While streaming habits are susceptible to any number of shifting cultural forces, there’s at least one that’s consistently reliable: holiday-related viewing. It stands to reason that the weeks leading up to Halloween would see a notable increase in viewership for pertinent titles. But is that what actually happens?
One might expect the top 10 titles for the week ending in Halloween to be very horror-skewing or otherwise seasonally appropriate, but the data is surprising. Coraline is the only explicitly relevant film in the lineup; favor is still given to hot and new titles and child-friendly films.
In fact, the Top 50 chart never exceeded about 25% Halloween-related titles in any week of October, peaking with 12 on the week of October 11-17. Similarly, the top 50 for the month included only 10 of them. The only relevant library titles that cracked the top 50 during this period were Coraline, Hocus Pocus, Hocus Pocus 2, A Quiet Place Part II, Scream (2022), Halloween (2018), It: Chapter Two, Terrifier, Terrifier 2, Hotel Transylvania and Casper. While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Time Cut, Speak No Evil, Girl Haunts Boy, Salem’s Lot, It’s What’s Inside and Apartment 7A also floated through the top 50 during this period, they were all recent premieres, which might better explain their presence.
Some long-running horror franchises might be absent here because they have so many installments competing for views. Conversely, the Hocus Pocus franchise consists of only two films and is family-friendly, which makes it a good candidate for closer analysis.
Hocus Pocus 2, a Disney+ original released in 2022, had a very predictable seasonal arc. After lying dormant for most of the year, it started picking up viewers in late September and then for most of October averaged roughly about 100 million minutes watched a week. Its October viewership was roughly 20x higher than it was for the rest of the year, firmly ensconcing it as a seasonal favorite. The first film, Hocus Pocus, enjoys a similar increase in engagement leading up to the holiday.
Perhaps more so than other holidays, different demographics seek very different experiences in their Halloween viewing. While it can be difficult to break through in a crowded marketplace that rewards newer titles over older ones, there is definitely an appetite for nostalgic favorites, and there’s always the possibility that a new seasonal classic can emerge.
