Megan Charpentier, | | Action, Fantasy, Horror. | $249.36M, PG identify-this-movie. John Richardson, Susan Hayward, Votes: Sleeping Beauty is one of the prime examples, but 22 years earlier, Snow White’s simplistic “Evil Queen” (whose actual name is apparently “Grimhilde”) laid the foundation for so many tropes to come. | Harry Simpson, A modern-day witch likes her neighbor but despises his fiancée, so she enchants him to love her instead. 95 min | Jennifer Morrison, Ian Ogilvy, | Few films have done more to puncture that ’50s-era oversimplification of “neighborly” helpfulness than Rosemary’s Baby, nor done more to make an idealized past “when you didn’t have to lock your doors” seem more absurd. 61,131 Emma Watson, Kids will no doubt earn a few chills from the ominous storybook character who seemingly comes to life, and grown-ups will appreciate the clever subtext about how scary it is to be a parent. Naked men and women crawling and cavorting in circles of demons, lining up to literally kiss demonic asses. Anjelica Huston, Mary Woronov, | | Chris Hemsworth, James Franco, | Comedy, Family, Fantasy. | Gross: Loosely (and I mean loosely) based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol, the film centers on the resurrection of a 17th century vampire-witch (Barbara Steele) and her paramour (Arturo Dominici) as they seek revenge on the descendants of the brother who executed her. | Director: Max Adrian, Votes: Still, it’s a refreshing twist to see the princesses taking control of their own destinies, and the humor of princes just a little too in love with their own charm won’t be lost on even the youngest audiences. | A newcomer to a Catholic prep high school falls in with a trio of outcast teenage girls who practice witchcraft, and they all soon conjure up various spells and curses against those who anger them. Director: Jeremy Renner, | Gross: Horror, Thriller. Eric Sykes, Votes: Largely ignored by both critics and audiences upon its initial release, the film proved to be one of those later bloomers that thrived in the nostalgic mind’s eye in the 2000s, when it became a cable Halloween season staple—the Halloween equivalent of It’s a Wonderful Life, if you will. Stars: 112 min Stars: | | 46,381 This one is reserved strictly for the serious horror fans. Flavio Bucci, Though all of Studio Ghibli’s previous films were modest critical if not financial successes up to this point, Kiki’s Delivery Service was a true watershed moment for the studio, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japan in 1989 and securing critical acclaim both at home and overseas. —Jim Vorel, After years spent toiling as a cinematographer and (at times uncredited) co-director on an assortment of moderate to low-budget horror and sword-and-sandals productions, Mario Bava broke out in a big way with Black Sunday. A young college student arrives in a sleepy Massachusetts town to research witchcraft; during her stay at an eerie inn, she discovers a startling secret about the town and its inhabitants. | Kåre Bergstrøm But the fantastical nature of Disney’s Into the Woods leads to a visual spectacle, and the cast—including James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick—does a fine job with the songs. —Kenneth Lowe, Oz the Great and Powerful is by no means a perfect film. Willem Dafoe, —Jim Vorel, Hocus Pocus feels almost like a sister story at times to Roald Dahl’s The Witches—not quite as vicious, by any means, but its trio of Sanderson Sisters do still want to murder a bunch of kids, which is pretty hardcore as Disney goes. Del Toro's Cronos is creepy, Pan's Labyrinth is a dark masterpiece, and Crimson Peak is old-school eerie, but The Devil's Backbone feels like the filmmaker's most personal horror story -- and his scariest. | On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil. 108 min In particular, as far as classical female “witches” are concerned, the contribution of Rowling’s series was to imagine a world wherein the thought of magic was a bit less miraculous and a bit more practical, being ingrained organically into the fabric of everyday life. Witches: Best Witch Movies by Kodi-Lists | created - 01 Feb 2017 | updated - 07 Jan 2018 | Public If you think i've forgotten to include specific movies, just drop a comment in the facebook comment section. Action, Crime, Horror. Stars: Neil Marshall, the director behind a few of your favorite Game of Thrones episodes, chose claustrophobia in his spelunking-gone-wrong horror movie, The Descent. This movie is widely considered the best horror flick of the soon-to-be-over 2010s, and when I searched "scariest film of the decade" on Google, The Witch was the first option shown. If it’s modern high society, on the other hand, there’s a certain sex appeal inherent to witchcraft—an offhand metaphor for hedonistic women able to get exactly what they want, à la The Craft or Practical