The Christina Ricci Supernatural Classic On Netflix That’s Timeless Fun
It’s officially spooky season, which means the pumpkin spice lattes are flowing, and the Halloween movies are being queued up. Fortunately, Netflix has Halloween fans covered with the classic and cute kid’s movie Casper hitting the streamer on October 1. Make sure to add this one to your list of Halloween movies to watch this October.
Starting October 1, Casper – starring Christina Ricci – will be streaming on Netflix.
Casper is based on the classic Harvey Comics cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost created by Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo. The film follows the titular ghost as he peacefully haunts a mansion in Maine before specialist James Harvey (Bill Pullman) and his daughter, Kat (Christina Ricci), arrive to communicate with the spirits in the house.
Casper falls in love with Kat, but their love story is frequently interrupted by his mischievous ghostly uncles known as the Ghostly Trio.
Along with Pullman and Ricci, Casper stars Cathy Moriarty, Eric Idle, Joe Nipote, Joe Alaskey, Brad Garrett, and Malachi Pearson in the title role. Brad Silberling directed the film from a screenplay by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver. Notably, the film is a little darker than your typical tales about the friendly ghost, as it actually goes into Casper’s backstory and how he died.
You can’t beat a cameo from a Ghostbuster actually playing a Ghosbuster (which also suggests this movie takes place in the same universe as Ghostbusters)?
Of course, these darker details don’t mean that Casper isn’t kid-friendly, as it has plenty of hijinks and humor to keep kids entertained. Even though the reception to the movie was relatively mixed on its release, it’s since become a nostalgic classic that people revisit around this time of year. Also, in 1995, the computer-generated ghosts actually look pretty good, and the visual effects hold up fairly well.
Along with being a pretty fun movie for kids, Casper is also rife with cameos that adults will love. Some notable ones are Clint Eastwood, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Gibson, and even John Kassir as the Crypt Keeper.
If you were looking to create a theme for your list of Halloween movies this year, it would be pretty easy to make a Christina Ricci Halloween movie night.
Of course, the best cameo is undoubtedly Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz, who is brought in to exterminate Casper’s uncles. You can’t beat a cameo from a Ghostbuster actually playing a Ghosbuster (which also suggests this movie takes place in the same universe as Ghostbusters)?
Fun cameos aside, Casper was actually a massive success at the box office, too. The film grossed a whopping $287.9 million at the worldwide box office, which easily surpassed its $55 million budget.
The movie was successful enough to get two direct-to-video follow-up films and a cartoon series. We may even have more of the friendly ghost coming in the future, as Peacock announced a live-action series was in development back in 2022.
If you were looking to create a theme for your list of Halloween movies this year, it would be pretty easy to make a Christina Ricci Halloween movie night. Of course, before Ricci starred in Casper, she got her big break as Wednesday Addams in the Addams Family film franchise. Those films are still beloved to this day, and they would make great companion watches with the Casper film.
Once you’ve watched the Addams Family film and Casper, you naturally can move on to streaming the Wednesday series on Netflix. Wednesday stars Jenna Ortega as the titular Addams Family daughter as she attends Nevermore Academy and learns about a plot that entangled her parents years ago. Although Ricci no longer plays the role of Wednesday, she has a different role in the series.
Wednesday was one of Netflix’s biggest hits, and it inevitably got the green light for another season, though there’s no word yet on when we can expect that second season to come out. But still, it’s worth catching up on now so you’re ready when the second season does eventually premiere. Plus, it’s hard to think of a better Halloween movie night than The Addams Family, Casper, and a couple of episodes of Wednesday.
Hopefully, we’ll get to hear more information about the live-action Casper series soon. What’s been announced so far is that Kai Yu Wu is writing and executive producing the series with UCP and DreamWorks Animation set to co-produce and that it follows the ghost in a coming-of-age story that involves a 100-year-old mystery. In the meantime, you can check out the 1995 film when it hits Netflix on October 1.
