The 50 Scariest Family-Friendly Movies of All Time

Disney spent part of the early ’80s trying to scare children. The Watcher in the Woods is the Mouse House’s forgotten gem of the bunch. Yes, the pacing and effects feel dated now. But it’s chilling gateway movie for kids who want to test the waters of supernatural horror. It’s simultaneously cozy and scary with everything revolving around a powerful performance by Bette Davis.

Sketch starts with a grieving girl drawing monsters to deal with the death of her mother. Then her sketchbook falls into a strange pond (don’t think about it too much). Her drawings come to life and start terrorizing their town. Some are funny. Others have too many eyes, sharp limbs, and big muscles or teeth. Younger audiences will be genuinely scared. It’s more intense than you’re probably expecting. The scares come with a purpose, though, as the creatures force the family to become a cohesive unit for the first time since the mom passed.

Anjelica Huston peeling off her human disguise is the moment most kids remember, and for good reason. It’s terrifying. But it’s not the only thing unsettling about The Witches. The camera bobs and weaves unnaturally and shots hold a little too long like someone is watching.

The haunted house isn’t haunted. It’s the monster. It has teeth, a tongue, an appetite for kids who lose a ball in its yard. Monster House is a rare animated horror film with real horror elements. The scares are wrapped in a family-friendly package that’s hiding a deeper story the kids have to unravel to end their nightmare on their block.

Every kid has something they’re afraid of. The Hole kicks open the lid on those fears. Director Joe Dante tells this scary story from the kids’ perspective. You feel their vulnerability as their worst fears start pouring from a basement trapdoor. This one isn’t funny like Dante’s other suburban horror-lite films Gremlins or The ‘Burbs. It is scarier.

There’s a mystery in the small town at the center of Lady in White, a place that has seen more than its share of tragedy. A young boy gets pulled into its past, giving families a kid’s-eye view of an old-fashioned ghost story. This film hides away its dark themes inside its cozy fall vibes.

J.J. Abrams channels the spirit of the kids-on-bike adventure flicks he loved growing up in Super 8. The film follows a group of kids making their own horror film when a train derails turning their story into a creature feature. People start to disappear. The military rolls in. The kids work to discover the truth about where the creature came from and how it got there. Fun, but intense at times.

M. Night Shyamalan might twist a little too hard here. But before he does, he gives a frightful peek into an isolated community that seems pulled from another century. It’s a place where nobody goes past the village border because of what’s lurking in the woods. The setting and sharp rules give The Village a dark fairytale feeling.

One spider is unpleasant. Hundreds slipping into shoes, showers, and cereal boxes will make your skin crawl. Seriously — what’s that on your ankle!?! Oh, just an itch. Arachnophobia cracks jokes while tapping into a fear plenty of kids (and parents) bring to family movie night. This one is more tame than other films on this list. But — what about that itch!?! — this one will get underneath your skin.

M3GAN turns a robotic best friend into a smiling, dancing nightmare of a toy. But don’t call her that. There’s enough dark humor to make the killer-doll mayhem fun for families, but make no mistake, this is a full-on James Wan horror film. There will be scares. Also, it’s a good lesson for the years ahead. Remember, if you give your kid an A.I. doll, read the terms of service first.

A made-for-TV movie shouldn’t be this creepy. Dark Night of the Scarecrow begins with a young girl losing a beloved friend to a horrible injustice, then asks whether somebody in a nearby field has returned to make things right.

A father brings his 12-year-old son along to renovate an old Vermont farmhouse and discovers the previous owner may still be hanging around. The Witch in the Window is a smaller ghost story with modest scares, though its father-son relationship makes it a natural fit for families easing into more mature horror.

Ray Bradbury’s novel is one of the great autumn reads, and the Disney adaptation does it justice. Two boys sneak into a traveling carnival and discover every attraction seems capable of granting a wish. The wishes come with a price. And two boys who question the intentions of the dark carnival are suddenly in danger. A children’s horror classic in the ’80s that stands up today.

It’s like Field of Dreams. But with aliens. And they want to kill you. A family marked by tragedy tries to move forward when crop circles begin appearing on their farm. They have to decide whether it’s time to leave before whoever made them arrives. The family chooses to stay and fight. Signs delivers a great message about family pulling together when things get strange. M. Night Shyamalan skips the major twist in favor of a few jump-worthy scares.

