We’re thinking of introducing our 10 year-old to the joys of horror films. We’re considering the best titles to start with and found a list by recommended age. However, I wonder if any of the happy mutants here might have some good suggestions as well.
Over the years she’s already seen Monster House, The Goonies, Monster Squad, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ghostbusters, and a few titles on the list that I don’t really consider horror films. We think we might start with both versions of Little Shop of Horrors. After that we disagree on the direction to go in. Pan’s Labyrinth is my pick.
i promoted this one in season 1.
i am here for season 2.
Zahn Maclaren is frikkin’ fantastico as Joe Leaphorn in this absolutely spot on adaptation of Hillerman’s novels.
he is stunning in his resolve to get the super bad guy in this season…
for reasons!
Coraline is a good one! @GospelXPan’s Labyrinth scared me as an adult!
but could be carefully introduced, IMHO, to a 10yr old, with commentary.
again YMMV
Yeah, agreed about pan’s labyrinth, @gospelX… it’s really not a children’s film, despite being a fairytale. It is a rated R film and very much shows a lot of brutal violence, as it’s set during the Spanish Civil War. Like there is a scene where a guy gets his face beaten in by a bottle and it does not hold back.
But you know your kid, so they might be able to handle it.
Also, I really love the idea of introducing kids to class films like Dracula, the Mummy, or the Bride of Frankenstein - though depending on the film, you might have to explain about differences on issues like race and gender compared to modern films, so be prepared to contextualize things like racial stereotyping.
Oh geez, I completely forgot about that! Honestly, I remember seeing it back when it was in the theater, and time does things. Like forgetting about the ghost BJ scene in Ghostbusters… At least that’s not as explicit. My wife had hesitations about Pan’s but couldn’t put words to it. Looks like I found words.
On the other hand, she hates Coraline. Not because it’s scary but because it’s emotional. I literally just learned that she’s peeked at me watching scary movies before (she knows about Ghostface and described a scene from the latest Scream to me), but she can’t sit through the dinner table scene of Encanto because she feels bad for Mirabel.
I think we’ll go through classics, maybe pairing them up with things slightly more contemporary if we feel like it. Even though it’s not technically horror, my wife wants to show her the Brendan Frasier The Mummy. I think it might be cool to watch the original as well (which we have never seen).
Pretty sure they’re recommending Labyrinth with Bowie and Connelly, not Pan’s lol
I thought “what horror movies had I seen at 10 years old?” and realized I was already well on my way to a being a grizzled VHS horror fanatic by 1980. I loved the Romero zombies, I loved both Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all the Hammer stuff. Halloween and The Exorcist and The Omen. I’m no help!
when i was ten (1970s), all we got was saturday night “creature feature” with Karloff, Legosi, Chaney, etc. and brother and i were big fans!
then, as we grew older, the Ray Harryhousen animated creatures were creepy cool.
Japanese kaiju flicks and movies like Attack of the Mushroom People were so wierd as to be almost scary!
Let me be honest, I was very poorly thinking of Pan’s Labyrinth as a great fairytale suggestion. The linked list has Labyrinth and is certainly a better suggestion. Your suggestions for horror movies with kids in them a great. Definitely Sixth Sense and Poltergeist. My wife also needs to see the latter.
From all this, I’m thinking black and white classics and maybe early 80’s might be good time periods to mine.
Wow, those take me back! Still, it’s all fun and games until the kid who isn’t scared by much ends up like Billy…
ETA:
The benefit of some of these (for kids) was they tended to be less explicit, but still scary. Lots of Vincent Price thrillers fit into this category, too. The Fly made a big impression on me, but viewers didn’t really see what happened directly (in comparison with the remake).
Seriously. when I was 10, I really liked the Creepshow movies. I’m not sure it was meant for little kids… I remember “the Naked Gun Guy” hamming it up as an evil millionaire (remember when millionaires were the evil rich people?), a germophobe and, um, a Father’s Day cake… but I definitely watched it when I was 10! How did your daughter react to the Large Marge scene in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure?
My wife already vetoed The Ring. I wish I could vouch for the American version’s not being that bad, but my memory has already proven faulty with regard to how bad a movie can get.
Many kids love creepy things. I mean, isn’t that part of the reason why Freddy Krueger got more silly than scary? This is partially an attempt to not only expand her horizons but also let her know it’s ok to want to. No need to be siloed into YouTube or watching certain shows over and over again (I’m ok with the latter). There are all sorts of cool things out there that you might not even know about. I mean, that’s why I keep coming back to this topic and the other movie-specific topic so often.
A spaghetti western made in Japan. Or is it a Ramen Western? Golden Kamuy is the live action version of a japanese comic book set in the aftermath of the Russian-Japanese war in Hokkaido. A rough yet bitter former soldier is looking for a cache of gold buried by an Ainu chieftain. The problem is that he must find a map made of human beings and fight the military, russian revolutionaries and assorted criminals.
Started the live action One Piece last night… I have to say, I’m loving the guy playing the live action Luffy!
Also, watching an anime called Monster… which has turned out to be pretty great… it’s set in Germany, mostly in the post-Wende period (mid-90s), and follows a brain surgeon (who is Japanese) who is trying to catch a serial killer (who he’d saved in surgery once)… Brings in a good bit of politics of central Europe from that era… David Sylvian who was a fan of the manga, did the closing song:
And this might be a bit of a spoiler, but there is a fairytale that is part of the story and I love how it was animated…
