Family Horror Films Too Scary For Kids
A little boy is tormented in a room of laughing people, being forcibly transformed by a witch into a mouse. It's pure nightmare fuel -- parental guidance suggested.
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00:00 A little boy is tormented in a room of laughing people, being forcibly transformed by a witch
00:06 into a mouse.
00:07 It's pure nightmare fuel, parental guidance suggested.
00:11 The 1980s were a memorable time for dark fantasy films, due in no small part to the work of
00:16 Jim Henson.
00:18 While he's more known for the colorful and friendly Sesame Street and The Muppets, we
00:22 can't forget the disturbing scenes he brought to life in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
00:27 "I think I'm getting smarter.
00:30 It's a piece of cake!"
00:32 "Ahh!
00:33 Ahh!
00:34 Help!
00:35 Help!"
00:36 The villains of The Dark Crystal, the vulture-like Skeksis, are burned into the minds of many
00:41 '80s kids, and in 2019, Netflix brought them back to traumatize a new generation with the
00:47 prequel series Dark Crystal Age of Resistance.
00:50 As far as the original film goes, the Skeksis emperor's death scene is a particularly disturbing
00:55 way to show the end of life.
01:06 But the Skeksis aren't the only creepy creatures in this dark fantasy universe.
01:11 Other weird monsters like Landstriders and Garthim also provided shivers up the spine.
01:17 Henson believed that a good dose of fear was an important part of children's diets, and
01:21 he certainly provided a large portion of that in The Dark Crystal.
01:25 If you asked older millennials or Gen Xers to name the scariest movie of their childhoods,
01:30 many would answer Return to Oz.
01:33 Return to Oz sets a dark tone right off the bat, with a child being strapped down for
01:37 electroshock treatment.
01:39 "Ready?"
01:40 "Yes, Doctor."
01:41 It only gets scarier from there.
01:50 While the wheelers are the most obvious nightmare fuel, with their thick smile mass and horrible
01:55 laughs, nothing's scarier than the Hall of Heads sequence.
01:59 In that scene, Dorothy has been taken captive by Princess Mambi, a headless woman who keeps
02:04 cabinets full of beautiful heads, which she uses interchangeably when she gets bored.
02:09 "What do you think?"
02:12 "I think you're very beautiful."
02:16 At night, Dorothy sneaks into a cabinet to get the magic powder she needs to escape,
02:21 only to find a stray head that starts screaming.
02:24 It wakes the rest of the disembodied heads, which also start screaming.
02:29 Then the headless body of the princess starts towards Dorothy, its arms outstretched like
02:33 a zombie.
02:34 "No, I know we're not in Kansas."
02:39 Roald Dahl is one of the all-time greatest children's authors, who laced his books with
02:43 scary scenes and dark humor.
02:46 Dahl's most frightening book has to be The Witches, and when Nicolas Roeg adapted it
02:51 into a film in 1990, he somehow managed to make it even worse.
02:55 The scariest things in the movie are the witches themselves.
02:58 They look normal on the outside, but when they reveal their true natures, they become
03:02 memorably monstrous.
03:04 One horrific scene involves the transformation of the boy hero and his friend into mice.
03:09 It sounds like it could be cute, but it comes off like the transformation in An American
03:14 Werewolf in London.
03:16 "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
03:21 If creeping dread is scarier to you than gruesome practical makeup, then look no further
03:26 than a scene near the beginning of the movie in which a young girl gets trapped in a painting
03:30 for the rest of her life.
03:32 It's mind-boggling that this movie was made for children.
03:35 And if The Witches isn't enough for you, the film adaptations of Dahl's James and the Giant
03:39 Peach and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory also manage to be pretty sinister in their
03:44 own ways.
03:46 Ghostbusters is a perfectly fun introduction to the world of ghosts for kids, but there
03:51 are a few moments in this comedy that are genuinely memorable scares.
03:55 "Hey, he pulls the wagon, I make the deals.
03:58 You wanna ride?"
04:02 The opening scene in the basement of the New York Public Library will intrude on your thoughts
04:07 every time you find yourself alone in the stacks.
04:09 Ectoplasm drips from record card drawers, bookshelves fall over on their own, and an
04:14 apparition transforms from a benign elderly librarian into a shrieking skeletal monster
04:19 when provoked by stance.
04:21 Another terrifying moment is undoubtedly the scene where arms suddenly protrude from Dana's
04:26 chair and she's pulled into the other room.
