StreamBroadcaster
Back to Magazine
FilmmakingNoFilmSchool

10 Best Non-Scary Movies for Halloween

· Jo Light
10 Best Non-Scary Movies for Halloween

I'm a horror girlie and love a good scare every now and again, but sometimes I'm just down for some cozy horror or Halloween-adjacent film time. Or my friends just want something easy. (Go figure, not everyone I know is down to watch New French Extremity or that one 1970s niche cult hit I found on Tubi.) So for the scaredy-cats among us or those seeking an easy watch this Halloween, we've got 10 s



I'm a horror girlie and love a good scare every now and again, but sometimes I'm just down for some cozy horror or Halloween-adjacent film time. Or my friends just want something easy. (Go figure, not everyone I know is down to watch New French Extremity or that one 1970s niche cult hit I found on Tubi.)

So for the scaredy-cats among us or those seeking an easy watch this Halloween, we've got 10 suggestions for you.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Casper

Last week I was exhausted after a shoot, and I threw on Monster House while my DP put on Casper. He probably picked the easier watch. Underneath the friendly ghost gags, it’s a movie about a dad and a daughter who can’t let go of someone they lost. That’s what makes it a good Halloween pick for people who don’t want to sleep with the lights on.

Brad Silberling was a first-time feature director. He was asked to build a movie around CG characters at a time when that technology barely existed. “Essentially, this was a movie I directed twice, once for 96 days on set and then the rest for the next year and change to get all of the animation done,” Silberling told SYFY, looking back on the shoot and the long animation process that followed it.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Practical Magic

This one just got a sequel, but the original remains a favorite amongst many autumn lovers. Its fall aesthetic and whimsigoth vibes make it beloved, but it also mixes fun supernatural elements with darker romance beats.

The original’s wild tonal blend was a fight to keep. Griffin Dunne recalled a studio boss ordering him to choose one tone and stick with it. “Well, I like two tones. Life has many tones,” Dunne said in an interview with Metrograph.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Clue

You may have revisited this one already in honor of the late Tim Curry, but it's endlessly rewatchable.

A board-game movie shouldn’t work this well. Jonathan Lynn’s secret was treating it like a real whodunit. “I tried to follow this relentless logic because that’s how you construct a mystery,” Lynn told Daily Dead.

He’s candid about the gimmick, too. Lynn told Daily Dead that he believes splitting the three endings across theaters hurt the box office, and that the story’s cleverness only clicks when you see all three together. He also had the cast watch His Girl Friday so they’d understand the pace he wanted.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Hocus Pocus

Another classic that somehow everyone still loves. In fact, a woman just went viral on TikTok when she was spotted getting gas in a full Winnie Sanderson beat. This one bombed, then became the movie everyone came back to. Kenny Ortega never meant to terrify anybody. He saw it “as a family Halloween comedy; it’s fun scary,” Ortega told Nerdist.

Mick Garris wrote the earliest drafts under the title Halloween House, and he estimates around 11 more writers worked on it after him.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The Addams Family

This family is another millennial favorite that keeps getting new life, including as animated iterations and a Netflix show starring Jenna Ortega. But the first feature adaptation is a classic for a reason—dark, funny, romantic, and spooky.

If you take one directing lesson from this list, take it from Barry Sonnenfeld. He told SYFY that tone is “the only job a director has: maintaining consistency of tone.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Arsenic and Old Lace

If you've skipped oldies for any reason, put this one on your list. It's a concept that shouldn't really work for how dark it is. Cary Grant plays a nephew to two aunts who he learns are serial killers. Peter Lorre shows up in one of his best roles. It's hilarious.
Frank Capra clearly loved his scene-stealing cast. “I let the scene-stealers run wild. It was a mugger’s ball,” Capra wrote in his memoir, The Name Above the Title, as quoted by Criterion.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

ParaNorman

This Laika masterpiece is as close to scary as we get. Norman is an outsider as a kid who can see ghosts. He's tasked with placating a witch that threatens his town with a curse, using his special skill that originally ostracized him.

Laika knew where the line was. Whenever things got gross, the goal was “to immediately burst the bubble with some humor,” co-director Chris Butler told Bloody Disgusting.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Young Frankenstein

Mel Brooks wanted the look of the old Universal monster movies for his satirical horror film, and that meant black and white. In a PBS American Masters interview, Brooks said Columbia wouldn’t let him shoot in black and white, so he took the movie to Fox.

He knew what the choice would buy him. “No color. That gives a cartooning effect,” Brooks told Roger Ebert on set.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Death Becomes Her

This manic dark comedy is one of my all-time favorites. Before Jurassic Park, this was the movie showing what computers could do to a human body. Visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston refused to digitize Meryl Streep’s face.
"I kept saying, 'You’re talking about Meryl Streep here. One of the great actors of all time and you wanna change her performance cause you want to animate her?’ That’s not gonna happen. So all of the facial stuff is really her, of course, and we shot her against blue screen," Ralston said, recalling his pushback in an interview with befores & afters.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein

Abbott and Costello are having a bit of a moment right now, thanks to Nathan Fielder. (If you know, you know.) So what better way to get to know this classic comedy duo than by exploring their horror catalog? The working title was Brain of Frankenstein.

The funniest part of its history is that Costello hated the script. “My five-year-old daughter can write something better than that,” Costello said, according to Bob Thomas’ book Bud & Lou (via MeTV).

That may be so, but fans still love this one.

What's your favorite non-scary horror film?

Tags

Read original at NoFilmSchool
Share