Family-friendly movies at Halloween are just as important as the thrills, chills, and buckets of gore that get dumped into some movies. Kids are growing up in a world where they see the horror and degradation of humanity all the time, they should at least have the chance to escape into the movies and have a bit of fun when the time of All Hallows Eve comes around. If nothing else it’s good fun for the family and it allows people to laugh as well as be just a little frightened in a good way that doesn’t give them nightmares after the movie’s over. Thank goodness there are Halloween movies that are made for kids and their families that can be enjoyed to the fullest and can make them laugh, giggle, and enjoy the holiday in a way that’s highly commercialized but still very enjoyable.
Here are a few of the best family-friendly Halloween movies.
5. Halloweentown
Just imagine a town where ghouls, ghosts, spooks, and monsters of all kind actually live in peace despite how they look and what they are. This is Halloweentown, a place beyond the mortal world where everything you could imagine is possible and the legends of humanity exist in a relatively peaceful manner. Yet when the demon Kalabar threatens the serenity by trying to take over and convince the denizens of Halloweentown to take over the mortal realm Marnie and her grandmother have to find a way to stop Kalabar and restore the natural order of Halloweentown so that his plan won’t succeed.
4. It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
You just can’t skimp and forget the classics. Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin are a part of a lot of our childhoods and something that a lot of us would be more than willing to pass on to the next generation. Yes the animation isn’t quite up to snuff compared to now and yes even restoring it might not make it much better but the story is still great and the fact that kids just want to watch something fun is good enough. Sometimes the classics need to live on, and this is about as classic as it gets next to the old stop-motion Christmas animation that so many people still remember and enjoy.
3. Monster House
It seems every so often that the ante for Halloween films needs to be raised just a bit and Monster House might not have done that as obviously as possible but it did manage to reaffirm every child’s nightmare that there’s that one house on the block that’s so unmistakably creepy. In every neighborhood there’s at least one home that kids seem to fear for no other reason than because it looks creepy and they can’t really figure out why. In this film at least the house is pretty creepy from a distance and the reason becomes pretty simple after a while when it starts gobbling up people left and right. Thankfully though there’s a happy ending and a pretty good reason why the house was so nasty.
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Tim Burton seems to celebrate the spirit of Halloween in a lot of his films regardless whether or not they’re for the holiday. This film was a wonder in that it took two favored holidays, both of them highly commercialized, and mashed them together for the sake of entertainment. Apologies if that sounded cynical but in truth it was fairly hilarious since it created a cult icon in Jack Skellington and in Sallie that hasn’t faded in the years since its release. In fact the film has only grown in popularity since then considering that it’s considered one of the favorite films to watch during either Halloween or Christmas at this point.
1. Hocus Pocus
The Sanford sisters have been resting pretty easy at the top of the Halloween heap for a while now largely because the cast of this movie and the idea of it have been perfect for a family-friendly flick that’s meant to be a little devilish and a lot of funny mixed into one smart and charming movie. Any adult can pick and point out the things that simply wouldn’t happen but won’t because their children enjoy the fantasy, while even adolescents can get a kick out of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker as three of the meanest and somehow most insipid witches alive. Really, they’re witches that joke about having been to hell, subsist on the life force of children, and they get outwitted by kids. There’s a certain level of irony in there that’s just hilarious.
Halloween is a fun time despite the way it’s been taken over by the media and the candy companies, and watching scary movies is just another part of the whole experience that can at least give the illusion that we’re all meant to have fun on this one unique holiday.
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