Halloween Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horror Movies

As soon as the first cool breeze blows a few crunchy leaves off their branch­es, hor­ror movie fans come crawl­ing out of the wood­work, eager to indulge their love of Hal­loween movies that fea­ture a chain­saw, a mas­sacre, or a chain­saw mas­sacre. Mean­while, peo­ple who pre­fer to cel­e­brate Hal­loween with­out hav­ing to sleep with the lights on return to a few safe favorites—classics like Hocus Pocus (1993), Beetle­juice (1998), and The Addams Fam­i­ly (1991). While your steel-nerved friends are busy with slash­ers and scream queens, here are 15 gen­tly spookymovies for you to check out.

1. Hal­loween­town (1998)

What Bette Midler did for Hocus Pocus, Deb­bie Reynolds does for Hal­loween­town (though, regret­tably, Reynolds doesn’t get a chance to show off her singing chops beyond the odd incan­ta­tion). The Sin­gin’ in the Rain star plays a kooky, kind­ly witch whose three grand­chil­dren fol­low her to Halloweentown—home to every mag­i­cal crea­ture imaginable—and bat­tle evil forces with their new­ly dis­cov­ered pow­ers. The film was first released as a Dis­ney Chan­nel Orig­i­nal Movie, and it quick­ly became a fan favorite among ’90s kids. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Dis­ney hap­pi­ly cap­i­tal­ized on this suc­cess: By 2006, three sequels had been made.

What We Do in the Shad­ows (2014)

Tai­ka Wait­i­ti and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 mockumentary—the basis for the equal­ly hys­ter­i­cal FX series of the same name—follows a few wacky vam­pires try­ing to nav­i­gate room­mate con­flicts, night­club dynam­ics, and oth­er mod­ern-day sit­u­a­tions with­out draw­ing atten­tion to their more mur­der­ous predilec­tions. Not only will the film have you scream­ing for mer­cy (due to laugh­ter, not pain), it’ll also make it impos­si­ble for you to ever fear a vam­pire again. Warn­ing: Though the movie is undoubt­ed­ly a com­e­dy, there is a lot of blood fea­tured.

Young Franken­stein (1974)

Mel Brooks’s 1974 mock hor­ror film stars Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein’s grand­son, a doc­tor who has spent his life trying—and failing—to dis­tance him­self from his embar­rass­ing elder rel­a­tive. The younger Dr. Franken­stein reluc­tant­ly takes a trip to Tran­syl­va­nia to scope out his inher­it­ed cas­tle and ends up embroiled in exper­i­ments that involve sev­er­al creepy ser­vants (played by Cloris Leach­man and Mar­ty Feld­man, among oth­ers) and, yes, an undead mon­ster. Wilder is wild-eyed, wild-haired, and side-split­ting­ly hilar­i­ous through­out the film, mak­ing this a must-see for every­one who thinks all hor­ror films should actu­al­ly just be come­dies.

The Phan­tom of the Opera (2004)

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s clas­sic musi­cal been acclaimed as a feat of the­ater for more than 30 years. But not enough peo­ple appre­ci­ate Joel Schu­macher’s 2004 film adap­ta­tion, which boasts earnest per­for­mances by Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wil­son, and Ger­ard But­ler (plus Min­nie Dri­ver in a stand­ing-ova­tion-wor­thy sup­port­ing role). It’s not exact­ly a ghost sto­ry, since the tit­u­lar phan­tom is a real man, but it does have plen­ty of eerie organ music, secret pas­sage­ways, and pos­si­bly the best under­ground lair of all time.

Prac­ti­cal Mag­ic (1998)

San­dra Bul­lock and Nicole Kid­man star as spir­it­ed sis­ter witch­es with cursed love lives (literally—their beaus always die young) in this big-screen adap­ta­tion of Alice Hoffman’s beloved nov­el. One acci­den­tal mur­der and an ill-advised res­ur­rec­tion spell lat­er, the pair ends up being inves­ti­gat­ed by a dash­ing, steely-eyed detec­tive played by Aidan Quinn. Think Gilmore Girls, but with mag­ic.

Death Becomes Her (1992

Based on Mary Stewart’s 1971 children’s book, this enchant­i­ng movie from a cou­ple for­mer Stu­dio Ghi­b­li film­mak­ers tells the sto­ry of a girl who stum­bles upon a mag­i­cal flower and gets car­ried off to a witch’s school in the sky. She has to fight a few evil­do­ers, of course, but the film over­all exudes the same cura­tive charm as Ghi­b­li projects like Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle (which eas­i­ly could’ve land­ed on this list, too).Scoo­by-Doo (2002)