The 10 best Halloween movies for family movie night, ranked from delightful to exceptional, balance chills and charm for all ages.
The best Halloween movies for a family movie night satisfy every age group simultaneously, and that’s no small feat. Ranked from delightful to exceptional, these ten films understand that parents need more than cartoon silliness while kids require something beyond R-rated gore. From stop-motion marvels to ghost-hunting comedies, these selections deliver thrills that won’t traumatize younger viewers while providing enough wit, artistry, and genuine scares to keep teenagers and adults invested. Grab the popcorn and dim the lights: these are the films that transform October evenings into shared memories worth revisiting year after year.
10. Monster House (2006)
PG | Ages 8+
Director: Gil Kenan
Gil Kenan’s motion-capture nightmare walks the tightrope between kid-friendly and genuinely unsettling with remarkable grace. Pre-teen DJ (voiced by Mitchel Musso, Hannah Montana) spends his summer spying on elderly neighbor Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), whose decrepit house seems to swallow anything that touches its lawn: tricycles, toys, even the occasional dog. When Nebbercracker suffers a heart attack, DJ and his friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) discover the truth: the house is alive, possessed by a tragic secret, and it’s hungry. Recruiting prep-school girl Jenny (Spencer Locke), they mount a Halloween night mission to destroy it before trick-or-treaters become appetizers.
The motion-capture animation, pioneered by Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers studio, gives performances an uncanny quality that enhances the creep factor. Characters move with subtle imperfections that make the house’s unnatural movements even more disturbing. Kenan trusts his audience to handle complex themes: grief, obsession, and how love can curdle into something monstrous. The house itself, with its groaning floorboards and window-eyes, is production design genius that influenced everything from Coraline to Up. What makes Monster House essential family viewing is its refusal to condescend, delivering sophisticated storytelling and emotional depth while maintaining rollicking adventure. Adults appreciate the melancholy backstory; kids thrill to the basement showdown. It’s Halloween cinema that genuinely satisfies everyone.
9. The Witches (1990)
PG | Ages 8+
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg doesn’t soften Roald Dahl’s beloved novel; he sharpens its edges into something that respects young viewers’ capacity for terror. Young Luke (Jasen Fisher) and his grandmother (Mai Zetterling) vacation at a seaside hotel that becomes ground zero for the annual convention of England’s witches, presided over by the Grand High Witch (Anjelica Huston, The Addams Family). When Luke spies on their secret meeting, he discovers their diabolical scheme: transform every child in England into mice using chocolate laced with Formula 86. Before he can warn anyone, he becomes one of their first victims. Now trapped in a rodent’s body with whiskers and a tail, Luke must infiltrate the witches’ lair and sabotage their plan before the potion hits every sweet shop in the country.
Huston’s performance belongs in the villain hall of fame. Beneath her elegant disguise lurks a bald, claw-fingered nightmare with a voice that could shatter glass and a pathological hatred for children that radiates from every pore. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop unleashed practical effects wizardry with those grotesque true witch forms: square-toed feet, purple eyes, and peeling face masks that still haunt nightmares decades later. The transformation sequence, where Luke’s body contorts and shrinks, is executed with such visceral craftsmanship you cannot look away even as your stomach churns. The film’s climactic ballroom showdown delivers slapstick chaos as mouse-Luke pours Formula 86 into the witches’ soup, turning hunters into hunted. While the ending restores Luke to human form (a Hollywood concession Dahl despised), the journey there teaches resilience and cunning. It’s genuinely scary without crossing into traumatic, perfect for families ready to taste real terror.
8. Coco (2017)
PG | Ages 6+
Directors: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Pixar’s stunning exploration of Mexico’s Día de los Muertos tradition delivers Halloween-adjacent wonder without a single monster or ghost story cliché. Young Miguel Rivera (Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming a musician despite his family’s generations-old ban on music. When he steals a guitar from the tomb of his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), on Día de los Muertos, Miguel is transported to the Land of the Dead: a vibrant, color-saturated realm where skeleton ancestors party until they’re forgotten by the living. Racing against dawn to return before he becomes a permanent skeleton, Miguel uncovers a family secret that redefines everything he thought he knew about his heritage.
The animation is Pixar’s most visually stunning work. Marigold petals guide spirits home, papel picado banners flutter with photorealistic detail, and the Land of the Dead glows like stacked birthday cakes lit by millions of candles. “Remember Me,” the film’s emotional anchor song, devastates in its final context. What makes Coco essential family Halloween viewing is its sophisticated treatment of death: not as something scary, but as part of life’s natural cycle. The film’s emotional climax will wreck parents while kids absorb its message about family legacy and following your passion. It’s Halloween viewing that celebrates rather than fears the departed, showing us that the best way to honor those we’ve lost is remembering them with love.
