Every Halloween, you see posters and trailers for old and new slasher flicks that are made to keep you up all night with fear. However, if you don’t like being scared for days on end, here are five non-scary movies that are more funny than terrifying.
- “Beetlejuice” (1988)
Tim Burton’s 1988 classic “Beetlejuice” still reigns supreme for the Halloween season. After Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) and his wife Barbara (Geena Davis) die in a car accident, their home is sold to the terminally annoying Deetzees family. In trying to scare the family away from their home, the Maitlands accidentally attract a mischievous spirit named Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), who quickly throws the spirits and the Deetzes’ daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) into danger. The movie is uncanny, with visuals giving you that spooky, Halloween feel without actually scaring you. It’s a fantastic movie the first time around or as a rewatch. There is always a new detail to notice cleverly added by the famous director.
- “Ghostbusters” (1984)
Ivan Reitman’s blockbuster of 1984 started a powerhouse franchise that, through a colorful cast and incredible special effects for the 80’s, refined movies as the public knew them. The titular Ghostbusters are a company of three (later four) men that initially go around New York City fighting ghosts for money after losing their jobs. However, they accidentally discover a portal to another dimension, causing them to start taking their situation seriously before the evil that comes out of it destroys the world. It’s an amazing series to go and binge watch, but the first is the best: it’s witty, it’s original and it redefined what “special effects” were at the time. It’s one of those movies you simply have to watch.
- “Scary Movie” (2000)
This is a hilarious parody. “Scary Movie” combines the “Scream” franchise with “I know what you did last summer,” adding horror movie tropes to create a vulgar but hilarious spoof. In the film, teenager Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) and her friends are hunted down by a mysterious killer known as Ghost Face who leaves the group notes pertaining to a murderous incident from Halloween a year prior. In increasingly humorous ways, the cast gets cut off one-by-one until the killer is revealed in the climax. Overall, it perfectly replicates the ridiculousness of horror movie tropes, letting the audience kick back and laugh rather than scream for once.
- “Coraline” (2009)
Henry Selick’s 2009 “Coraline” follows 11-year-old Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) as her family moves into a shared Victorian-esc style house known as the Pink Palace in Oregon. She soon discovers a doorway leading to the seemingly perfect “Other” world, where her “Other” mother (Teri Hatcher) and “Other” father (John Hodgeman) entice her with everything she feels her life lacks. Slowly, secrets shimmer to the surface that make Coraline realize the “utopia” that is the parallel universe is secretly a nightmare. Selick uses stop motion to slowly turn the dream world into a nightmare, perfectly adapting the novel it’s based on. Despite having plenty of funny scenes, provides a good but not gory scare.
- “The Nightmare before Christmas” (1993)
While debates continue to this day on whether Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare before Christmas” is a Halloween or Christmas movie, it is undoubtedly my favorite movie of both holidays. In fact, it might even be my favorite movie of all time. In this musical, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon speaking and Danny Elfman singing) grows bored of his holiday and discovers Christmasland, deciding to take the holiday for himself that year. However, everything goes wrong when everybody realizes horror and happiness don’t mix. The stop-motion art style gives the world of this movie an unnatural but warm feel, perfectly encompassing the passion director Selick and Burton put into this 1993 masterpiece.
