BY MORGAN KILGER, NEWS ASSIGNMENT EDITOR
The best part of the Halloween season are the movies. But not all Halloween movies have to be scary.
Generally, Halloween movies fall into one of two genres: family-friendly and horror.
There’s a difference between Halloween movies and typical horror movies. Halloween movies tend to take place around Halloween time, horror or non-horror. Typical horror movies can have any time period, take “Jaws” (1975) for example. It’s considered a horror movie, but it’s set in the middle of summer.
There are horror movies that are set on or around Halloween. Unlike typical horror movies, these have a set time.
An example of a Halloween horror movie is the “Halloween” franchise.
In the first movie, Michael Myers is an escaped criminal locked away after killing his sister as a child. After his escape, he begins going after babysitters that weren’t paying attention to the kids they were watching. However, his “last kill” got away from him. Strode would be haunted by Myers in a cinematic timeline lasting 47 years.
Each movie starts on a “new” Halloween night or picks up from the previous Halloween. That’s at least 12 movies based on 5 Halloween night encounters between Strode and Myers, with a few movies not about Strode or Myers.
Some horror movies do somehow fall into the Halloween horror movie category. Movies like “Midsommar”, “The Shining” and “Friday the 13th” aren’t Halloween-based horror movies, but they are still nostalgic for the Halloween season.
Halloween movies aren’t all horror movies. There are a whole slew of movies that are considered more family friendly. “Hocus Pocus”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”and “Hubie Halloween” are all examples of non-horror Halloween movies.
Most family-friendly Halloween movies have the same plot type as horror movies: a curse or family secret sets a classic monster loose and it’s up to a group of kids or teens to break the curse they released.
Take the plot of “Hocus Pocus” for example. During the Salem Witch Trials, three witches are hanged for practicing witchcraft and cursing one of the village boys by turning him into a cat for eternity. Fast forward to 1993, a group of kids find the home of the witches (The Sanderson Sisters) and accidentally bring them back to life.
The teens and the cat have to banish the sisters before the town of Salem is taken over by them. Spoiler alert: They succeed.
Watching Halloween movies are the best ways to kick off the Halloween season, even if you watch them year round.
kilgermi22@bonaventure.edu
