Every film here is rated PG, and every one of them is a real Halloween movie rather than a cartoon wearing a costume. What separates them is how much each will frighten a seven-year-old, so they are ranked by how good they are and every one comes with an honest note on how scary it is and which age it suits.
The hard part of picking a Halloween film for children is not finding one. It is that the word "kids" covers a five-year-old and a twelve-year-old, and a film that delights one will bore or terrify the other. A PG rating tells you almost nothing here: Coraline and Hocus Pocus share one, and they are not remotely the same evening.
So the rule for this list is that a film has to be about Halloween, or about the thing Halloween is about (ghosts, witches, the dead coming back), and it has to be made for families on purpose. Each entry ends with a plain answer to the question every parent is actually asking.
A good children's scary film lets the fear in and then shows the child how to walk back out of it. The bad ones only do the first half.
5Monster House
The house across the street is alive, and it is hungry.
Three kids spend the day before Halloween convinced that the house belonging to the neighbourhood's angriest old man, voiced by Steve Buscemi, is eating things. They are right. Directed by Gil Kenan with a motion-captured cast, it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and it plays like an Amblin film from the eighties that happens to be animated.
It sits at five because it is the least Halloween-flavoured film here until its final act, where it becomes a genuine trick-or-treat night set piece. It is also the one that most often surprises parents: the house is properly menacing, and the backstory behind it is sadder than you expect.
How scary: moderate. Best from about eight up. The house attacking the kids is loud and fast rather than creepy, which most children find thrilling rather than upsetting.
Norman talks to ghosts, which makes him the strangest kid in a small New England town built on the legend of a witch. Voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, with Anna Kendrick and Casey Affleck around him, it is the second feature from Laika, the stop-motion studio behind Coraline, and like Coraline it was nominated for Best Animated Feature.
It is a zombie film for children that turns out to be about bullying and about how a crowd treats someone it has decided is different. That sounds heavy, and the last twenty minutes are genuinely moving, but the first hour is one of the funniest things Laika has made.
How scary: mild to moderate. Best from about nine up. The zombies are comic; the witch's storm near the end is the one sequence that can upset a younger child, and it is there on purpose.
3Coraline
A secret door, a better mother, and buttons where her eyes should be.
Adapted from Neil Gaiman's novella and directed by Henry Selick, Coraline follows a bored girl, voiced by Dakota Fanning, who finds a small door in her new house leading to a copy of her life where everything is better. Her Other Mother, voiced by Teri Hatcher, cooks, listens and adores her. She only wants one thing in return.
It is the best-made film on this list and the scariest by a distance, which is why it is not higher for this particular job. The fear is not a monster but the idea that the loving adult in front of you is pretending, and that is a fear children feel more sharply than adults do.
How scary: the scariest here. Best from about ten up, and worth watching yourself first if you are unsure. Plenty of younger children love it; plenty cannot sleep afterwards, and it is hard to predict which.
Jack Skellington runs Halloween Town and is sick of it. Also directed by Henry Selick, from Tim Burton's story, with songs by Danny Elfman (who also sings for Jack), it is the film that argues over which holiday it belongs to every single year. The answer is both, which is why it is on this list.
At 76 minutes it is the shortest film here, and it is wall-to-wall songs, so it holds a young child's attention better than anything else on this list. The stop-motion was nominated for the Oscar for Visual Effects, and it still looks handmade in the best way.
How scary: mild. Best from about six up. Oogie Boogie is the one character who unsettles small children, and his scenes are short and mostly musical.
A new kid in Salem, played by Omri Katz, lights the wrong candle and resurrects the Sanderson sisters, led by Bette Midler, who need to steal the lives of children before sunrise or turn to dust. His little sister, played by Thora Birch, is the one they want most. Directed by Kenny Ortega, who went on to make High School Musical.
It was released in July, of all months, and was not a hit. It became the definitive family Halloween film anyway, entirely through years of October television airings, which is a better measure of what families actually watch than any opening weekend. A sequel arrived on Disney+ in 2022, nearly thirty years later.
It is number one because it is the only film here that is about the night itself: costumes, trick-or-treating, a town full of people out after dark. It is funny for adults, the witches are villains children enjoy booing rather than fear, and it works for the widest age range on this list.
How scary: mild. Best from about seven up. The zombie Billy Butcherson and a few threats to children are the darkest it gets, and it plays all of them for laughs.
Six and up: The Nightmare Before Christmas, then Casper.
Seven and up: Hocus Pocus, then its 2022 sequel.
Eight and up: Monster House, then Goosebumps.
Nine and up: ParaNorman.
Ten and up, or a brave younger child with a parent next to them: Coraline.
Those ages are a starting point, not a rule. You know your child better than a rating board does. If they are ready for the next step up, the dolls in our ranking of doll horror movies start with M3GAN, the one PG-13 film on that list, and that is a reasonable first real horror film for a young teenager.
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