Fantasy movies show us worlds beyond our own where the fantastic is real. But the genre also serves up some poignant insights about the world in which we live. That’s one of the reasons why it remains a popular genre among fans. And while Netflix doesn’t have as many big fantasies from other studios that it used to have, it does have several original movies to help fill that gap. So as we head into the end of 2022, these are the best fantasy movies on Netflix.
We’ve also rounded up the best fantasy movies on Amazon Prime and the best fantasy movies on Hulu if Netflix doesn’t have what you’re looking for.
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Slumberland2022
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The Addams Family1991
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Labyrinth1986
With Wednesday winning over a new generation of fans, it’s time to revisit 1991’s theatrical adaptation of The Addams Family. This was a revival of the TV series based on Charles Addams’ characters, and it’s incredibly well-cast. Christina Ricci becomes a star before your eyes thanks to her turn as Wednesday, while the late Raul Julia absolutely lights up the screen as her father, Gomez Addams.
Within the film, Christopher Lloyd’s Gordon Craven has an uncanny resemblance to Gomez’s long-missing brother, Fester. At the behest of his mother, Abigail Craven (Elizabeth Wilson), Gordon goes undercover as Uncle Fester in the Addams household in order to steal their fortune. The complication is that Gordon soon discovers that he loves being an Addams. And if he betrays them, then his newfound family will be lost.
Don’t fancy yourself a storyteller? Well, as the saying goes, necessity can very well be the mother of invention as the young Alex (Winslow Fegley) learns in Netflix’s new dark fantasy film Nightbooks. Based on the 2018 novel by J.A. White, Nightbooks stars Krysten Ritter as a terrifying witch who imprisons Alex. In order to escape certain death at her hands, Alex must tell her a scary story every night to entertain her. Knowing his death is inevitable otherwise, Alex befriends the witch’s servant, Yazmin (Lidya Jewett), and together they try to outwit the evil sorceress to escape her mystical home. Scheduled to start streaming in the middle of September, Nightbooks promises to be both scary and family-friendly while giving Ritter a wonderful chance to play against type./dt_media]
Some of the best fantasy stories are the oldest. Case in point — Errementari: The Black Smith and the Devil, based on a Basque reimagining of the fairy tale The Smith and the Devil. In 19th-century Spain, the supposed government investigator Alfredo Ortiz (Ramón Agirre) arrives in a small village looking for lost treasure. His search leads him to a forge in the nearby woods where the blacksmith Paxti (Kandido Uranga) lives in solitude. When Ortiz hires men to help him raid the forge, a young girl named Usue (Uma Bracaglia) sneaks in to recover a lost doll — and makes a terrifying discovery. Errementari is a wonderful fusion of fantasy and bone-chilling horror that still captures the sense of fascination children have for fairy tales and folklore.
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