Halloween is by far one of my favorite holidays, aside from Christmas of course, and along with this spooky time of year comes another favorite of mine: 31 Nights of Halloween on Freeform—formerly known as 13 nights, though they thankfully realized the demand for more Halloween movies all October long.

There are so many wonderful classic Halloween movies like “The Addams Family,” “Halloweentown,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Casper,” “It’s a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” (a personal favorite), “Ghostbusters,” “Halloween” and “Hocus Pocus,” to name a few.

These are only a few of the many great movies acceptable for viewing during October. These all deal with aspects of Halloween (think ghosts and monsters), and they actually take place during Halloween or October.

Although, some channels—cough cough Freeform cough cough—are not perfect when it comes to understanding these guidelines when scheduling their programs. Freeform also has this problem when it comes to their 25 Days of Christmas schedule, but that is another article.  

Unfortunately, movies like “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Hook,” “Iron Man,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Moana” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” to name a few, all managed to somehow make the cut this year. 

I have seen all these movies, and I do not remember any of them having any Halloween themes whatsoever in them. So how did they manage to make this year’s list? They are all great movies—except for “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”—but there are also so many more spooky and actual Halloween movies that could have made the cut instead. 

Movies like “Coraline,” “Frankenweenie,” “ParaNorman,” “Sleepy Hollow” and “Beetlejuice,” to name a few, would have been more acceptable choices for Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween lineup.

While “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” may freak me out a bit (everything about the Oompa Loompas is creepy), I would not classify under my must-watch movies for Halloween. The creepiness of the Oompa Loompas and the fact that there is candy involved are pushing it when trying to qualify this movie as a Halloween movie.  

Compared to a classic like “It’s a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” fails my personal test. “It’s a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” actually takes place around and on Halloween, involves the Peanut characters dressing up and celebrating Halloween and watching for the great pumpkin—pumpkins being another key factor for Halloween movies which is absent in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”

I would also appreciate if Freeform did not show “Hocus Pocus” practically every day because, again, they can sprinkle in more of a variety of movies so we are not stuck watching the same one or three movies—cough cough  “Hocus Pocus” cough cough.

That gets old and seems lazy on their scheduling end of things. If I only wanted to watch “Hocus Pocus” all October, I would buy or stream the movie myself.

There are so many great Halloween-themed and generally spooky movies that you can watch during October, and Freeform did not seem to get that memo with their random additions of non-Halloween movies like “Moana”—where the only scary thing about that movie is how overbearing her father is.