One of the oldest Disney Channel original movies, Halloweentown provided a tame view of the goblins and ghouls that roam the streets on Halloween.
I’m kind of a wimp. I once read a Baby-sitter’s Club mystery novel that gave me nightmares for weeks. In sixth grade, I sobbed hysterically while in line for a haunted hayride. In high school, my friends tricked me into seeing The Haunting in Connecticut in theaters, and I spent the entire hour and a half of the movie turned around in my seat, gripping my friend’s hand with my face buried in her sweatshirt. I’m unashamed to admit I will still check behind a closed shower curtain for ax murderers when I’m in a bathroom. So it’s probably pretty surprising that Halloween is my favorite holiday.
I don’t love it for the gore, or the thrill of being scared, which, frankly, I’ve never understood. I don’t even love it for the candy, though that’s definitely an added perk. No, the real reason I love Halloween can be perfectly summed up by the Disney Channel original movie Halloweentown — a completely non-scary (even by my standards) tale of a girl named Marnie who discovers, at age thirteen, she is a witch. Her family hails from a magical and exotic place called Halloweentown, which is populated by ghosts, monsters, skeletons, witches, trolls and every other sort of creature typically embodied by trick-or-treaters.
The great thing about Halloweentown is that it’s not scary. Halloween doesn’t have to be all about being terrified to the point of trauma. It doesn’t have to be about buckets of blood and creepy crawlies and murder. In the movie, Marnie loves Halloween for the lore, the mystery and the magic. The other parts are either a side factor or just don’t exist for her (it is a Disney film after all). But it works. The movie masterfully captures the essence of Halloween, and it helped to cultivate my love for the holiday as a child, yet never once left me petrified.
Here’s what I learned from the movie: On Halloween, you can be any weird thing you can imagine, and it’s not weird. Want to wrap yourself in toilet paper and portray Egyptian culture? Fine. Want to don some warts and a black hat and ride around on a broomstick? Awesome. In Halloweentown, all these Halloween tropes were just like “normal” people – they had jobs, they went to the dentist, they drove cars – but they also looked different even among each other and it didn’t matter. I love that about Halloween. Everyone assumes another identity and it makes us all stand out a bit more from each other, but we all don’t have to make such a big deal about our differences. (Cue grand social message about equality and world peace, etc.).
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying being scared, either in general or on Halloween. But there is something to be said for a Halloween movie that doesn’t rely on terror. Halloweentown emphasizes all the best parts of my favorite holiday and encourages quirkiness without capitalizing on my deepest insecurities and fears. For a wimp like me, I’d say that’s pretty wonderful.
