The best horror movies about evil children are easily the easiest way to make anyone think twice before having kids. Throughout the history of horror cinema, there have been movies with creepy kids. Sometimes, these children are just scary enough to make everyone around them want to get away. However, in the more extreme cases, these little kids can be as ᴅᴇᴀᴅly as any serial killer in a hockey mask and can slaughter an entire town of adults without missing a beat.
The thought of terrifying children turning into mᴀss killers has been around for decades, and there are movies in just about every country that tackle this particular idea. These movies have large groups of children killing every adult they find on islands or in small country towns. However, even more terrifying than that are the films where a parent realizes their own child might be a killer. Seeing their own flesh and blood child become a terrifying killer is a premise that some horror movies have handled so effectively that it may make someone think twice about having a baby of their own.
10
Goodnight, Mommy (2022)
Two Children Torture Their Mother For The Truth
Released in 2022, Goodnight, Mommy is a psychological horror movie about a woman whose sons don’t believe she is their real mother. Naomi Watts stars as the unnamed mother, an actress who had cosmetic surgery done and returns home with bandages covering her face. Her twin sons, Elias and Lukas, have been living with their father since the divorce, and they show up to stay with her and have an adverse reaction to her bandaged face. The two suddenly believe she isn’t their real mother, and then they try to prove it.
Most of the film is from the boys’ point of view, which makes things hard to watch since they believe their mother is lying, and they do terrible things to her to prove it. The twist ending paints the entire story in a more tragic slant, making this small family unit even more devastatingly horrific. Released as an Amazon Prime Video exclusive, critics mostly dismissed the film. Still, it tells a terrible story about a family destroyed by a child with unattended mental health issues.
9
Who Can Kill A Child (1976)
An Island Full Of Killer Children
The 1976 Spanish horror film Who Can Kill a Child? has a triggering тιтle, but it is a question that needs to be asked when it concerns the film’s plot. An English couple named Tom and Evelyn head to an island for a short vacation before she has their baby. However, when the couple arrives there, they realize that the island is full of children, all with blank expressions on their faces, and none of them are talking or communicating. To make it worse, there are no adults in sight, and soon the killing starts.
Something has changed the children into emotionless monsters.
The most horrific moment is when Tom and Evelyn realize something has changed the children into emotionless monsters, changed by them living through wars and seeing how adults always seem to kill each other for ridiculous reasons. What is more terrifying is that all children are affected – even Evelyn’s unborn child. The movie has become a cult classic since its release. It is considered one of the best international horror movies ever made, showing how excessive violence can change children for the worse.
8
The Children (2008)
A Couple’s Children Become Murderous
The Children is a 2008 British horror movie that takes the idea of violent children and explains it by introducing a spreading virus. A couple, Elaine and Jonah, are on vacation with their three kids, Miranda, Paulie, and teenage Casey. They are spending Christmas with Elaine’s sister’s family and her two kids, but bad things start happening when they arrive. Paulie begins to get sick, and no one knows why until the next day, when all four young kids are sick. Very quickly, the kids start attacking the adults and trying to kill them.
The entire movie then falls into the survival horror genre, as the four kids start to kill each of the adults one at a time, while none of the grown-ups believe what is happening until it is too late. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics and is a disturbing tale of parents who realize their kids are trying to kill them and then have to decide if they can fight back against their flesh and blood. The film has plenty of scares and works perfectly as a twisted fairy tale with a downer of an ending.
7
Children Of The Corn (1984)
Children In Nebraska Kill Their Parents & Any Outsiders
Based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, Children of the Corn tells the story of a young couple who stop in a small Nebraska town when their car breaks down. They find no adults anywhere but children all over the town, menacingly stalking them. The couple (Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton) learn quickly that the kids in town have killed all the adults (and their parents) and have joined a cult under the young Isaac (John Franklin), serving He Who Walks Behind The Rows.
While a product of its time, Children of the Corn still works as a cult horror movie, with Courtney Gains, who stars as Malachai, and Franklin as extremely creepy kids. The film also spawned multiple Children of the Corn movies, although none of the sequels or remakes matched up to the original, which itself only received average reviews until it achieved cult film status over the years.
6
Mama (2013)
Two Children Raised In The Woods Are Integrated Into Society
Directed by Andy Muschietti and executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, Mama is a 2013 supernatural horror movie about two children found alone in the woods five years after they went missing when their parents died. They are taken in by their father’s twin brother, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). While the older Victoria acclimates well, the younger Lily remains feral and lashes out violently at others. They also talk about a mysterious “Mama” who cared for them in the woods.
When Victoria grows close to Lucas’s girlfriend Annie (Jessica Chastain), a malevolent spirit known as Mama tries to reclaim the girls at any cost. While Mama is the villain here, she is also very protective (and possessive) of the two girls. At the same time, young Lily is the most frightening – a child raised in the woods since she was one with no memory of civilization. She violently lashes out at anyone trying to keep her away from the being who always protected her.
