Wholesome Halloween Movies

I’m a Halloween nerd. I love everything about this time of year. The cool crisp autumn air, the opportunity to get scared at a haunted house, or a haunted hayride, an excuse to wear one of my many costumes… And free candy! What is there not love? Well, actually there is one traditional Halloween activity that I don’t particularly like: watching scary movies. While I love being scared face to face at a haunted house, I don’t enjoy all the jump scares found in most scary movies. To be honest, with a lot of horror movies I actually find myself getting quite bored when a bad plot is covered with egregious blood and creepy music. So I wanted to share with everyone my list of good vibe Halloween movies. These movies are a lot of fun to watch and will put you into the Halloween spirit, without leaving you shivering in fear.

There’s no place better to start with a list of good vibe Halloween movies than with Hocus Pocus (DVD FIC Hoc). It is a Halloween classic. It follows a comedic trio of witches who are inadvertently resurrected by a teenage boy called Max. Max, the girl he has a crush on, his little sister, and a magical talking cat, must work together to save their town from the witches. 

In a similar vein, you have the Halloweentown movies (DVD FIC Hal, DVD FIC Ret). These four movies were Disney channel originals in the late 90s early 2000s and many young adults who grew up around that time have fond memories of these friendly movies. The premise is that there is a town where witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, skeletons, and more have gone to live in secret, away from the humans. Marnie Piper’s Grandmother is one of the inhabitants of Halloweentown and can only visit her grandchildren on Halloween. In each movie, Halloween hijinx ensues in the picturesque hamlet of Halloweentown. 

In this vein of 90s movies, I would also like to suggest checking out the Addams Family movies from that time (DVD FIC Add), and Casper the Friendly Ghost (DVD FIC Cas).

The 70s and 80s also had a number of good non-scary movies perfect for Halloween. There is The Goonies (DVD FIC Goo), Ghostbusters (DVD FIC Gho), Beetlejuice (DVD FIC Bee), and Young Frankenstein (DVD FIC You), just to name a few. 

I personally love a good animated movie and there are a lot of fun animated Halloween movies. Probably the most famous is The Nightmare Before Christmas (DVD FIC Nig) which uses stop motion animation to give it a unique feel. I however get a great kick out of watching the Hotel Transylvania movies (DVD FIC Hot). They are genuinely very funny and also quite heartfelt. I also always recommend to people at this time of year, that they watch the movie The Book of Life (DVD FIC Boo). It’s one of my all-time favorite animated movies and it tells a very unique story about the Mexican holiday of Día de Los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead, and the music in it is great. 

If you are still looking for something to watch, I’ll list just a few more options for wholesome Halloween titles we have on our shelves: Goosebumps (DVD FIC Goo), Coco (DVD FIC Coc), Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (DVD FIC Cor), Matilda (DVD FIC Mat) and Paranorman (DVD FIC Par).

I hope some of these movies will help you get into the Halloween mood before this weekend. If you’d like to pick one up from the library, visit our DVD section on the 2nd floor of Crawfordsville District Public Library, and while you’re here, check out our Halloween book display which has a ton of Halloween themed books that have been sorted based on how scary they are.