Watch · AnimatedNo. 9935 · The 2026 edition
The best animated Halloween movies, and the one that really scares.
The best animated Halloween movies, ranked by popularity: Pixar monsters, Burton’s singing skeletons, Aardman’s were-rabbit and one Other Mother best saved for older kids.
Animated Halloween movies are where most of us met our first ghost, and the best of them hold up at any age. These run from 1937’s Snow White to KPop Demon Hunters, with a strong showing of stop-motion from Tim Burton, Laika and Aardman. They’re ranked by popularity — how many viewers have rated each one — so the most-watched come first.
Nearly everything here carries the Fieldguide’s mildly spooky label: monsters with day jobs, skeletons with a jazz band, a vampire grandpa waiting on his grandson’s fangs. The exception is Coraline, rated scary for good reason. Check the scare level under each title before you press play with the smallest viewers.
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01
Monsters, Inc.
Sulley and Mike work the scare floor in a city powered by children’s screams, until a toddler named Boo gets loose. Pixar at its warmest; the scariest thing in it is paperwork.
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02
Spirited Away
A girl is stranded in a bathhouse for gods and spirits and has to work to free her parents, now pigs. The highest-rated film on this list, and it earns it.
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03
Coco
Guitar in hand, a boy from a family that forbids music wanders into the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather. Pixar at its most colorful, skeletons and all.
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04
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The stop-motion benchmark. Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, discovers Christmas and decides to run it himself, which goes about as well as the songs predict.
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05
Corpse Bride
A shy groom, a misplaced vow and a bride who climbs out of the grave to claim him. Burton’s stop-motion gives the dead the color, the jazz and all the best jokes.
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06
Hotel Transylvania
Genndy Tartakovsky’s rubber-limbed animation is the real star, as one cheerful human throws Dracula’s monsters-only hotel into chaos. Built for laughs, not jumps.
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07
Coraline
The one that genuinely scares. A bored girl finds a door to a better version of home, run by an Other Mother with buttons for eyes. Stop-motion perfection, best for older kids.
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08
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Disney’s first feature, from 1937, and its Evil Queen still casts a long shadow. The forest chase and the old-hag transformation are where animated scares began.
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09
Monsters vs. Aliens
Struck by a meteorite on her wedding day, a bride grows to giant size and gets drafted into a government squad of monsters. A cheerful homage to old creature features.
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10
Hotel Transylvania 2
Dracula and his monster friends try to coax a little vampire out of his half-human grandson. Gentle, goofy and aimed squarely at the under-tens.
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11
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Something enormous is raiding the village vegetable patches ahead of the giant-veg contest. Aardman claymation that treats werewolf movies with great affection and very few teeth.
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12
Monster House
Three friends realize the house across the street is alive, hungry and in a foul mood — just in time for trick-or-treat. Motion-capture animation with a few genuine jolts.
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13
KPop Demon Hunters
A world-famous K-pop girl group moonlights as demon hunters, and the soundtrack became a phenomenon of its own. Bright, loud and spooky only around the edges.
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14
Frankenweenie
Young Victor reanimates his dog Sparky, and the rest of the science class wants in. Black-and-white stop-motion stuffed with nods to the old monster classics.
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15
ParaNorman
Norman sees dead people and nobody believes him — until a centuries-old curse wakes the town’s zombies. Laika stop-motion that’s funny, properly eerie and kinder than it looks.
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16
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
The monsters go on a cruise and Dracula falls for the captain, who turns out to be a Van Helsing. More summer than Halloween, but the kids won’t complain.
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17
The Addams Family
The creepy, kooky family, computer-animated, with Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron voicing Gomez and Morticia. Lighter than the live-action films and pitched at younger viewers.
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18
The Black Cauldron
Disney’s famously dark detour: an assistant pig-keeper and a band of misfits race the skeletal Horned King to a cauldron that can raise an army of the dead. Moodier than most Disney.
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19
Scoob!
Scooby and the gang race to stop a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus, after a detour into how they all met. The 5.6 rating says fans, not converts.
Nineteen gentle frights and one Other Mother. Plan the running order accordingly.
Want more? The Fieldguide’s full watchlist covers every Halloween movie we track, so you can pair a stop-motion classic with something newer — and save Coraline for the kids who ask for it.