From Kids Films To Adult Horror, The Best Ways To Find Your Fav Halloween Movies

All Hallows Eve will soon be upon us and children— or their adults– everywhere might be looking for the perfect spooky season film to play on repeat. Or perhaps a Halloween-eve basement movie fright fest is in order. Luckily, there are several ways to parse out what to watch and why to watch it.

US Dish released a fun report that details the top spooky films for kids per state. They got at this data by merging film searches with regional searches. So, Coraline is the top winner for Illinois and Kentucky while Alaska is partial to 2002’s Scooby Do. Meanwhile, 80’s icon Gremlins is the movie of the moment for North Dakota and Florida apparently adores E.T. (which I’d argue is not a Halloween film but hey, anything goes!)

That’s one way to look at it. Another way could be to view films by region or by state. Fictional Fairvale, California is home to Psycho, Jeepers Creepers takes place in Florida and for a city specific film, Candyman (the original and the remake) are excellent ways to visit a fictional tale out of Chicago. (Though Halloween’s Michael Meyers does all his dirty work in Illinois too.) The Stephen King fans out there will always recommend Pet Sematary as a representative of Maine. But then again, Maximum Overdrive took place in Wilmington, North Carolina. (Yes, I consider this truck-smashing classic a horror film. What else could it be?) The Hills Have Eyes takes place in New Mexico and Nevada. The Ring takes places in Washington and of course Texas is represented by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There are plenty movies to consider across nearly every state, and the watching of them would give the viewer a bit of horror history as well. Many of the above-referenced films were game changers for scary storytelling in Hollywood.

You could also work out a system of only watching remakes – and then re-watching the originals. Disney’s rejiggered Hocus Pocus is one such film, as is the before-referenced Candyman. It and The Fly also have entertaining remakes that make it worth watching the original too. For more modern fare, the reboot of 1996’s The Craft has a 2020 version that is a stand alone movie that also serves up nostalgic nods to the original.