Spooky, Not Scary: The 13 Best Halloween Movies Streaming on Disney+ In 2025

There’s no shortage of Halloween media even on the most blatantly kid-friendly streaming service. In fact, there might be more Halloween stuff on Disney+ than other streaming channels, because it seems like almost every one of their properties and shows has produced some kind of Halloween special over the years, and from the looks of it, the Disney Channel produced approximately 50 Halloween TV movies every year from 1995 until sometime in the 2010s. And look, you and your kids can certainly enjoy that stuff. But maybe you’re also enough of a movie snob to know that they don’t really count as movies?

Due respect to Halloweentown and its government, but we do not recognize that sovereignty as a feature film. Besides, anyone can flip on a particularly Halloween-centric episode of Vampirina or listlessly rewatch Hocus Pocus (a theatrical release, yes, but come on). What you need is a guide to real Halloween CINEMA that’s available with your Disney+ subscription, and Decider is here for you! And don’t worry: Despite the appearance of twelve movies, there’s a secret thirteenth (and another bonus!) hidden within. Spooky!

1. Hocus Pocus (1993)

   Photo: Everett Collection

   RATING: PG
   DIRECTOR: Kenny Ortega
   CAST: Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, Sarah Jessica Parker

   Fine, fine! Personally, I’ve long felt outside the demographic for this movie; I remember too clearly this flopping back in the summer (?!) of 1993, same as Super Mario Bros. and Last Action Hero. But so many decades later, it’s impossible to deny that the Sanderson Sisters, the nefarious witches played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the invaluable Kathy Najimy, are icons, and that Disney was really On One with its Halloween-themed entertainment in 1993. (Spoiler: Its other ’93 release in this category bookends this list.) The sequel is pretty shoddy, but it’s admittedly impressive that the Sandersons made it into the Disney Witch canon without centuries-old fairy tales backing them up.

   Stream Hocus Pocus on Disney+

2. Cruella (2021)

   Photo: Disney

   RATING: PG-13
   DIRECTOR: Craig Gillespie
   CAST: Emma Stone, Joel Fry, Emma Thompson

   Speaking of Disney Witches: Cruella de Vil isn’t one, nor is the revisionist origin story Cruella a spooky movie, per se. It is, however, Halloween Costume Cinema par excellence. Emma Stone recasts Cruella as a thwarted, then triumphant designer pulling fashion pranks, and frankly all of that is way more fun than any material that attempts to tie this movie into 101 Dalmatians, the classic cartoon that inspired it. Naturally, the film won an Oscar for Costume Design – and you don’t see many threads imitating Phantom Thread or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom when you’re out trick or treating. If Cruella is more mood board than fully satisfying feature, well, at least its inspo is actually inspired.

   Stream Cruella on Disney+

4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

   Disney

   RATING: G (seriously)
   DIRECTOR: Kirk Wise & Gary Trousdale
   CAST: Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Kevin Kline, Tony Jay

   Alongside the core Universal monsters – Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and the Invisible Man – there are the earliest iteration of the studio’s monster movies, featuring the more literary and less sequelized likes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; the Phantom of the Opera; and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Now, Disney’s version of the Hunchback is even less of a monster movie – empathy and all! – but it does feature the famous character as well as one of the studio’s scariest animated songs ever. “Hellfire,” sung by the villainous Judge Frollo, is a self-torturing anthem of desire and disgust, and helps make Hunchback one of the darker Disney cartoons, in spite of its inexplicable G rating.

   Stream The Hunchback of Notre Dame on Disney+

5. Monsters, Inc. (2001)

   RATING: G
   DIRECTOR: Pete Docter
   CAST: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi

   The creepy, crawly, fuzzy, and/or fang-heavy monsters of this Pixar classic aren’t exactly macabre, but this is a whole cartoon about the idea of fear: What causes it in different cultures, how that fear is used, and how more positive emotions might be harnessed instead. So while the color scheme is more bright blues and pastel purples than the traditional orange-and-black (and certainly never blood red), there’s a certain monster-mashiness to this movie that makes it feel seasonally appropriate.

