-eyes black servants to the overly interested small talk with her parents' friends. Chris's mounting sense of terror is effortlessly portrayed and a chilling unease runs throughout. A must-see.
Don't Breathe - Prime Video (16)
Directed with serious genre smarts and stones by Evil Dead helmer Fede Alvarez, Don't Breathe reunites him with star Jane Levy and takes its inspiration from the old 'one last score' chestnut. Against the wasteland backdrop of Detroit, three teenage thieves decide to rob a blind Iraq War veteran who, they reckon, is sitting on a fortune. That's the set-up, but to reveal any more plot-wise would spoil your immersion in a movie that has nods to the masters but still manages to deliver real terror from the tropes and has a few tricks up its sleeve too.
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