The trick-or-treating ends, the porch light clicks off, and the biggest decision of Halloween night moves to the couch: what can the whole family actually watch together, right now, without twenty minutes of scrolling? This year the answer is unusually tidy. Four of the season’s most rewatched family favorites are sitting on a single service, and the rest are spread across just a handful of others, so one or two subscriptions most homes already have will cover almost the entire night.
Start where most families will start anyway. Hocus Pocus (1993) is streaming on Disney+, with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as the Sanderson sisters, three Salem witches brought back for one Halloween night by a teenager who did not believe the legend. The 96-minute film has spent this month at the top of the Disney+ movie chart, and it remains the safest first pick of the night: spooky enough to feel like Halloween, funny enough that younger viewers stay in the room.
Its sequel is in the same place. Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) is also streaming on Disney+, reuniting Midler, Parker and Najimy twenty-nine years after the original with a new trio of Salem teenagers, and a look back at how the sisters became witches in the first place. Played back to back, the two films run just over three hours, which is a full evening on one subscription with no app hopping in between.
Also on Disney+ is Halloweentown (1998), the Disney Channel favorite with Debbie Reynolds as Grandma Aggie and Kimberly J. Brown as Marnie, a thirteen-year-old who learns on Halloween that she comes from a family of witches and follows her grandmother to a town where ghosts, goblins and vampires live ordinary lives. It is streaming on Hulu as well, and its three sequels are on Disney+ too, so families who finish early have somewhere to go next.
Rounding out the Disney+ lineup is The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the stop-motion musical directed by Henry Selick from Tim Burton’s story, with Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, stumbling into Christmas Town and deciding to run that holiday too. At 76 minutes it is the shortest feature on this list, a useful slot for families with younger kids and an early bedtime even on Halloween.
The gentlest ghost of the season lives elsewhere. Casper (1995), with Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman, is streaming on Hulu and Peacock. Ricci plays Kat, whose father is hired to clear the ghosts out of a Maine mansion, and who instead makes friends with the one ghost who never wanted to scare anybody. For families with a child who finds even the Sanderson sisters a little much, this is the pick that still feels like Halloween without a single nightmare after.
The oldest classic on the list takes one extra step. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) streams only on Apple TV, where it has lived since 2020, and it turned sixty this week. Apple offered it free to everyone on October 17 and 18, and that window has closed, so tonight it takes a subscription. New subscribers, though, can start a seven-day free trial, which covers Halloween night and makes Linus’s long wait in the pumpkin patch the one genuinely free feature presentation on this list for anyone who has not used a trial before.
For slightly older kids, Corpse Bride (2005) is streaming on HBO Max. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson directed the stop-motion romance, with Johnny Depp voicing Victor, a nervous groom who rehearses his vows in the woods and accidentally marries Emily, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, a bride from the land of the dead. It is sweeter than it sounds, though its gothic edge makes it a better fit for tweens than toddlers.
One beloved option is not included with any subscription tonight, and it is worth knowing before a child asks for it. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998), the Mystery Inc. movie where the monsters turn out to be real for once, is available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play, but it is not currently streaming on a subscription service. It is also the scariest title here by a wide margin, so for most families it belongs in the older-kid slot, after the little ones are asleep.
Every listing in this guide was checked today, Saturday, October 31, and streaming lineups can change without much warning, so it is worth confirming a title inside the app before promising it out loud. But that small check is the only work left. Pick the service your home already has, start with the Sanderson sisters, and let the pumpkin patch wait for Linus one more year.