   Stream Monsters, Inc. on Disney+

6. The Haunted Mansion (2003)/Haunted Mansion (2023)/Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)

   Photo: Disney+

   RATING: PG (2003); PG-13 (2023); PG (Muppets)
   DIRECTORS: Rob Minkoff (2003); Justin Simien (2023); Kirk Thatcher (Muppets)
   CAST: Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp (2003); LaKeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito (2023); Gonzo, Kermit, Piggy (2021)

   The various Haunted Mansion rides throughout the various Disney parks worldwide are a whole mood; the attraction in all its forms is a masterpiece of the form, surely one of the most inventive and best-engineered combinations of spookhouse thrills and silly laughs. It makes sense, then, that a Disney that (eventually) embraced Tim Burton would want to translate that spirit (pun intended) to the cinema. Unfortunately (if not surprisingly), they haven’t quite nailed it yet. The Haunted Mansion is typical of the theme-park translations of its era, Pirates of the Caribbean (which came out the same year!) excepted; it plays the material as a genial family comedy, complete with 2000s-era Eddie Murphy learning to be a better dad. The 2023 version (which drops the “the”; it’s cleaner) is more ghoulish and less kid-oriented, but that weirdly just makes it kinda boring. They’re both worth a look for committed Disney fans, but the best non-ride Haunted Mansion so far never came to theaters. As such, we will break our feature-films-only rule to include a substitution: Muppets Haunted Mansion, a special produced for Disney+ in 2021 that does a better job with the comic-horror dynamic than either of the actual features adapting the ride.

7. Coco (2017)

   Photo: Everett Collection

   RATING: PG
   DIRECTOR: Lee Unkrich
   CAST: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt

   Again, not technically a Halloween movie, but Pixar made a very necessary Halloween-adjacent movie by exploring the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday that immediate follows Halloween on November 1st. It follows aspiring singer Miguel into the Land of the Dead, where he hopes to meet his musical idol after running away from home. Though it’s not too scary for little kids, the movie is chockablock with the most musical bunch of skeleton characters this side of Corpse Bride, and builds to a typically Pixarian tearjerker of an ending. Notably, the studio hasn’t had a bigger original hit since.  

   Stream Coco on Disney+

8. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

   Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
   Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%
   The latest installments of the franchise may draw ire and disappointing box office performances, but the film that started it all remains an exciting, funny adaptation of the beloved Disney attraction. It may be spooky for the younger ones, but Jack Sparrow’s silly antics offer fun for the whole family. Starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and Orlando Bloom, this swashbuckler film is the epitome of an enjoyable summer blockbuster.
   [Stream Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl] Photo: Disney

   RATING: PG-13
   DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski
   CAST: Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush

   No arguing with the summer release this time, as the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was an instant summer-movie classic. But really, it could have been released in September or October, too; as Captain Barbosa points out, this is very much a ghost story. There’s not that much spooky stuff in the original Disney ride, but the supernatural becomes a focal point in the film series, which never really got better than a battalion of ghost-pirates confidently marching across the ocean floor, beams of light revealing their hidden skeletal forms.

   Stream Pirates of the Caribbean on Disney+

9. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

   Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp, courtesy Everett Collection

   RATING: PG-13
   DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
   CAST: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest

   Before a certain stop-motion classic, Tim Burton merged Halloween aesthetics with wintry wistfulness in his take on the Frankenstein, featuring a never-gentler Johnny Depp as an artificial man whose creator died before swapping hands in for the placeholder blades that render him both difficult to touch and impossible to forget. Edward Scissorhands also doubles as a satire of suburban conformity, which makes it all the more impressive that Burton manages to tease out the subtext of so many classic monster movies – where the monster, while capable of violence, is ultimately a sympathetic figure in some ways, capable of human yearning – and make it the whole story of this one.