04:28 The sequel is arguably even scarier, with the painting of Vigo the Carpathian being
04:33 genuinely creepy.
04:34 "On a mountain of skulls in the castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood."
04:43 The Black Cauldron is a lesser-known Disney movie from the pre-Little Mermaid slump.
04:47 It starts off similarly to The Sword in the Stone with a wart-like character, Taron, and
04:52 his pig companion, Hen.
04:54 The first traumatic moment comes when Hen is pig-napped by the Gwythaints, the hence
04:59 dragons of the evil villain The Horned King.
05:02 Then the king uses the Black Cauldron to raise the dead and create an army of zombie skeletons
05:07 known as the Cauldronborn.
05:08 "Soon the Black Cauldron will be mine."
05:12 The original climax of The Black Cauldron was considered too disturbing for children,
05:17 and was re-edited.
05:18 Despite this, the movie was Disney's first animated feature to be given a PG rating instead
05:23 of the usual G. Compared to other Disney cartoons, the imagery is dark and creepy.
05:29 It's easy to see why this movie wasn't a hit.
05:32 "You evil, nasty people.
05:35 You shall all be turned into frogs and eaten."
05:39 Tim Burton has made a career out of weirdly creepy family films.
05:44 Only two of his movies, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd, are R-rated.
05:48 All of the rest are PG or PG-13, lulling unwitting parents into a false sense of security.
05:54 The first and arguably best of Burton's feature-length spook-fests is Beetlejuice, starring Geena
05:59 Davis and Alec Baldwin as ghosts who haunt a family with the help of a mischievous spirit
06:05 called Beetlejuice.
06:06 "You know what's really beautiful about this?
06:08 You two kids picked me.
06:09 You didn't have to, but you picked me.
06:10 It makes me want to kiss you guys.
06:12 Come on, come on, kiss me, come on."
06:14 While most of Beetlejuice is mild horror comedy, there are a few real shocking moments.
06:19 One of these is when the mild-mannered Adam and Barbara change their appearance in an
06:23 effort to scare the obnoxious family living in their home.
06:26 The practical makeup effects of the inhabitants of Death's Waiting Room and the puppetry when
06:30 Beetlejuice is transformed into a snake are also fairly creepy.
06:34 "Oh, no!"
06:37 "Oh!"
06:39 "Oh!"
06:41 Henry Selleck's The Nightmare Before Christmas has become a cult classic, with the tie-in
06:45 merchandise still selling well to this day.
06:48 Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, and Sally, a mannequin brought to life by a Dr. Frankenstein-like
06:53 evil scientist, may be friendly, but there are plenty of background creatures that make
06:58 the film scary, especially for younger children.
07:01 The most frightening character in the film is Oogie Boogie.
07:05 The scene in which he straps down and tortures Santa Claus before revealing that he's made
07:09 entirely of bugs is a lot to swallow.
07:12 "Now look what you've done!"
07:16 The two-faced mayor of Halloween Town isn't easy to look at, either.
07:20 The concept of Christmas gifts coming alive and attacking children is also pretty frightening.
07:24 So while The Nightmare Before Christmas may be safe for small children, it's still surprisingly
07:29 creepy.
07:30 Laika is an animation studio that thrives on making creepy stop-motion movies, including
07:36 Paranorman, The Box Trolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
07:40 It all began, however, with perhaps the darkest Laika film of all, Henry Selleck's Coraline.
07:45 Coraline finds a secret door in her new house that leads to an alternate version of her
07:49 own world.
07:50 There, she finds monstrous versions of her parents, an Other Mother, and Other Father.
07:56 "We aren't worried at all, darling.
07:59 Soon you'll see things our way."
08:02 The Other Mother is particularly sinister, with her thick smile and blank button eyes.
08:08 The Other Mother charms Coraline with delicious feasts, but soon traps her, with a plan to
08:13 sew buttons onto Coraline's eyes, too.
08:15 As the film progresses, Other Mother becomes more skeletal and spider-like, with claw-like
08:20 hands that terrorize Coraline and the audience.
08:24 Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is a book series about the poor Baudelaire
08:29 orphans — three children at the mercy of their uncle, Count Olaf.
08:33 Olaf is an actor who frequently disguises himself in an attempt to steal their inheritance.
08:38 It was recently made into a Netflix television show, but before that, it was a standalone
08:43 film starring Jim Carrey as Olaf.
08:45 "Well, hello, hello, hello.
08:51 I am your beloved Count Olaf."
