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Top 10 Best Witch Movies (2026)

The best witch movies split cleanly in two: the ones that make an October night feel properly haunted, and the ones where magic is simply an ordinary job. Which half you want usually comes down to who else is on the sofa and how late it already is.

Hocus Pocus suits a living room with children in it, where the fun is laughing at witches instead of being scared of them. Suspiria is for an adult after real menace and no jokes, and it plays best once the house has gone quiet.

Witch films cover far more ground than the Halloween aisle suggests, running from Disney Channel comedy to Italian horror people still argue about. Some of these suit a nine year old on a school night, some suit a slow Sunday afternoon, and one or two need the lights off.

1.Hocus Pocus (25th Anniversary Edition) - starring Bette Midler

Hocus Pocus (25th Anniversary Edition)
Halloween with a mixed-age audience needs films where the witches are funny well before they are frightening. All three of these keep the threat cartoonish and the running time short enough for a school night. Three Salem sisters hanged in 1693 come back for one night in 1993, and the whole film runs on how badly they want to stay. Hocus Pocus pitches its scares at the level of a talking cat and a busload of screaming children, which is why it has become the default October rewatch in houses with a wide age range.
$11.99$14.99-20%
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2.Halloweentown / Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge - starring Debbie Reynolds

Halloweentown / Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge
A thirteenth birthday, a grandmother who turns up by bus, and a portal to a town where the ghouls run the bakery. Halloweentown plays several years younger than Hocus Pocus, and the sequel sits on the same disc, so one purchase covers an autumn tradition for a kid still deciding whether witches are frightening. Debbie Reynolds treats the grandmother as the best part she ever got, and most of the charm comes from that.
$11.99$14.99-20%
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3.Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (DVD) - starring Jennifer Hale

Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (DVD)
A New England village, a horror novelist and a folk-rock band called the Hex Girls who walk off with every scene they appear in. Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost is the entry in the direct-to-video run that grown fans keep going back to, mostly because the reveal genuinely lands. At roughly seventy minutes it fits inside a bath and bedtime.
$5.98
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4.Kiki's Delivery Service - starring Janeane Garofalo

Kiki's Delivery Service
Not every witch story is trying to frighten anyone. These two treat magic as ordinary work or as the weather of a whole invented country, and both hold up for a parent watching alongside. A thirteen-year-old witch leaves home with a radio, a black cat and exactly one useful skill, which is flying. Kiki's Delivery Service spends its running time on rent, on work and on a slump in confidence rather than on a villain, and that is why it lands so hard with children the same age as its heroine. Miyazaki made it in 1989 and almost nothing about it has dated.
$14.99$19.96-25%
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5.The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (DVD) - starring Georgie Henley

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (DVD)
Tilda Swinton's White Witch is the reason this one belongs here: an eternal winter, a sledge, and a boy bought with a box of sweets. Narnia is a wartime evacuation story before it is a fantasy, so the stakes feel oddly domestic for something with a talking lion in it. Younger viewers get a clean adventure, and the 135 minutes are the only real ask.
$9.99$12.99-23%
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6.Practical Magic - starring Sandra Bullock

Practical Magic
The other long tradition here is the love story, where a spell is a complication rather than a threat. Both of these descend from Salem and both are far lighter than their premises sound. Two sisters raised by their aunts in a Massachusetts house where a family curse kills every man they love. Practical Magic cares far more about kitchens, midnight margaritas and sisterhood than about spellwork, and the plot mostly gets in the way of the mood people actually return for. It is the autumn comfort watch that quietly outlived its 1998 reviews.
$5.98
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7.I Married a Witch (Criterion Collection) (DVD) - starring Fredric March

I Married a Witch (Criterion Collection) (DVD)
Veronica Lake plays a witch burned at Salem who comes back three centuries later to ruin the descendant of the man who sentenced her, then makes the mistake of drinking her own love potion. The screwball timing is quicker and drier than Practical Magic, and Rene Clair shoots the sorcery as slapstick instead of spectacle. Seventy-seven minutes, and it never once slows down.
$15.99$19.95-20%
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8.The Craft - starring Robin Tunney

The Craft
Once the youngest person in the house has gone up, witch movies get considerably meaner. A high-school coven, a German dance academy and a silent film that still reads as an accusation cover the range from cult favourite to genuinely unpleasant. Four Catholic-school girls form a coven and find out that the power arrives long before the judgement does. The Craft is a 1996 teen movie with a real mean streak, and its second half is about what happens when one member stops treating any of it as a game. Fairuza Balk's performance is the reason it keeps getting handed down.
$8.99$9.99-10%
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9.Suspiria (4K Ultra HD) - starring Stefania Casini

Suspiria (4K Ultra HD)
An American ballet student arrives at a German academy in a rainstorm, and the building itself starts behaving like a predator. Unlike The Craft, which keeps its coven at high-school scale, Suspiria treats witchcraft as architecture: red corridors, a score played at punishing volume, and almost no explanation until the final ten minutes. Dario Argento's 1977 film is closer to a nightmare than to a plot, which is either the appeal or the problem.
$45.99$59.95-23%
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10.Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) - starring Clara Pontoppidan

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)
Benjamin Christensen spent 1922 arguing that the witch trials were a medical misunderstanding, then staged that argument in Häxan with devils, torture instruments and a butter-churning sabbath. Part lecture and part silent horror, the reconstructions are still genuinely nasty a century on. It is the oldest thing here, and it tends to leave a room arguing about what Christensen was actually claiming.
$29.99$39.95-25%
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Pick the witch movie your night calls for

Work out who is in the room before you pick, because the witch film that works with kids on the sofa is rarely the one that works at midnight. Browse more fantasy movies when the next one needs choosing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best witch movies for a family with young children?
Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost is the gentlest thing on this page, and its monster resolves into something a six year old can carry to bed. Halloweentown sits one step above it and hands a young viewer a heroine their own age. Both stay well clear of the jump scares that make the rest of these a bad idea before lights out.
Do any two of these pair well into one evening?
Practical Magic and I Married a Witch make a natural double bill, since both treat a Salem curse as a romantic obstacle rather than a threat, and the 1942 one is short enough to follow the longer film. If you would rather the evening got darker as it went, let The Craft take over from either of them.
Is The Craft too much for a younger teenager?
It carries its rating for a reason: the bullying turns cruel, there is blood, and the last act plays as horror rather than as a school story. Most fifteen year olds handle it without much trouble. If that still sounds like a stretch, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe covers the same idea, that power arrives before the sense to use it, with none of the cruelty.
Which of the older films works for someone who rarely watches pre-1970 cinema?
I Married a Witch is the easy answer, because the screwball pacing carries it and none of the comedy needs translating. Häxan asks a great deal more and rewards curiosity rather than patience. Start with the 1942 one and save the silent film for a night when nobody minds title cards.
What works best with a group that cannot agree on a mood?
Kiki's Delivery Service is the film a mixed group tends to settle on, because it asks nothing of anyone and still holds an adult's attention. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe also works when there are two hours going spare and the room wants some scale. Anything from the late slot will lose half the sofa.

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