   Stream Edward Scissorhands on Disney+

10. The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad (1949)

    ‘The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad’ (1949): No one cares much about Mr. Toad, but the torment thrown Ichabod Crane’s way on behalf of the Headless Horseman? This guy has been scaring people for centuries, but DIsney delivered it in an animated version for children’s nightmares. Photo: Disney; Courtesy Everett Collection

    RATING: G
    DIRECTOR: Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, James Algar
    CAST: Bing Crosby, Basil Rathbone

    OK, half of this feature from Disney Animation’s leaner anthology years is just a pretty good adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. (Fun, but the book is better.) But the other adaptation at hand here is more than enough: an animated version of Washington Irving’s classic short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” scary enough to pass muster on Halloween but less gruesome (and more faithful to the original story) than the Tim Burton adaptation from 1999 (which rules, but isn’t exactly a Disney picture).

    Stream The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad on Disney+

11. Frankenweenie (2012)

    RATING: PG
    DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
    CAST: Charlie Tahan, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau

    Almost 20 years after his initial Disney stop-motion triumph, and even longer after the relatively little-seen live-action Disney short this feature is based on, Tim Burton returned to his old employer for a passion project: a black-and-white (!) stop-motion monster-ish movie about a little boy bringing his best friend and dog Sparky back to life with Frankensteinian lightning. It also indulges any number of additional Burton fixations, like the kaiju movies of his childhood. It’s not quite as sprightly or musical as Burton’s other stop-motion projects, but it may be more of a straight shot of his sensibilities, and misfit kids everywhere will find kinship in his sweet, mordantly funny tone.

    Stream Frankenweenie on Disney+

12. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

    The Walt Disney company flailed a bit in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in the wake of Steven Spielberg and Star Wars re-arranging the family-movie landscape. Before creating the Touchstone label for more grown-up fare, they experimented with some darker stories still aimed at younger audiences, hiring sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury to adapt his own novel. It was not a fun experience for anyone involved; Bradbury fell out with director Jack Clayton over changes, only for Clayton himself to be shoved aside by Disney as they partially reshot, re-edited, and re-scored the film, which subsequently flopped anyway. But the mere existence of a Bradbury adaptation about a dark carnival arriving to menace a pair of young brothers, in the catalog whose live-action offerings at the time often centered on a sentient Volkswagen, has made the movie an object of cult interest for years. It’s only just appearing on streaming for the first time this fall; it’s been out of circulation since the Blu-ray went out of print. So take the opportunity to watch for yourself and decide whether it’s the prefect mix of kid adventure and autumnal creepiness, or if Disney really did have trouble getting the balance right.

    Stream Something Wicked This Way Comes on Disney+

13. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

    Photo: Everett Collection

    If Disney felt similarly skittish about their decade-later offering for goth kids, they didn’t let it affect production on The Nightmare Before Christmas (though it was notably first released by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, apparently out of trepidation over associating the Disney name with various ghouls, serpents, and disembodied heads). They were likely reassured by the return of their once ill-fitting employee Tim Burton, who was then a box office champion with the likes of Beetlejuice and Batman under his belt. Though Burton didn’t actually direct Nightmare—master animator Henry Selick did—it may be his single most lasting contribution to film culture: a holiday classic that plays perfectly from anywhere between Labor Day and New Year’s, brought to life through stunning stop-motion animation, beloved by children and adults alike. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen it already, whether on home video or its many theatrical rereleases. But if by some chance you or your kids haven’t checked it out, the story of Jack Skellington, superstar of Halloweentown, taking a crack at Christmas (against the will of one abducted and irritated Santa Claus) is about as good as Halloween or Christmas movie as has ever been made.

    Stream The Nightmare Before Christmas on Disney+

How To Watch Halloween Movies on Disney+

Disney+ offers a number of subscription options, so you can find the one that works for you. With ads, a subscription costs $9.99/month; without ads, it’s $15.99/month or $159.99/year.

There are also Disney+ bundles with Hulu, Max, and ESPN+, so you can subscribe to up to three services at once and save over 40% every month. The bundles are available in a few different configurations, starting at $10.99/month for Disney+ and Hulu with ads, and going up to $29.99/month for Disney+, Hulu, and Max ad-free.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.