By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 12-page classroom-ready resource.
Comprehension questions in chronological order, made as two sets for differentiation. Answer keys are included for both sets.
- 30 questions requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 multiple choice questions with 3 possible answers per question.
Students use the movie questions to guide sequencing.
- Students create a 9-scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the beginning, middle and ending of the movie, with a short sentence describing the action in each scene.
- Students choose one scene from each part of their storyboard (beginning, middle and end), write the box number, then write a short paragraph about what happens in that scene.
A creative task and a puzzle to finish the guide.
- Students design an imaginative monster guest coming to stay at the hotel, including a drawing and a completed profile with question prompts about the monster.
- A word search with 15 words or connected words. Students first unscramble 10 words, then answer 5 clues for the rest. Answers are included.
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🦇 Fear that comes from loss. Dracula builds the hotel after an angry human mob kills his wife, Martha, and that loss sits behind his hatred of humans and his need to protect Mavis. When Jonathan sees a painting of Martha, he understands why Dracula built the hotel and why he distrusts humans. The movie shows the reason behind his behavior rather than leaving it unexplained.
🤥 A lie that keeps growing. Dracula dresses Jonathan up as a monster named Johnnystein, claims he is Frankenstein's cousin, and later says he is a party planner. Each cover story solves one problem and creates another. The chain of events gives a clear cause and effect sequence to follow from the first lie to the confrontation at the party.
🙇 Admitting a mistake. After Mavis is heartbroken, Dracula apologizes to the guests and sets out into the human world to find Jonathan. He then apologizes to Jonathan over the PA system of a plane, saying Mavis has grown up and can make her own decisions. The apology comes with action, not just words.
🎂 Growing up and independence. Mavis turns 118 but looks 18, and she wants to see the world outside the hotel. Dracula's answer is to stage a scare to send her home, and the movie follows what happens after Jonathan arrives. Even when the guests learn the truth, Mavis stays set on being with Jonathan.
🧟 What Dracula assumes about humans. The monsters stay in the hotel to be safe from human persecution, and Dracula's hatred of humans shapes how he treats Jonathan. After Mavis is heartbroken, he realizes he no longer knows how tolerant humans really are of monsters. In a town celebrating a Monster Festival, a crowd of humans then responds to Frankenstein's roar with applause.
🎃 Classic monsters in one place. The hotel guests and staff include Frankenstein's monster and his wife Eunice, the werewolves Wayne and Wanda, Griffin the Invisible Man, Murray the Mummy, and Quasimodo as the chef. These characters come from classic horror and literature, so the movie works as an introduction to them. The animation also pushes expressions and poses to cartoon extremes, drawing on the physical comedy of classic 2D cartoons.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Mild cartoon scares, including a few jump scares.
- Mild cartoon violence.
- Mentions of a parent's death.
- Mild potty humor.
- Mild language only, with no strong profanity.
- Mild romance and innuendo, with no actual nudity.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
Note for educators: Movie details and age ratings in this post are sourced from IMDb, Common Sense Media, and Wikipedia to help ensure accuracy.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
Click your subject below to see how this guide supports it:
📚 English Language Arts Teachers
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
💙 SEL Teachers
🌟 Supporting All Learners A movie gives students a story to follow, and the guide gives them questions to work through as they watch. For students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities, that combination provides a clear focus for the lesson and a concrete way to show understanding. The format can be useful in special education and learning support classrooms, where teachers need activities that give students a defined task during viewing. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
Watching a movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work you can grade: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
