As Halloween approaches, families across the UK may soon find visitors at their doors, seeking treats to celebrate the occasion. Marking this time with cinematic flair, a selection of films offers spine-tingling enjoyment for all ages, reports BritPanorama.
While parental discretion is advised, these films provide thrills without veering into unwatchable horror territory. This curated list features a dozen recommendations, ensuring that even the youngest viewers can partake in the spooky fun without enduring sleepless nights. All selections are categorized with age ratings, allowing for informed viewing choices.
Coraline (2009, PG)
Henry Selick’s masterful stop-motion tale about a curious child who travels into a parallel dimension and discovers her “Other Mother” with buttons for eyes is at once charming and creepy. Credit for that goes to Selick’s beautiful, artisanal animation style, and to Teri Hatcher, who imbues the Other Mother with demonic menace as she reveals her plan to steal little Coraline away from her real life and her actual family.
The Woman in Black (2012, 12A)
Hands down Daniel Radcliffe’s best post-Harry Potter project, The Woman in Black faithfully adapts Susan Hill’s classic ghost story to blood-curdling effect. Radcliffe is Arthur Kipps, a widowed solicitor called to a remote English village to arrange the papers of the dead resident of forbidding Eel Marsh House. But Eel Marsh has secrets that gradually reveal themselves in this wonderfully eerie tale that delivers goosebumps by the gallon.
Goosebumps (2015, PG)
Jack Black was born to play horror writer RL Stine in this fun adaptation of Stine’s Goosebumps stories, which finds a Scooby-Doo-esque gang of kids racing against time to capture the monsters that have escaped from Stine’s books into the real world. Great fun – and while previous knowledge of Stine’s books is not necessary, fans of his writing will be charmed to see his world brought to the screen with such enthusiasm.
Gremlins (1984, 12A)
I’ve tried to avoid too much gore on this list, but you can’t argue with the splatter-tastic glee on display in this Steven Spielberg-produced tale of a small town overrun by horrible, rubbery nasties that hatch after sweet, innocent Mogwai is fed after midnight. Gremlins are trapped in microwaves, shoved in blenders and left to burn in the sunlight, but the entire escapade is pulled off with such giddy joy that it’s hard to find anything objectionable. Besides, the queasiest scene of all has no Gremlins and instead features love interest Kate (Phoebe Cates) telling the film’s accidental hero Billy (Zach Galligan) how her father died on Christmas Eve, one of the darkest scenes in any family movie from the Eighties.
The Frighteners (1996, 15)
Before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson was best known as a creator of supremely tacky, zero-budget horror movies (on no account track down his 1989 Muppets parody, Meet the Feebles). But he signalled that different things lay ahead with his 1994 Kate Winslet/Melanie Lynskey murder drama Heavenly Creatures and then with The Frighteners, a pedal-to-the-metal paranormal romp starring Michael J Fox as a psychic con artist who stumbles upon a very real haunting.
Paranorman (2012, PG)
This charmingly eerie stop-motion spookfest tells the story of a young boy who can communicate with ghosts. He has to call on all his supernatural abilities as a 300-year-old witch’s curse leaves his home town in New England facing a zombie invasion. Stop-motion powerhouse Laika (also responsible for Coraline and just-released Wildwood) is operating at the height of its powers in this heart-warming tale of a kid who doesn’t fit in and whose paranormal adventures are a smart metaphor for the challenges of growing up.
The Others (2001, 12A)
Nicole Kidman is brilliantly unhinged in this tale of a mother in post-War Jersey who becomes convinced that her house is haunted and that the ghosts are out to get her and her terrified children. She’s correct, after a fashion, but when the truth is revealed, it’s one of the great bombshells in modern horror. As with all good ghost stories, The Others gets under the skin without actually showing you anything explicitly upsetting.
The Sixth Sense (1999, 15)
The Sixth Sense is renowned today for one of the best twists in cinema. But aside from the sheer shock value of its final rug pull, M Night Shyamalan’s 1999 paranormal investigation masterpiece is full of creepy moments. The whole thing is elevated further by great performances by Bruce Willis as a disgruntled child psychologist and Haley Joel Osment as the psychic child who says he can “see dead people”.
Monster House (2006, PG)
In this animated family-friendly horror, a creepy house is revealed to be a monster that eats people. Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Catherine O’Hara feature among the enthusiastic cast of voice actors – while the uncanny factor is dialled up by the use of performance capture technology that makes the characters look almost, but not quite, human.
Crimson Peak (2015, 15)
Guillermo del Toro went full hammer horror with this self-consciously over-the-top tale of a young American woman (Mia Wasikowska) who marries into a family of doomed aristocrats (Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain) and their vast haunted mansion that broods in deepest Cumberland. There are shades of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and of the chapters in Dracula where Jonathan Harker calls on the count – all topped off with del Toro’s unimpeachable visual flair.
Crimson Peak is chock-full of nightmarish imagery and adult references, so it’s not something you’ll want to sit down to with your 12-year-old. But for older teens who can handle the bloody and the baroque, this supercharged haunted-house romp delivers its scares with a cackle.
The Haunted Mansion (2023, 12A)
This old-fashioned haunted-house story is told with flair and a hint of mischief and is elevated by an all-star ensemble headed by Danny DeVito, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and, in an unbilled cameo, Winona Ryder. Ben (LaKeith Stanfield) is a bereaved scientist-turned-tour guide recruited by a priest (Wilson) trying to rid a New Orleans mansion of its resident ghosts (led by a vengeful bride) – with rip-roaring results.
Poltergeist (1982, 15)
Tobe Hooper’s classic tale of suburban horror finds the Freeling family terrified by an unfamiliar presence in their new California home. Steven Spielberg famously produced Poltergeist as he was applying the finishing touches to ET. Both films are full of his early 1980s blockbuster magic, but in the case of Poltergeist, those energies are poured into the unsettling tale of a malignant entity that transforms Spielberg’s typically cheery vision of the American Dream into an unending nightmare.