Magic. | Gross: Kate Dickie, A meticulous attention to period detail -- from the clothes to the location to the dialogue -- makes The Witch a novel diversion. | Director: 360,731 Daniel Radcliffe, Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, and get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun. $0.31M, PG Backed by a clever premise, an effortlessly gloomy tone, and a handful of very well-crafted shocks, Sinister has proven to be quite the favorite among contemporary horror fans, and while the flick packs at least five or six great scares into one nasty package, my favorite is still the one they semi-spoiled in the trailer. Neve Campbell, | The Blair Witch Project was made on a small budget of $60,000 but grossed more than $248 million at the worldwide box office, and the found footage movie became the decade… Ian McKellen, Votes: Maren Pedersen, Stars: | Gross: | Witches can be protagonists, or comic relief. Rob Marshall —Andy Crump, There’s no shortage of witchy adversaries in the depth of the Disney Vault, but Ursula is arguably the queen of them all. | Gross: | 125 min If your choices are being a good little girl or nuking the lingering spirit of your ex-boyfriend and literally sweeping his ashes out the front door while the ladies of the town cheer, then it’s not hard to see why some women choose to be witches. | Gross: | The movie's elaborate ad campaign took off like wildfire on the internet (yes, even in 1999 that stuff happened) and helped turn a micro-budget horror movie into a smash hit that pulled in over $248 million worldwide. Drama, Horror. This isn’t the case, of course, but nobody would fault your logic. Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Kent pulls it off in the wonderfully eerie The Babadook. In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Miyazaki’s affinity for depicting flight shines through every scene of Kiki wrestling against the air current to steady her broom mid-flight, her dress billowing in the wind as she jets off in the film’s spectacular finale. Harry Potter finds himself competing in a hazardous tournament between rival schools of magic, but he is distracted by recurring nightmares. | Drama, Horror. René Clair This is a truly depraved soul in service of her dark master, but she comes to Rosemary in a guise that is chillingly mundane, that of the chatty next-door neighbor. Toby Hemingway, | Diane Cilento, | Julian Richings, Votes: The grotesque, Jim Henson-conceived witch makeup is equal parts repulsive and goofy, and it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable watching the witches scratch madly at their open sores after removing their wigs. Action, Adventure, Fantasy. Horror. Action, Adventure, Drama. In that sense, in spirit, it’s closer to the gothic languor of French master Jean Rollin than any contemporary proto-slasher. 81 min Diane Ladd, | —Jim Vorel, What Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and What We Do in the Shadows did for vampires, Witching & Bitching essentially did for the cinematic depiction of witches, albeit on a less visible scale. | The Witches of Eastwick falls into the latter camp, buoyed by a vampy sense of charm and four leads who perfectly captured the moment: Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher as a trio of comely witches alternatingly seduced/hounded by that most rakish of Old Scratch portrayers, Jack Nicholson. (Those who fear subtitles got a surprisingly effective American remake in 2010.) Rupert Grint, | Director: The ambiguity of the religious thriller is what makes it so darn scary. They can start delivery services or repel the Nazis from England’s shore (provided they’re also Angela Lansbury—more on that below). Rupert Grint, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance. | $63.77M, R —Toussaint Egan, You can’t exactly put together a list of witch movies without the most iconic witch in the history of cinema, can you? The modern witch, in fact, can be whatever the story requires her (or him) to be. Pointed hats and warty chins. Director: —Jim Vorel, It’s a bit of a shame that Disney animated features of this period—your Robin Hoods and Sword in the Stones—haven’t quite maintained their classic status, often being relegated to the depths of the infamous Disney “vault,” unknown to younger generations whose exposure began with The Little Mermaid and the following Disney Renaissance of the 1990s. Benjamin Christensen, $0.03M, Unrated Flying broomsticks and children in cages, waiting for the oven to adequately preheat. Adventure, Family, Fantasy. —Jim Vorel, Film adaptations of beloved musicals are almost always polarizing; to succeed, the movie must simultaneously capture the magic of the stage while bringing something visually new to the proceedings. $155.33M, PG-13 | Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home to Kansas and help her friends as well.