I adore Halloween; the costumes, the pumpkin carving, the opportunity to cause public disorder and write it off as seasonal trickery. Everything about the spooky season calls to some of my dearest passions – well, everything except the best horror movies, that is.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m impartial to a good ghost story, few and far between as they seem to be in Hollywood these days, and I will gladly puzzle my way through a mind-bending sci-fi flick like It’s What’s Inside. However as soon as things veer too far into gratuitous gore or traumatic thrillers that hit just a bit too close to home, I’m tapping out – I’ll leave that to my wonderful colleague Rowan Davies, who has spent much of this month reporting on the best horror movies to watch this Halloween from different genres.
Instead, I’m impartial to the lightly creepy but family-friendly side of Halloween movies, broadly characterized by some excellent animated movies. Here are my top picks for TechRadar’s Halloween Week.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
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RT Score: 95%
Director: Henry Selick
Runtime: 76 minutes
Where to stream: Disney Plus (US, UK, AU)
Part Brothers Grimm fairytale, part art film, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a genre-defining animated Halloween movie conceived by Tim Burton – though we owe a lot of its production and creativity to the lesser-credited director Henry Selick. Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of ‘Halloween Town’ feels unfulfilled by his role and yearns for something new, and stumbles upon ‘Christmas Town’. What begins as a somewhat well-meaning attempt to share his discovery with his loyal subjects quickly spirals into a hostile takeover of the festive season, the kidnapping of Santa Claus, and a frighteningly close call with a bogeyman.
It’s a visual delight, effortlessly blending its raw, scratchy and stuttering animation with a soft, whimsical playfulness that only stop-motion animation can achieve. It’s macabre, it’s evocative, but most importantly it’s also fun and inventive, creating a timeless world that generations since and those to come will delight in.
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
RT Score: 95%
Directors: Nick Park and Steve Box
Runtime: 85 minutes
Where to stream: Netflix (US), Prime Video (UK)
A modern classic, Aardman Animations’ iconic British stop-motion animated comedy duo returns for another slapstick jaunt in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This time, cheese-loving inventor Wallace has turned his talents to a new business venture; pest control. Joined as ever by his long-suffering beagle, Gromit, the duo is employed by Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) to prevent a plague of rabbits from pillaging the town’s crops. Of course, things never quite go to plan when there’s one of Wallace’s clever contraptions involved, and taking down a giant were-rabbit certainly was not part of the plan.
Packed with plenty of delightful Britishisms, Wallace and Gromit’s first feature-length adventure didn’t quite stick the commercial landing Aardman’s then-parent company Dreamworks had hoped for. Still, the movie has seen international acclaim and stands among the most popular family-friendly Halloween movies of all time.
Coraline
RT Score: 91%
Director: Henry Selick
Runtime: 100 minutes
Where to stream: The Roku Channel and Tubi (US), rent on Apple TV and Amazon Video (US, UK, AU)
Another Henry Selick masterpiece and based on Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novella, Coraline sees its eponymous character discover a secret “Other World” within her new home. With her real parents busy with work, Coraline is lured to this vibrant world by her parents’ button-eyed doppelgängers. Unbeknownst to her, however, all is not as it seems, and she must outsmart and outmaneuver these evil entities to save her family.
Featuring the immense vocal talents of the likes of Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and more, it’s not just a star-studded cast that makes the magic of Coraline come to life; Selick assembled a fantastic team of visual artists and techniques to render the hauntingly beautiful and unique aesthetic of the film. It features the talents of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi as a concept artist, credited with conceptualizing the vibrant color palette of the “Other World” as well as designing sets and backgrounds, and the crew also 3D printed thousands of models for everything from facial expressions to set pieces. The resulting film is a technical and visual masterpiece that stands the test of time.
Corpse Bride
RT Score: 84%
Directors: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Runtime: 77 minutes
Where to stream: Max (US), rent on Apple TV and Amazon Video (US, UK, AU)
You guessed it, another stop-motion masterpiece. The movie centers around Victor (voiced by Johnny Depp), a nervous soon-to-be groom to Victoria (Emily Watson), with the two being initially brought together in an arranged engagement before falling madly in love. Following a disastrous wedding rehearsal, Victor accidentally weds himself to a corpse while rehearsing his vows, reviving a woman called Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) who was murdered on the night of her elopement in the process. He’s subsequently whisked away from his impending nuptials to the Land of the Dead to fulfill his obligation as her husband, and with Victoria waiting for him in the world of the living, takes action to reunite with his real bride.
Tackling some more mature, tragic themes of love, loss, resentment and abandonment, Corpse Bride is a visual feast that combines CGI visual effects with highly detailed and painterly set and character design.
The Secret of NIMH
RT score: 93%
Director: Don Bluth
Runtime: 82 minutes
Where to stream: The Roku Channel (US), Prime Video (US, UK)
This is a title I only discovered while researching this article, but it’s quickly risen the ranks of my all-time favorite animated movies. While it’s not a true Halloween movie in the traditional sense that applies to the movies I’ve listed above, Don Bluth’s directorial debut is a surprisingly dark animated movie that tackles themes of animal testing, housing crisis and loss. Its protagonist, widowed field mouse Mrs. Brisby, must protect her ailing and bed-bound son Timothy from the impending destruction of their home, a cinder block in a farmer’s field. To do so, she enlists the help of a group of highly intelligent rats who have mastered the use of human technology after being the subject of human experimentation to try and move the entire home to safety.
Sprinkle in a touch of betrayal, some tragic deaths and a glimmer of magic, and you’ve got the recipe for an instant classic. Despite this dourness, however, NIMH’s gutsy cast of countryside wildlife creatures sparkles in a classic display of 1980s animation duplexity. If you enjoy Bluth’s other, perhaps better-known classics like An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven and Anastasia, it’s sure to delight.
Spirited Away
RT score: 96%
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 125 minutes
Where to stream: Max (US), Netflix (UK, AU)
OK, this one also might not be considered a true Halloween movie, but I challenge you to argue that the crown jewel of Ghibli animation isn’t eerie and haunting enough to be considered a spooky season classic. While moving to the countryside, 10-year-old Chihiro and her parents make a wrong turn and land themselves in trouble when they discover a seemingly abandoned amusement park. In truth, the eerie ghost town is, well, a literal ghost town, through which Chihiro meets a host of whimsical characters on her quest to reunite with her parents.
Poignant and poetic, Spirited Away imaginatively and hauntingly explores themes of adolescence, generational conflict, consumerism, and nostalgia through the lens of its child protagonist, resulting in a splendrous and thought-provoking piece of modern animation. Oh, and that one scene with the giant-headed crone wailing for her missing child gave me nightmares for about fifteen years.
Frankenweenie
RT score: 88%
Director: Tim Burton
Runtime: 87 minutes
Where to stream: Disney Plus (US, UK, AU)
If you’ve experienced the pain of losing a pet, you’ll understand the plight of Frankenweenie’s protagonist, a young Victor Frankenstein. Grappling with grief, Frankenstein turns his burgeoning scientific talents to resurrect his beloved dog, Sparky. Unfortunately, his classmates aren’t exactly discerning with his discovery, using Frankenstein’s research to reanimate a host of creatures and, in their fervor, create monstrosities.
Like many films in this list, Frankenweenie leans on the natural eeriness of stop-motion animation, but with the added flair of being shot in black and white to pay homage to Burton’s original 1984 short film of the same name. Much like Coraline, it’s a technical masterpiece, with human hair being used to create the eerie, uncanny puppets and Swiss watchmakers being employed to create the tiny nuts and bolts used in Sparky’s model.