Santa Carla looks like a great place to spend the summer until you find out the local cool kids are vampires. The Lost Boys is full of ’80s vibes, which is half the fun. There’s also solid family chemistry that makes the bloodsucking stick. Once the sun goes down, the film takes a darker tone with some violence and vampire gore. It’s an exciting romp for older kids who want to know what it was like growing up, with vampires, four decades ago.

A mother and daughter move into a worn-down apartment building hoping for a fresh start. Then a water stain appears on the ceiling and keeps growing. They can’t clean it. You can’t escape the horrors that pour forth. Hideo Nakata, who directed the Japanese original of The Ring, is a master at making something small, like a leak, feel ominous.

The old fairy tale was already pretty creepy. It’s about a witch trying to eat children. Director Oz Perkins , who made the stylish and creepy Longlegs, brings his patient, artful horror style to the woods. Gretel & Hansel is Hansel & Gretel like you’ve never seen it. So visually delectable, it’ll lure you into the home where the horror truly begins.

Whenever parents start talking about kids’ movies that scared their children, Coraline usually enters the conversation fast. There’s a reason. Like the otherworld Coraline discovers, the film eases you in, then grabs hold of you in a discomfiting manner.

Never spin a record backwards while reading heavy metal album liner notes. In The Gate, two kids make that mistake, accidentally opening a portal to Hell. And, of course it happens when the parents head out of town. The stop-motion demons the kids summon are of the kill-before-asking-questions variety. The Gate is a forgotten ’80s classic that doesn’t have the pedigree of Amblin behind it, but it’s heavy metal through and through.

Mike Flanagan is a modern horror master because he takes ordinary vulnerabilities and latches something monstrous to them. In Before I Wake, sleep becomes the problem. A family who adopts a young boy finds his dreams come to life, including a horrific creature called the Canker Man. It’s fantastical but familiar. We’re all vulnerable when we close our eyes at night, especially when something invades that peaceful time.

Before Parasite made Bong Joon Ho an Oscar winner, he made one of the greatest creature features of all time. The Host is about a dysfunctional family trying to save a young girl who’s snatched from a river in Korea. The film oozes heart, but also blood. There’s a lot of blood. And dismemberment. This one earns its R rating. Horror that’s not for all families, but a fantastic horror movie about families.

Guillermo del Toro has spent his career finding humanity inside monsters and monstrosity inside humans. Pan’s Labyrinth is his finest example. It follows a young Spanish girl as she traverses from the harsh reality of fascist Spain into a fantasy world filled with monsters, including the unforgettable Pale Man. Warning: There’s a brutal attack in the human world that’s harsher than anything in the fantasy world. If you want to cover eyes, it’s around the 16:00 mark.

Do you like jumpscares? There’s one coming here. It will get you. You will be shocked. Z is about an eight-year-old boy with a new imaginary friend. The friend does bad things. Or is it the boy? The film unnerves you because you’re not sure who or what the monster is. But you see what happens when it’s not happy. And you will jump. Scared.

The Sixth Sense moves at the pace of a funeral procession, which makes its frightening moments hit you harder. And there are scares here as we follow a deeply frightened boy who’s trying to navigate a truly terrible gift. You know where I’m going. He sees dead people. The film guides you to one of cinema’s classic twists. Knowing the twist doesn’t make the journey there less scary. You will enjoy watching your kids when they realize they’ve been misled the whole time.

Two little girls disappear into the woods and are found years later living alone in an abandoned cabin. Well, almost alone. The presence they call Mama follows them home. There’s an emotional tug at your heartstrings before you realize the intentions of this creature that sure as Hell is no mama.

Staying at the grandparents is always fun. Late night on the couch. Sugary cereal in the morning. The violent outbursts while you try to sleep. The…wait, what? M. Night goes found-footage in The Visit to bring some fantastic scares to what’s normally a safe space. These siblings are no pushovers, either. They’re older and tech savvy. They start to record the bizarre behavior of their grandparents. Then things escalate out of their control. Don’t worry, there are a few genuine laughs to temper the scares.

Fixer uppers are a sonofabitch. This one is worse than most. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is about a family who moves into an old mansion to find something dark hiding inside. Of course, the child becomes well aware of the terror long before the adults. Don’t worry. They’ll get caught up in horrific and violent ways. Warning: The opening sequence has an especially violent moment.

