The leaves are falling, the air is chilly, and spooky season is here. It’s that time of year where people begin spending more time inside, cuddled up on the couch watching movies. Here are a few of my favorite films that are a perfect October watch, including both family and horror movies.
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
Rating: TV-G
Runtime: 25m
Genre(s): Animation, Comedy, Family
Starring: Peter Robbins (voice), Christopher Shea (voice), and Sally Dryer (voice)
Where To Watch: Apple TV
About: Charlie Brown and friends have a Halloween party, except Linus decides not to join. Instead, he sits in the local pumpkin patch and awaits the arrival of the mythical Great Pumpkin, believing that he delivers presents to everyone on Halloween night.
Coraline (2009)
Rating: PG
Runtime: 1h 40m
Genre(s): Animation, Drama, Family
Starring: Dakota Fanning (voice), Teri Hatcher (voice), John Hodgman (voice)
Where To Watch: Max
About: Coraline moves to a new house and feels lonely, so she decides to explore the house and discovers a secret tunnel to another world. At night she travels there and feels as though she is living a great life, until she finds out that it was a trick and used to lure her.
Halloween (1978)
Rating: R
Runtime:1h 31m
Genre(s): Horror, Thriller
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tony Moran
Where to Watch: AMC+
About: Michael Myers murdered his sister as a child and is institutionalized. He breaks out 15 years later to return to Haddonfield and spends all of Halloween night chasing down Babysitter Laurie Strode, unbeknownst to why he is targeting her, killing anyone who gets in the way.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Rating: PG
Runtime: 1h 36m
Genre(s): Comedy, Family, Fantasy
Starring: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy
Where to Watch: Disney+, Hulu
About: 300 year-old witches are returned to Earth due to a spell being broken by a teenage boy. The witch sisters have until sunrise to gain their place back on Earth, while the teen boy, his crush, and his sister work to stop them.
The Craft (1996)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1h 41m
Genre(s): Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Starring: Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell
Where to Watch: Hulu
About: Sarah, the new girl in town, is drawn to a group of wannabe witches. Their powers grow and each girl becomes more and more power hungry, leading to extreme consequences.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1h 31m
Genre(s): Horror
Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund
Where to Watch: Max
About: Nancy Thompson is haunted in her dreams by a disfigured Freddy Krueger. He picks her friends off one by one, until it becomes her job to defeat him and to save others from their own worst nightmares.
Scream (1996)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1h 51m
Genre(s): Horror, Mystery
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette
Where to Watch: AMC+, Paramount+
About: Sidney begins receiving strange phone calls from an unknown number, asking trivial questions. It turns out to be a masked serial killer who is coming after both her and her friends.
Beetlejuice (1988)
Rating: PG
Runtime:1h 32m
Genre(s): Comedy, Fantasy
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder
Where to Watch: Prime Video
About: A new family moves into a dead couple’s house and the ghosts make it their mission to rid the house of mortals. Their plan backfires, so they summon Beetlejuice, another spirit, but his help quickly becomes dangerous.
Halloweentown (1998)
Rating: TV-G
Runtime: 1h 24m
Genre(s): Adventure, Comedy, Family
Starring: Debbie Reynolds, Jon Cooksey, Kimberly J. Brown, Judith Hoag
Where to Watch: Disney+
About: On Halloween night, Marnie and her siblings sneak out of the home and travel with their Grandma to Halloweentown. Discovering that all of them are witches and their mom kept it from them their whole life. An evil force begins attacking the town and Marnie, Dylan, and Sophie must step up to save everyone.
Fear Street Trilogy (2021)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1h 47m, 1h 49m, 1h 54m
Genre(s): Drama, Horror, Mystery
Starring: Kiana Maderia, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ashley Zuckerman, Gillian Jacobs
Where to Watch: Netflix
About: The trilogy follows the story of Shadyside, a town that has a long history of mass murders that date back to the 1600s. Two teen girls discover that a curse was placed on the town a very long time ago by a witch named Sarah Fier, causing the mass murders, so they work together to break the curse. Along the way, they uncover many dark secrets that have been buried deep for years.