7. Beetlejuice (1988)
PG* | Ages 10+
Director: Tim Burton
Tim Burton’s second feature unleashed his Gothic imagination on suburban Connecticut with anarchic glee. When recently deceased couple Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis, The Fly) discover they’re ghosts trapped in their beloved home, an obnoxious New York family called the Deetzes moves in and redecorates with modern art nightmares. The Maitlands attempt amateur haunting with disastrous results. Desperate, they summon Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a “bio-exorcist” from the afterlife’s seedy underbelly who promises to scare the Deetzes away. Problem: Betelgeuse is more interested in marrying the Deetzes’ teenage goth daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder, Stranger Things) than actually helping.
Keaton’s performance is volcanic. He’s lecherous, disgusting, hilarious, and somehow magnetically watchable even as he transforms into a snake and gropes Barbara. Burton’s production design creates an afterlife bureaucracy that’s simultaneously whimsical and nightmarish: waiting rooms filled with accident victims, caseworkers buried in paperwork, and sandworms lurking in desert dimensions. Danny Elfman’s carnival score became his signature sound, while the “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” possession dinner party remains one of cinema’s most memorable sequences. What makes Beetlejuice perfect for families is its anarchic energy. Adults appreciate the sharp wit and Burton’s visual genius, while teenagers identify with Lydia’s outsider status. It’s PG-rated chaos that somehow works for everyone. Death doesn’t have to be grim when you’ve got a perverted ghost with a flair for showmanship.
*Note: Contains one use of swear-jar worthy language.
6. The Addams Family Values (1993)
PG-13 | Ages 8+
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Barry Sonnenfeld’s sequel improves on the original by weaponizing Wednesday Addams. When con artist Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack, Toy Story 2) marries Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) and tries to murder him for his fortune, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are shipped off to Camp Chippewa, a relentlessly cheerful summer camp run by the insufferable Buds (Peter MacNicol and Christine Baranski). While Morticia (Anjelica Huston) and Gomez (Raul Julia, in his final completed role) welcome baby Pubert and grow suspicious of Debbie, Wednesday wages psychological warfare against the camp’s enforced happiness, culminating in a Thanksgiving pageant for the ages.
Cusack’s Debbie is deliciously unhinged. Her black widow video montage of murdered husbands is comedy gold, and her final confrontation is pure camp perfection. But Ricci owns this film: her monotone delivery (“I’ll be the victim!”) and thousand-yard stare make her the patron saint of misunderstood teenagers. The Thanksgiving play massacre, where Wednesday leads the outcasts in revolt against the pilgrims, is subversive brilliance that critiques American mythology while delivering slapstick mayhem. Paul Rudnick’s screenplay bristles with quotable zingers (“These Addamses are hard to kill”), and Sonnenfeld’s direction finds the perfect balance between Gothic excess and genuine warmth. What makes Values superior family viewing is its celebration of the weird: the Addamses love unconditionally, regardless of how bizarre things get. It’s empowerment wrapped in velvet and cobwebs, with some of cinema’s best one-liners as bonus.
5. Corpse Bride (2005)
PG | Ages 8+
Directors: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Tim Burton returns to stop-motion with this Victorian ghost story that’s simultaneously morbid and deeply romantic. Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), a nervous groom-to-be, flees into the forest while practicing his wedding vows and accidentally proposes to Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a murdered bride who’s been waiting underground for her true love. Whisked to the Land of the Dead (a jazz-age party where skeletons drink, dance, and live more fully than the living), Victor discovers that Emily is kind, vivacious, and far more appealing than his arranged marriage. Meanwhile, his intended bride Victoria (Emily Watson) waits in the drab living world, wondering where her fiancé vanished.
Danny Elfman’s score shifts from somber piano to raucous jazz as Victor moves between worlds, and the animation achieves remarkable expressiveness despite the puppets’ limited faces. Burton flips expectations: the dead are colorful and joyous while the living exist in grey, oppressive Victorian society. What makes Corpse Bride resonate across generations is its meditation on love and letting go. Emily’s arc from possessive ghost to selfless martyr is genuinely moving. The film’s climax, where Emily literally becomes butterflies and releases Victor, is beautiful without being saccharine. Adults appreciate the dark humor (a skeleton removes his skull to use as a ball) and emotional complexity, while younger viewers are captivated by the visually stunning contrast between worlds. It’s Burton’s most romantic film, illustrating that even death can’t kill true love, but sometimes love means setting someone free.
4. Ghostbusters (1984)
PG | Ages 7+*
Director: Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman’s supernatural comedy shouldn’t work. It’s simultaneously a buddy comedy, horror film, and special-effects spectacle, yet it’s become one of cinema’s most enduring crowd-pleasers. When parapsychology professors Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) lose their university funding, they launch a ghost-catching business in a converted firehouse. Business is slow until cellist Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) experiences paranormal activity in her apartment: her refrigerator contains a portal to another dimension, and an ancient Sumerian god named Gozer wants to use her as a vessel for apocalyptic destruction.
