Film

The Addams Family

A slick, big-budget resurrection of Charles Addams's cartoon ghouls, played dead straight by a cast having entirely too much fun. Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston turn marital devotion into gothic comedy gold, while a fraudulent-Fester plot ticks along under the gags. Broad, brisk and gleefully macabre — comfort viewing for anyone who's always preferred the Addamses to the neighbours.

TMDb rating7.1

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Addams Family Values1993no page yet

The rare sequel that betters the original — sharper jokes, a summer-camp plot that skewers wholesome America mercilessly, and Christina Ricci given even more room to be magnificently deadpan as Wednesday.

But If you found the first film's tone a bit much, this one leans even further into the same register.

Beetlejuice1988

Tim Burton's manic haunted-house comedy shares the same DNA: death treated as farce, bureaucracy as horror, and a gleeful disregard for good taste, anchored by Michael Keaton at his most unhinged.

But Faster and weirder than the Addamses — some find its chaos exhausting rather than charming.

Beetlejuice poster

Wednesday2022

The most successful modern reboot of this world, with Jenna Ortega giving the character a sardonic, murder-curious edge while the show builds an actual mystery plot around her.

But It's teen-drama shaped underneath the goth aesthetic, with romance subplots that feel far from the original cartoon's spirit.

Wednesday poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grey Gardens1976

Same fascination with a family that has simply opted out of normal society, minus the punchlines — this is what that choice actually looks like.

A real mother and daughter, eccentric aristocrats living in genteel decay in a crumbling East Hampton mansion, utterly indifferent to how the world sees them — documentary proof the Addamses aren't as fictional as you'd think.

But There's no joke here to laugh with — it's sad, intimate, and genuinely uncomfortable at times.

Grey Gardens poster
More like this (8)

Clue1985

A mansion full of murderous eccentrics, played by a stacked comic ensemble at top speed — the closest thing to Addams Family energy without a single Addams on screen.

But Multiple alternate endings and a farcical pace mean it rewards patience with old-fashioned screwball timing.

Clue poster

Edward Scissorhands1990

Burton and Depp's suburban gothic fairy tale, about an outsider whose strangeness the neighbours can't forgive — same tension between the ghoulish and the ordinary, played tender instead of jokey.

But It's a melancholy fable, not a comedy — expect heartbreak rather than one-liners.

Edward Scissorhands poster

Death Becomes Her1992

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn go full grotesque in this vicious, effects-heavy satire about vanity and mortality — the same appetite for turning death into slapstick, cranked up considerably.

But Meaner and gorier than the Addamses ever get; its cruelty is the whole joke.

Death Becomes Her poster

Hocus Pocus1993

Bette Midler leads a trio of resurrected witches terrorising a small town in this Halloween staple — cartoonish, family-friendly, and stuffed with the same theatrical relish for the macabre.

But Lower budget and broader jokes; it's aimed squarely at kids in a way the Addamses films weren't quite.

Hocus Pocus poster

Ghostbusters1984

Deadpan wisecracks in the face of the supernatural, from a cast that treats the apocalypse like a Tuesday — the same trick of finding comedy in things that should terrify.

But It's an entirely different flavour of comedy — sci-fi action-comedy rather than gothic domestic satire.

Ghostbusters poster

Young Frankenstein1974

Mel Brooks's black-and-white monster-movie parody is the funniest ancestor of this whole macabre-comedy lineage, gleefully affectionate toward the horror genre it's mocking.

But Its rhythms are pure 70s vaudeville — expect puns and mugging over modern comic timing.

Young Frankenstein poster

Arsenic and Old Lace1944

The same core joke — a family so pleasant and murderous they see no contradiction — done in wartime Hollywood's clipped, theatrical style.

Cary Grant discovers his sweet old aunts have a hobby: poisoning lonely gentlemen and burying them in the cellar. Rapid-fire 1940s black comedy that got there decades before the Addamses did.

But Stagey and talky by modern standards — it's adapted from a play and it shows.

Arsenic and Old Lace poster

Corpse Bride2005

Trades the sitcom jokes for genuine tenderness toward the macabre, showing what the Addamses' worldview looks like taken fully seriously.

A stop-motion musical where the land of the dead is warmer and more alive than the land of the living, sung through by Danny Elfman — the Addamses' romance with death, animated and sincere.

But It's a wistful romantic tragedy at heart, not a gag-driven comedy, and moves at a much gentler pace.

Corpse Bride poster

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ParaNorman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, Count Duckula, Beetlejuice, What We Do in the Shadows, Hotel Transylvania, Hocus Pocus 2, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Santa Clarita Diet, Ghostbusters II