Spooky season is finally here! Fall leaves, crisp air, and hot apple cider — this is one of my favorite times of year.
And one of my favorite ways to wrap up a day of running through pumpkin patches with the kids is to get cozy and watch one of our favorite Halloween movies.
Does your family have a Halloween movie you watch year after year together? I know we do (cough, cough — Hocus Pocus), and one of our favorite ways to make these traditional movie nights extra special is to create a themed dinner to go with it.
Enjoying a special themed dinner is a great way to immerse your family in the story and take movie night up a notch.
Whether you take inspiration from the film and its characters, or even actual food references onscreen — the possibilities are endless!
Here are a few ideas!
Halloween Themed Dinner & Movie Nights
Hocus Pocus
A bubbling witch’s brew stew paired with pumpkin cornbread make a spellbinding entrée for a Hocus Pocus movie night.
And to ensure everyone gets their veggies, you can also assemble a veggie tray inspired by Winifred Sanderson herself! For dessert, whip up a pan of eerie spellbook brownies.
Or rather than plan an entire meal, you can create a Hocus Pocus inspired charcuterie board featuring the trio of witches!
Find all the details for these fun dinner ideas here.
Beetlejuice
To honor the “ghost with the most,” take inspiration from the spooky elements of Beetlejuice to build your menu.
Kick off dinner with a haunted shrimp cocktail (or, if you prefer to skip the seafood, “shrimp” breadsticks and marinara). Roasted roaches (bacon wrapped dates) make an excellent side dish.
Then for entrees, you can create “eyeball” stuffed meatballs or serve Chinese takeout just like the Deetz family dinner.
Finish the dinner with some sandworm cookies and shrunken head apple cider.
Find all the details here!
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a timeless Halloween tradition. To honor this beloved tale, you can serve a meal inspired by the Peanuts® gang and pumpkin patch setting.
We started our movie night with a charcuterie board depicting the Peanuts® gang waiting in the pumpkin patch.
You could also play with pizza toppings to create a Snoopy® pizza using thinly sliced mozzarella, pepperonis, and black olives.
Mandarin oranges make the perfect mini pumpkin snacks for movie time. Then, finish off movie night with some delicious pumpkin patch brownies.
Get all the details here!
Underwraps
We’re circling back to our 90s kid roots with this dinner.
To kick off the party, make some scarab deviled eggs topped with black olives. Or make a mummy cheeseball served with crackers and veggies.
Entrees could include mini mummy-wrapped pizzas and hotdogs. Rice cereal treat mummies make the perfect sweet ending to the meal.
Get full details here!
Coraline
Coraline’s spooky Other Mother is constantly luring Coraline into her dangerous fantasy world with delicious meals. There are many dishes to get inspired by!
For our Coraline themed dinner, we replicated her “welcome home” dinner with roasted chicken, peas and corn, rolls and mango milkshakes. And don’t forget the “Welcome Home” cake!
Full details here.
Halloweentown
What 90s kid didn’t love watching Halloweentown?
You could kick dinner off with a Town Square Jack-o-Lantern cheeseball, or an order of witches’ broomsticks made with string cheese and pretzels. Merlin’s Talisman fruit wands serve as a healthy and interactive movie snack.
You could also incorporate actual food references from the film, made with a spooky twist!
We served Gwen’s fried chicken with ghostly mashed potatoes and Sophie’s chocolate chip cookies topped with spider chocolate chips.
Get all the details for this idea here!
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Whether you consider it a Halloween or Christmas movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastic film to pair with a themed dinner.
You can begin with Sally’s Worms Wort soup. We also created a Halloweentown cheeseboard featuring a Jack Skellington cheeseball.
For dinner, consider making a Jack Skellington pizza using sliced pepperoni to create his facial features. Sweet treats can include Oogie Boogie’s bugs (gummy candies) or skeleton reindeer gingerbread cookies.
A dessert board is another great option to make a this movie night extra special. For our dessert board, we made cookies inspired by Jack Skellington, Sally, Oogie Boogie, and the flying skeleton reindeer.
Oh, and don’t forget to include plenty of candy — it’s a dessert board, after all! Just brace yourself for the impending sugar rush.
Find all the details for this idea here!
If you’d like to see more ideas for Halloween themed dinners, head to Inspiring Magical Memories to see the full spooky line up!
