The month of October, a time of costumes, candy and scary movies or not so scary movies. I don’t know about you, but I hate scary movies. The world is already scary enough with everything going on right now.  Why make it worse? Here are some Disney plus movies that will get you in the Halloween mood without giving you nightmares till next October.

“Halloweentown” the Series 

“Halloweentown” is a series of four movies that surround Marnie Piper (Kimberly J. Brown for the first three films and Sara Paxton for the last one) and how she deals with her powers as a witch and threats to the human or monster world. In the movies she gets help from her family and friends to defeat the evils that rise to cause problems. 

In the first movie, Marnie is 13 and just finds out she is a witch and her mother Gwen Piper (Judith Hoag) is hiding it from her hoping that she’ll lose her powers and become human like her father. She finds this out when her grandmother Aggie Cromwell (Debbie Reynolds) comes to ask her mother to help defeat an evil in Halloweentown. When her mother refuses to help, Marnie along with her brother Dylan (Joey Zimmerman) and sister Sophie (Emily Roeske) sneak out to Halloweentown to help their grandmother. 

In the second “Halloweentown” movie, “Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge,” Marnie is 15. The movie starts off with the Pipers hosting a Halloweentown party where Aggie’s magical never emptying bag runs empty causing her and Marnie to run to Halloweentown to see what is wrong. Though when they arrive they become trapped as a new villain tries to reign terror on the mortal world.

In the third “Halloweentown” movie, “Halloweentown High,” instead of Marnie going to Halloweentown, Halloweentown comes to her. Marnie starts a foreign exchange program where she takes a bunch of kids from Halloweentown and enrolls them into her high school. This is great, but there are also problems with her plan like how some people want the portal closed, and it’s up to Marnie and her family to stop them before they close the portal. 

Returning to Halloweentown, the fourth Halloween town movie happens when Marnie is heading off to college. At the college Marnie becomes the victim of the Domine, a group of people who want the prophase of Marnie giving them total control of Halloweentown to come true. 

All four movies have interesting and different plots. Though if you don’t watch them in order you will most likely be confused as each movie has a plot that is connected to the other movie and you won’t understand their references unless you’ve seen the others.

The “Halloweentown” series while made for young kids can be enjoyed by all. “Halloweentown” has magic, rebellious kids and little romance just what kids, pre teens and some teenagers want. Parents will like it especially for their kids to watch because unlike most Disney movies there is very little over dramatic disney teen attitude.

Additionally, while most of the costumes from “Halloweentown” look a little costume-like it fits with the setting, and they do try and make the costumes as cool as they can so if there’s a little costume look to it. I feel it’s fine and doesn’t cause a negative effect on the movies. All movies have costumes that are very pretty or accurate to the times.

“Invisible Sister”

“Invisible Sister,” a movie where weird science meets teen angst. Cleo (Rowan Blanchard)  is a very intelligent teen who excels in science. Molly (Paris Berelc) is Cleo’s older sister, a popular lacrosse star that everyone loves. In the movie, Cleo is assigned a project from her teacher to figure out what a matter is and then turn it into its crystalized state. While doing this project, Molly is throwing a party leading to a bunch of chemicals mixing together causing her sister to turn invisible. So Cleo gets to look at how it really is to be her sister, and Molly gets to feel invisible like her sister does .

“Invisible Sister” has an overused teen no one understands me plot, but it’s actually pretty interesting and enjoyable for everyone. I mean a mix of sports, science and romance with an epic transformation moment–what’s not to love?

“Invisible Sister” takes place in 2015 the year it was filmed. So the characters’ outfits are pretty much what most teens would wear today. Well, when we were not wearing pajamas and sweatpants. Besides the normal street clothing there are also Halloween costumes because it takes place on Halloween. Two of the most memorable costumes are Mardi Gras Dorothy and the cowardly bear.

“Twitches” the Series

Tia Mowry and Tamera Mowry are back again to play another role where they are twin sisters separated at birth. But this time taking a more spooky theme. In the movie, Alex/Artemis (Tia Mowry) and  Camryn/Apollo (Tamera Mowry), are princesses from another planet sent to earth and separated for their protection. In the first “Twitches” movie  the girls find out they are twins and that they have to save their birth world from the darkness. In “Twitches 2,” the girls are both getting used to living together because of struggles for everyone around them. While this is going on, both girls are getting visions from their father trying to contact them from the shadow world. Their mother did not believe this vote to have the girls destroy the shadow world instead. It is now up to them to save their father before he is destroyed.

Both movies have plots that, while go off each other are not the same as one is about defeating an evil and the other being about rescuing someone.

One of the best parts about this movie is that it focuses on the relationship of sisters instead of forcing each of the girls to have a love interest. Though Camryn does appear to be a little boy crazy in the second movie, but not annoyingly so.

The outfits chosen for the movie really help see the differences between chapters. For example, the clothing Camryn wore looks more expensive and also wore different clothing styles than what you see Alex wear. Alex from a less high class life dresses more practical and less expensive clothing.

“Hocus Pocus”

“Hocus Pocus”, released on July 16, 1993, is the oldest and probably the scariest Disney movie on this list. In Salem on  Halloween of 1993, Max Denison (Omri Katzz) is trying to prove that witches don’t exist and breaks a spell and summons the witches Winifred Sanderson (Bette Midler), Sarah Sanderson (Sarah Jessica Parker) and  Mary Sanderson ( Kathy Najimy) who now want to feast on Max’s sister Dani (Thora Birch) and all the other children in town. With nobody believing him, it’s up to Max and Allison (Vanessa Shaw) with the help of one of the witch’s previous victims that was turned into a cat (Sean Murray) to stop the witches before they kill all the children.

Now as I have said before, I don’t think you should let a 5-year-old watch the movie, because the combination of a wild imagination and witches trying to take little kids’ souls is never a good combo with young children.  Once you hit pre teens it shouldn’t be a very scary movie to watch.

Also while it is not a musical, the two songs that the sisters sing “I put a Spell on you” and “Come Little Children” are very entertaining and fun to listen to. The song Sarah sings, “Come Little Children,” is so popular that other people have redone the song and put it in their albums.

Additionally, the costumes in the movie are very funny and cool. Seeing as this movie happens on Halloween most of the characters are in costumes rather than street clothing. One of my favorite costumes is Max and Dani’s mom, Jenny (Stephanie Faracy), who decides to dress as Madonna. This costume consists of her wearing long fake blond hair, a red corset, mike and big red and black earrings.

Hope you gave a wonderful spooky October filled with no tricks but lots of treats and movies.