Murray’s deadpan delivery revolutionized comedy. His sarcastic interrogation of possessed Dana and apathetic response to apocalypse set the template for every ironic hero that followed. Aykroyd’s script, inspired by genuine interest in paranormal research, grounds the fantasy with pseudo-scientific jargon that makes proton packs and ghost traps feel plausible. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a last-minute addition, became an icon: who else would destroy New York with something so adorably corporate? What makes Ghostbusters perfect family viewing is its accessibility. Kids thrill to the ghost-catching action and Slimer’s gooey antics, while adults appreciate Murray’s wit and the film’s satirical jabs at bureaucracy (William Atherton’s EPA inspector is hilariously punchable). Elmer Bernstein’s score adds legitimacy, treating supernatural comedy with orchestra-worthy respect. It’s lightning in a bottle that spawned an empire, a masterclass in how humor and horror make perfect partners.
*Note: This is a “1984” PG, before the creation of the PG-13 rating; would likely be PG-13 by today’s standards
3. Tremors (1990)
PG-13* | Ages 11+
Director: Ron Underwood
Ron Underwood’s desert creature feature is the Halloween film nobody thinks to recommend, and that’s criminal. Handymen Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) are planning to escape their dead-end Nevada town of Perfection (population: 14) when residents start dying mysteriously. Seismology student Rhonda (Finn Carter) detects bizarre underground readings, and the truth emerges: four massive subterranean worm creatures called “Graboids” are hunting anything that makes vibrations on the surface. Trapped in town with dwindling supplies and no escape route that doesn’t cross open ground, the survivors must outsmart predators that sense every footstep.
What makes Tremors brilliant is its problem-solving structure. Each plan to escape or fight back fails in new, creative ways, forcing characters to adapt constantly. The creature design is practical-effects perfection: blind, armored, with serpentine tongues that snatch prey. Bacon and Ward have buddy-comedy chemistry that makes you genuinely care whether they survive, while survivalist Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) and his no-nonsense wife Heather (Reba McEntire, making her film debut) steal scenes with their basement arsenal. The film’s PG-13 intensity never feels gratuitous; tension comes from intelligence, not gore. Adults appreciate the razor-sharp script (written by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock) and callbacks to Jaws and Alien, while teenagers thrill to the creature-feature mayhem. It’s smart, funny, suspenseful, and utterly rewatchable. Sometimes the best Halloween movie is the one hiding in the desert dust.
*Note: Contains one use of swear-jar worthy language
2. The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
PG | Ages 9+
Director: Eli Roth
Eli Roth, known for extreme horror, proves he can terrify all ages without bloodshed in this Amblin-style throwback. Newly orphaned Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) moves in with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) and discovers the warlock’s Gothic Michigan mansion is alive with magic, including a mysterious clock ticking within its walls, counting down to doomsday. When Lewis accidentally resurrects evil warlock Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), he must help Jonathan and their neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) stop the apocalypse before the clock strikes midnight.
Black and Blanchett have delightful chemistry, trading barbs and spells with equal enthusiasm, while their characters model unconventional family bonds that include rather than exclude. The practical effects (living topiary, animated stained glass, pumpkin-headed demons) honor 1980s Amblin productions while the CGI clock gears create hypnotic, kaleidoscopic dread. What makes this essential family viewing is its treatment of grief: Lewis acts out because he’s lost his parents, and the film respects his pain while showing how found families heal. Roth balances genuine scares (the Izard resurrection is nightmare fuel) with humor and heart, demonstrating that family Halloween films can be authentically frightening without being inappropriate. It’s Gothic magic that understands loss, celebrates weirdness, and delivers thrills for every age.
1. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
G | Ages 5+
Directors: Steve Box, Nick Park
Nick Park’s first feature-length Wallace & Gromit adventure proves that Claymation can compete with Pixar-level storytelling. Inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his loyal dog Gromit run Anti-Pesto, a humane pest-control service protecting their village’s vegetables ahead of the Giant Vegetable Competition. When Wallace’s latest invention (the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic, designed to brainwash rabbits into hating vegetables) goes wrong, a giant Were-Rabbit begins terrorizing prize crops nightly. As aristocrat Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) loads his golden bullets and Wallace’s love interest Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) begs for humane solutions, Gromit realizes the terrible truth: Wallace IS the Were-Rabbit.
The animation is Aardman Animations’ masterpiece: every frame contains sight gags (a rabbit reading Smash ‘N’ Grab magazine), and the stop-motion achieves remarkable expressiveness. Gromit conveys everything without speaking a word. Park crafts a perfect horror-movie pastiche: the Were-Rabbit transformation parodies An American Werewolf in London, while the climax spoofs King Kong with vegetable-based mayhem. What makes Were-Rabbit the apex of family Halloween viewing is its universal appeal: toddlers laugh at slapstick, kids follow the adventure, teenagers catch the film references, and adults marvel at the craftsmanship and wit. It’s simultaneously a love letter to classic monster movies and accessible entertainment. The best family films don’t pander, they elevate. With zero cynicism and maximum heart, it’s Halloween viewing that every generation can embrace, delivering thrills, laughs, and the gentle reminder that even monsters deserve compassion.