Dinosaurs become considerably less fun once they learn how to open doors. Steven Spielberg begins Jurassic Park with pure wonder, then lets the T. rex and raptors terrorize you. The kitchen sequence is first-rate horror. Younger kids should be ready for several deaths and a severed arm but this is a fantastic first step into horror. Or a fantastic 1,001st step into horror.

Stephen King has a knack for finding monsters in places children already fear. The Boogeyman takes aim at your child’s dark bedroom. It’s about two sisters grieving the loss of their mother. They begin to suspect something darker than grief has entered their lives. And their house. It’s hiding exactly where you think it would. That’s what makes this film so scary.

Ed and Lorraine Warren have an entire room of objects nobody in their right mind would touch. Annabelle Comes Home finally lets us spend a terrifying night locked inside. Once Annabelle starts waking the collection, the film becomes a haunted-house ride through the deeper corners of Conjuring lore.

If you’re like me, you couldn’t imagine lasting long in the world of A Quiet Place because your kids are incapable of being quiet. The Abbott family is luckier. They rebuilt their lives around staying quiet, using sign language and careful routines to stay safe. Somehow most of their kids fall in line. The film does a great job giving simple parenting mistakes terrifying consequences.

Lights Out began as a three-minute YouTube horror short from David F. Sandberg. The film expands on the scary premise that something appears when the lights go out. With a brother and sister trying to protect their mother, darkness becomes something the whole family has reason to fear.

Paranormal Activity 3 is the best of the found-footage horror franchise. This prequel finds brilliant new ways to make an ordinary camera frightening. Its R rating comes primarily from language and intense supernatural material rather than gore. The other Paranormal Activity films are also solid choices, though this one tweaks you better than the others and gives us a little more backstory to the hauntings.

Fright Night is an ’80s classic about teenagers trying to prove the charming new neighbor is a vampire. The premise has the spirit of a teen adventure even when the fangs come out. It’s a lot of fun. The film earns its R rating thanks to bloody vampire effects, brief nudity, and general teenage horniness.

Daniel Radcliffe leaves Hogwarts behind for a much scarier ghost story. The Woman in Black sends him to an isolated English village where children keep dying. It may be the terrifying woman in black who always appears when you least expect it. The movie takes its time, not rushing the story, which gives you plenty of time to search every dark corner of the frame. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t.

It’s never wise to invite spirits into your home as part of the family business. A widowed mother and her two daughters find that out the hard way. Their séance scam becomes frighteningly legit. You know what’s coming but it still gets you. Director Mike Flanagan somehow gives Ouija: Origin of Evil far more depth than you’d expect from a movie based on a board game.

Missiles are falling on Tehran. Yet the scariest thing facing one mother and daughter may already be inside their apartment. A djinn begins tormenting the family, and escaping it could mean walking straight into a war zone. There’s nowhere to hide in Under the Shadow.

Fact: Abandoned orphanages make for scary settings. In The Orphanage, a woman returns to the place where she grew up. She hopes to reopen it while raising her own young son there. When he starts talking to children who aren’t there, the orphanage’s dark history begins to emerge. The mood gets heavy, scares get intense, and one sudden and disturbing death gives the film its deserved R rating.

Annabelle steals the show in The Conjuring, which led to a mediocre Annabelle film. This prequel, however, will frighten you as you learn the doll’s backstory. It involves a dollmaker and his wife opening their home to a group of orphaned girls. The demon who possesses Annabelle stalks them like prey. The attacks get violent, which is why this one is rated R.

Footsteps upstairs. A door opening on its own. A voice coming from an empty room. The Others will scare you before you ever see a ghost. Nicole Kidman plays a mother raising two photosensitive children in a huge country manor. She keeps every curtain closed and every door locked for their safety. But they may not be alone. Classic ghost story premise that still works because it’s done so well.

Stephen King’s It taps into the fears we carry around as kids, then gives them a face in Pennywise. A terrifying clown face that will haunt them like Tim Curry haunted me in the ’90s. This is a classic kids-on-bikes movie, though each kid in this town gets singled out as Pennywise knows their worst fears. Those individual set pieces are creative and unsettling. Bill Skarsgård is disturbingly good at playing the evil clown. The film starts with a gory death. It’s for big kids only. The 1990 miniseries is a somewhat gentler alternative, with Tim Curry as Pennywise. As I said, Curry will still haunt their dreams.