08:55 The books and the film are both very bleak for children's stories.
08:59 The gothic stylings have a lot to do with that, but what really makes the movie dark
09:03 is its underlying theme that adults will always let children down and are not to be trusted.
09:07 "He tried to kill us with a train."
09:09 "Then where would this man get a train?"
09:11 "Where am I gonna get a train?"
09:13 "Now, children, that's enough of this foolishness."
09:14 While the hurricane scene at the end of the film is full of peril, it's probably the scenes
09:19 in which Olaf outright abuses the children that carry the most scares.
09:23 Even though the Baudelaires are exceptional children, they feel powerless when mistreated
09:27 by an adult with lots of influence.
09:29 They've already lost their parents.
09:31 How much worse can things get?
09:32 In the end, you can think of the film as a reminder for kids growing up in normal, loving
09:36 households to appreciate what they have.
09:40 Studio Ghibli broke out into international success in 2001 with Spirited Away.
09:45 It's surprising that this was the movie that became so big, given that it's perhaps Ghibli's
09:49 strangest film.
09:51 And that's saying something.
09:52 Spirited Away starts with 10-year-old Chihiro's parents being turned into pigs in a mysterious
09:57 abandoned theme park.
09:59 Afterwards, the huge-headed bathhouse matriarch, Yubaba, magically sews Chihiro's mouth shut
10:05 when she tries to ask for a job.
10:06 "I was wondering if you could give me a job."
10:15 Chihiro lets a spirit called No-Face into the bathhouse, where he proceeds to start
10:20 eating the workers.
10:21 No-Face is black and shapeless, but has a cavernous mouth that opens up in its chest.
10:27 Chihiro's friend, Haku, can assume both human and dragon forms.
10:31 In one scene, he's injured as a dragon, and left covered in bloody scratches while spewing
10:36 blood from his mouth.
10:37 There are surface-level scares in Spirited Away, but it's also frightening on a deeper
10:42 level.
10:43 Like the Baudelaire orphans, Chihiro is separated from her parents and enslaved by a tyrannical
10:48 figure, an unsettling scenario that most kids can relate to.
10:52 Monster House is the first Sony Pictures Imageworks film, with an eerie animation style that's
10:57 almost real, but not quite.
10:59 The result is an uncanny valley vibe similar to the unintentionally creepy look of the
11:04 Polar Express.
11:05 That's not the only reason it's scary, though.
11:08 As the Nebuchadnezzar, the cranky custodian of a possessed house that sometimes comes
11:12 alive and tries to eat children, Steve Buscemi delivers one of the all-time great voiceover
11:17 performances.
11:18 "You think you can just terrorize my lawn?"
11:19 "No, I'm sorry!"
11:20 "You wanna be a dead person?"
11:23 Elderly neighbor Nebuchadnezzar is initially a scary character himself, threatening children
11:28 who come near his lawn, but he eventually joins forces with the kids to try to defeat
11:32 the evil abode.
11:34 "Oh, my sweet.
11:38 You've been a bad girl, haven't you?"
11:42 The inventive ways that the Monster House is personified are ingenious.
11:46 It has a tongue, a uvula, and various other body parts that the kids have to contend with.
11:51 It makes for an inventive, scary family film and a perfect Halloween watch.
11:56 The Spiderwick Chronicles is based on a book series and features a slew of fantastical
12:01 creatures.
12:02 Freddie Highmore plays twins Jared and Simon, who move into a new house, discover a magical
12:07 book, and realize that the house is surrounded by magical creatures, most of them hostile.
12:12 The main villain is Mulgirath, the shapeshifting ogre.
12:15 There's also an army of child-snatching goblins, led by a creature called Redcap.
12:20 "You win.
12:21 You are strong, smart human boy.
12:24 So don't be foolish.
12:25 Give us the book.
12:26 We leave you alone."
12:27 One of the scarier scenes in the movie involves the children being chased through an underground
12:31 tunnel by a beast-like troll with a forked tongue and yellow eyes.
12:35 Towards the end, the house comes under attack by the goblins, who reach up from under the
12:39 floorboards and grab people's ankles.
12:42 Eventually, Mulgirath himself gets into the house and onto the roof.
12:46 On top of all that, this is a divorce drama, and Jared is a dark, angry character who resents
12:52 his mother.
12:53 It's frightening, but the tumultuous time following a divorce is something that many
12:57 kids will be able to relate to.
12:58 "
12:59 (upbeat music)
13:02 (upbeat music)