Watch · WitchesNo. 1640 · The 2026 edition
The best witch movies, from cozy to properly cursed.
The best witch movies, sorted by how hard they bite — from Ghibli bathhouses and Salem sing-alongs to Puritan dread that follows you to bed.
Witches are Halloween’s most flexible monster. They run bathhouses, sing show tunes, mix midnight margaritas and, now and then, dismantle a family for good. This list of the best witch movies covers that whole spread: twenty films, ordered by how many viewers have rated them, each with its scare level checked this September.
The split lands almost evenly. Ten sit at the cozy end, all rated mildly spooky, from Snow White to Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Six are properly scary. Four are rated terrifying, and those are for grown-ups with a lamp on. The notes below say which is which.
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01
Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki at full power: a sulky ten-year-old, a bathhouse for spirits, and Yubaba, the witch who runs it and takes people’s names. Mildly spooky, endlessly strange.
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02
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The Potter film where the series grows up. Alfonso Cuarón directs, Dementors drain the warmth from every scene, and a werewolf turns up. Scary for young kids; ideal for the rest.
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03
Hereditary
A grieving family, then something much worse. Why it belongs on a witch list is best discovered, not explained. Terrifying, relentless, and strictly for adults who can take it.
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04
The Witch
Robert Eggers’ 1630s New England: one Puritan family, one dark wood, one goat called Black Phillip. Terrifying in a slow, creeping way — the dread arrives long before anything happens.
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05
The Blair Witch Project
Three students, a Maryland forest and the footage they left behind. You never see the witch, and that is the whole trick. Rated terrifying; the last shot lingers.
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06
Dark Shadows
Tim Burton’s gothic-soap comedy: Johnny Depp as a vampire cursed by Eva Green’s jilted witch, freed after two centuries and dropped into 1972. Mildly spooky, mostly silly.
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07
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The original Disney witch: a vain queen who turns herself into a hag and delivers one poisoned apple. The dark-forest scene still spooks the smallest viewers.
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08
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
The fairy tale, fast-forwarded: the siblings grew up and turned witch-hunting into a trade. Loud, gory action-horror that knows exactly what it is. Scary, and for grown-ups.
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09
Hocus Pocus
The Sanderson sisters get one Halloween night in Salem to stay young forever. The default family witch movie for three decades — mildly spooky, endlessly quotable.
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10
Into the Woods
Sondheim’s fairy-tale mash-up, with Meryl Streep as the Witch pulling every string. Mildly spooky; the second half turns darker than the first, just as the stage show does.
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11
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Angelina Jolie’s horned antiheroine returns, and Michelle Pfeiffer plays a future mother-in-law with plans of her own. Big fantasy spectacle, more battle than bite.
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12
The Craft
The teen witch movie with actual teeth. A Catholic-school coven learns that power sours fast, and Fairuza Balk makes sure you believe it. Scary, and best for older teens.
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13
Practical Magic
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witch sisters raised by aunts who treat midnight margaritas as a family rite. Cozy and romantic, with one properly dark subplot.
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14
Suspiria
Dario Argento’s ballet-school nightmare: violent primary colors, a pounding Goblin score, murders staged like opera. Terrifying, and style first — logic comes a distant second.
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15
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Built from the Alvin Schwartz books that haunted school libraries, with Guillermo del Toro producing. A cursed book of stories, a haunted house, and a solid gateway scare for teens.
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16
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
The Halloween film without Michael Myers: Silver Shamrock masks, a jingle you can’t shake and a doctor chasing a very bad corporate plan. Scary, odd, and a genuine cult favorite.
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17
The Witches
Roald Dahl, done right. Anjelica Huston’s Grand High Witch peeling off her face is a childhood rite of passage. Rated mildly spooky; small viewers may disagree.
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18
Hocus Pocus 2
Twenty-nine years on, the Sanderson sisters are back in Salem and still hungry. Softer and sillier than the original, and a fine second feature alongside it.
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19
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Angela Lansbury as an apprentice witch, three evacuee children and a con-man magician hunting one missing spell to help defend wartime Britain. Mildly spooky, very Disney, and the flying bed still delights.
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20
Thinner
A smug lawyer is cursed after a fateful accident, and the pounds start falling off — then keep falling. Stephen King’s grim fable of guilt; scary, and less funny than it sounds.
Every witch movie tells you early whether she’s brewing tea or trouble.
Start cozy with Hocus Pocus or Practical Magic, move to The Craft once the younger ones are in bed, and save The Witch for last. The full watchlist has more witches — and every other kind of Halloween movie.