Top 5 Best Halloween Movies

Halloween is a great time for candy, for fear, and for movies. Here’s a list of fun and spooky movies that are perfect for Halloween! 

5 – Sleepy Hollow

Director: Tim Burton

Stars: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson

Rating: R

Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

Released: 1999

Sleepy Hollow is a true Halloween movie. It’s spooky, scary, and has a bunch of supernatural demons. To be completely honest, it’s probably not the best Halloween movie since it gets a bit repetitive towards the end and the R rating doesn’t make it a particularly great family watch. I think in terms of Halloween-ness though, it certainly takes the prize, with a big, angry, Headless Horseman decapitating bodies and an eerie, dark setting.

4 – Dracula

Directors: Tod Browning, Karl Freund

Stars: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners

Rating: Not Rated

Length: 1 hour 15 minutes

Released: 1931

No Halloween list is complete without Dracula, a seasonal staple of Halloween. I can’t even begin to articulate how important Dracula is to Halloween. To this day, there have been so many Dracula variations and spin-offs that it has almost become its own sub-genre. This particular one is about Dracula manipulating a real estate agent by day and drinking blood by night. Definitely a Halloween classic.

3 – Batman, The Dark Knight

Director: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart

Rating: PG13

Length: 2 hours  32 minutes

Released: 2008

This movie is my favorite movie of all time. To be honest, it’s not much of a Halloween film, but it certainly is a great one. I put it on this list because it has the same appeal as a horror film.: you can’t look away. It has great character development and is probably the best Batman movie out there. Heath Ledger, my favorite actor ever, plays the Joker, and plays the best Joker in all of the Batman series. The way he plays Joker shows much more than a one-sided “evilness,” but a mixture of fear, disgust, and rage, all lumped into one, unfortunate man. 

2 – Wait Until Dark

Director: Terence Young

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna

Rating: Not Rated

Length: 1 hour 48 minutes

Released: 1967

Don’t be disappointed by the somewhat plain picture—it’s an amazing movie. It is also an absolutely chilling movie. Basically, a toy doll filled with heroin ends up in a blind woman’s home (it doesn’t matter how, just go with it), and some thugs show up at her house to mess with her. Scared blind person antics ensue and she ends up fighting them all off with the help of an annoying toddler and a fridge. A fridge? Yup, a fridge. Watch it to find out!  

1 – Rear Window

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Stars: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey

Rating: PG

Length: 1 hour 52 minutes

Released: 1954

Side note: Don’t get fooled into thinking this movie must be bad because it was made in 1954, watch it, and you’ll see why it still remains one of the movie industry’s greatest productions

This movie is absolutely terrifying. I watched it with my family a couple years ago and I still think about how Hitchcock manipulates your fears as you watch this movie. It doesn’t have any supernatural elements but still manages to terrify you. It’s about a man with a broken leg who sits near a window and watches a murder unfold. It’s an amazing movie, from the music, to acting, to smartly-placed bits of comic irony. Watch it! But not alone, don’t watch it alone, I can’t stress this enough.

So, 5 of the greatest Halloween movies filled with fear, suspense, tension, and action. Which will you watch?

Works Cited

Irving, Washington, et al. “Sleepy Hollow.” IMDb, 19 Nov. 1999, www.imdb.com/title/tt0162661/.

John Michael Hayes, and Cornell Woolrich. “Rear Window.” IMDb, 15 Nov. 1954, www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/.

Stoker, Bram, et al. “Dracula.” IMDb, 14 Feb. 1931, www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/.

“The Dark Knight.” IMDb, 16 July 2008, www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/.

“Wait until Dark.” Www.imdb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0062467/.