5
The Omen (1976)
The Antichrist Raised By A U.S. Diplomat
The 1970s had its fair share of movies about demonic children, with Rosemary’s Baby as an influence on them all. If anyone wondered what would happen when Rosemary’s child began to grow up as the son of the devil, The Omen answers that question. In this movie, the Antichrist is born, and a cult switches the baby at birth and gives him to an American diplomat who is living in Rome while killing the other baby. Soon, the child, Damien, grows up and slowly exhibits his evil ways.
It helps that Gregory Peck is in the lead role, giving a sense of gravitas to the story as the father and diplomat who realizes too late that his son is pure evil and is the cause of the deaths happening around him. A religious thriller directed by Richard Donner (Superman), The Omen was followed by three sequels that showed Damien growing up and becoming the Antichrist world leader who seeks to bring Armageddon. However, the first movie, with Damien as a child, remains the most terrifying.
4
The Good Son (1993)
A Child Exhibits ᴅᴇᴀᴅly Behavior
Arguably, what is most frightening about The Good Son is that it takes Macaulay Culkin after his breakout in Home Alone and shows what he would look like if he began to target and kill his own family instead of burglars. The movie stars 12-year-old Elijah Wood as a boy named Mark whose mother dies, and he ends up living with his aunt and uncle. However, when he meets his cousin, Henry (Culkin), the two become friends before Henry reveals his fascination with death and begins to exhibit violent tendencies.
The movie received poor reviews, primarily due to casting Culkin as the killer.
The film is a scary look at a child who exhibits the tendencies of a sociopath. He has killed someone before Mark ever shows up at his house, and he will kill again if Mark doesn’t stop him, making him a very frightening child – especially for his parents, who struggle to believe he could ever commit these atrocities. The movie received poor reviews, primarily due to casting Culkin as the killer. However, that is what makes it so terrifying. Elijah Wood won a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.
3
Brightburn (2019)
A Pre-Teen With Superpowers Becomes A Serial Killer
While James Gunn was working in the MCU on Guardians of the Galaxy, and before he moved to the DCU, he wrote an original superhero horror movie for David Yarovesky to direct. This movie asked a simple question: what if an alien baby crashed on Earth, and a Kansas family took him in to raise him? Of course, the answer usually leads to Superman. In this case, it leads to Brandon – a child with the powers of Superman, but one who chooses evil instead of good.
This is an atypical superhero movie as it shows what happens if a young person gains superpowers and has no role models to help during adolescence, which leads to countless deaths and more when the film ends.
In Brightburn, when Brandon turns 12, he learns he has superpowers. Instead of having Jonathan Kent teach him how to be a hero, he has no one teaching him and lashes out at everyone who hurt him – including his mother, for hiding his alien origin from him for his entire life. This is an atypical superhero movie as it shows what happens if a young person gains superpowers and has no role models to help during adolescence, which leads to countless deaths and more when the film ends.
2
Village Of The Damned (1960)
Mysteriously Born Children Develop Telepathic Powers
There are several movies about a town or island where children have taken over and killed all the adults for one reason or another. Most of these movies owe their existence to Village of the Damned, which came out in 1960. One of the best black-and-white horror movies, Village of the Damned is based on the novel by John Wyndham called The Midwich Cuckoos, and it stars George Sanders as Professor Gordon Zellaby, a man who lives in a town where everyone falls unconscious for four hours. When they wake up, all the women are pregnant.
Every child is born on the same day and has telepathic powers; this wasn’t the only town where this happened. When the children start to kill anyone that angers them, the people in the town have to find out how to stop them before it is too late. The movie was a small box office success, and it mainly received glowing reviews, with critics calling it scary, ingenious, and chilling. The film received a sequel in 1964 with a smaller group of kids, and a U.S. remake by John Carpenter arrived in 1995.
1
The Brood (1979)
A Mother Releases Her Trauma In ᴅᴇᴀᴅly Creatures
David Cronenberg wrote the script for The Brood after a bitter divorce and custody battle over his daughter (via BFI). The film approached some psychological themes, including parenthood and mental health. A psycH๏τherapist named Dr. Hal Raglan developed a technique for people to let go of suppressed emotions through “psychoplasmics.” However, when he tries this with a mentally unstable woman named Nola, who is going through a divorce, her “psychoplasmics” come to life.
These take the form of dwarf brood creatures resembling children. They are born out of Nola’s intense lifelong trauma. The brood is ᴅᴇᴀᴅly and sets out to kill anyone they feel is a threat to Nola, including her daughter, Candice. When released, critics blasted The Brood with negative reviews for its shock factor and body horror. However, it has since become a renowned masterpiece, with an 81% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score and critics praising its themes of trauma and motherhood.
Source: BFI