Guillermo del Toro. Orphanage. Spanish Civil War. It sounds like we’ve seen this story before, but we haven’t. Not like this. A boy begins seeing the ghost of a child who died at the orphanage. Yet the dead aren’t necessarily the ones these kids should fear most. The Devil’s Backbone mixes its ghost story with brutal wartime violence. Like in Pan’s Labyrinth, adults in this film show they’re the true monsters.

Go to the bathroom. Fill your water bottle. Take a breath. Once this film gets going, it doesn’t stop. It’s about a woman who lives alone in her childhood home because she’s shunned by most of her small town. Then the aliens arrive. They do not ignore her. They come to get her. They do not give up. No One Will Save You barely lets you catch your breath. The young woman faces one frightening encounter after another. There’s almost no dialogue and surprisingly little gore.

Joko Anwar was already a horror star in Indonesia before audiences around the world started catching up. His film Satan’s Slaves is about a family whose dead mother may not be finished with them. It plays a lot like an Indonesian The Conjuring. Anwar sets up scares brilliantly, often letting you notice something in the frame a second before it jumps out. Even with subtitles, the scares will get to you.

This movie may be hard to watch with your child, but there’s no denying you’ll both be terrified. It’s about a grieving mother and her young son struggling with behavioral issues. Let’s just say he’s not popular at parties. A strange storybook arrives, introducing them to a top-hatted creature called Mister Babadook. The monster is frightening. The mother, when grief and exhaustion kick in, begins to change as well, trapping the child in a house with the person who’s supposed to protect him.

Verónica is a teenager trying to raise her younger siblings with no parental supervision. After a séance during a solar eclipse, she begins seeing something else around their Madrid apartment. There are no parents in sight, and what is in sight will terrify you long before Verónica figures out how to keep it away from the kids. When your hand shoots out to grab your kid during Verónica, they’ll think it’s for their sake. But you’ll know it’s really for yourself.

Insidious keeps adding layers to the terror. A family first wonders whether its house is haunted, then realizes their comatose son may be haunted by a ghost. To protect him, the dad opens a door into the Further, where a powerful demon is waiting. The family-haunting story becomes much darker and harder to escape. The jump scares, plot twists, and demonic reveals are relentless — and all paired with nerve-rattling sound elements, from music to effects.

Road trip! Ed and Lorraine Warren travel to England to help a single mother whose daughters are being targeted by something evil. But this story doesn’t stop there. Director James Wan builds several of the series’ best set pieces around Valak — the demonic nun. The scares are legit. There is no gore. Watch the end credits to see the real photos and recordings of real Enfield case.

Poltergeist is a classic for a reason. The bustling suburb has the warm Amblin feeling of E.T. or The Goonies. Kids race through the neighborhood on bikes. Kitchens are bustling with activity in the morning. Once the familiarity is set, the terrors begin. That’s how Spielberg gets you. The family, the home, and the neighborhood built on an ancient burial ground could be yours. The effects are ancient but still effective. Most of the scariest family-friendly movies list pays tribute to this movie.

The Conjuring is a disciple of Poltergeist. James Wan surrounds the Perron family with something evil that seems capable of appearing anywhere in their farmhouse. A dark doorway becomes scary. A sheet hanging on a clothesline becomes scary. Even two hands clapping can scare the hell out of you. What sets it apart is the world beyond the farmhouse. The mythology doesn’t stop with Annabelle, which would be enough for this to be a classic. But your imagination wanders as you see the collection of haunted objects in the Warrens’ home. There’s a built-in backstory that gives this film higher stakes. James Wan gives you a taste of sweet, almost corny, family living then batters you with brilliant, terrifying scares. Like your favorite haunted house at Halloween, you’ll revisit this one again and again.

These movies just didn’t make the cut for the scariest family-friendly movies of all time because they take things a little too far. That said, your family may want to go there. No judgment! Here are some more extreme picks:

• The Exorcist (1973): Self-mutilation, extreme sexual behavior, strong language
• Hereditary (2018): Self-mutilation, nudity, extreme child death
• The Omen (1976): Graphic deaths
• The Shining (1980): Extreme violence, full-frontal nudity
• Sinister (2012): Disturbing family murders
• Train to Busan (2016): Extreme violence, gore