Scary Movies for Kids

Plenty of kids want to be scared long before they're ready for horror, and the wish doesn't wait for October. These are scary movies for roughly ages six to ten, ordered from gentle to genuinely frightening on a scale rated for children, with the gentlest at the top, and each note gives the age we would suggest. Guide ages run from 5 to 11, and most of these have nothing to do with Halloween.

The scale follows a change in what frightens children. At the gentle end, the scares are things a child can see and then laugh off, like the motel mystery in Toy Story of Terror! or the were-rabbit glimpsed first in shadow in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. By level 4 the fear comes from ideas that are harder to shake: a convention of witches plotting against every child in England in The Witches, a boy held prisoner in Nightbooks, and in Coraline, a second home that turns into a trap. Those are the ones to watch alongside a child the first time.

Every title links to its entry in our parents' guide, which says what's in it, scene by scene where it matters. For under-sevens, Halloween Movies for Little Kids stays gentler, and Spooky Shows for Kids covers TV. Family Halloween Movies adds Halloween-night favorites such as Hocus Pocus and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. When a child has outgrown level 4, the next steps are Halloween Movies for Tweens and Teens and, from about twelve, Horror Movies for Teens.

• Casper

  Movie · 1995
  Scary for kids: 1 of 5

  Here the ghosts are mostly the comedy: Casper only wants a friend, while his three uncles toss the living around the mansion for fun. The heavier material is everything else: a dead boy's backstory, a girl still missing her mother, a father who dies on screen before the story undoes it, adults smoking and one getting drunk, and 'bitch' and 'piss off.' Fine from eight.

  Where to stream →8+ Parents' guide

• Monsters, Inc.

  Movie · 2001
  Scary for kids: 1 of 5

  The bottom rung, for five-year-olds finding out whether they like monster movies at all. Sulley is huge, furry and roars for a living, yet he and Mike turn out to be the gentle ones. Three moments carry real tension: Randall's plan to drain a captured Boo of her screams, a chase through a vast warehouse of doors, and Sulley watching a trash compactor he thinks has Boo inside. Rated G.

  Where to stream →5+ Parents' guide

• Hotel Transylvania

  Movie · 2012
  Scary for kids: 1 of 5

  A way to meet the classic monsters before they're scary: Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man and a family of werewolves all check in for Mavis's birthday. Dracula's red-eyed rage, pitchfork-waving townspeople, Dracula singed by sunlight and a look back at the night villagers killed Mavis's mother are as tense as it gets. Expect gas jokes and mild innuendo. Rated PG; seven and up.

  Where to stream →7+ Parents' guide

• Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

  Movie · 2005
  Scary for kids: 2 of 5

  A good test of how a six-year-old copes with a monster in the dark. The beast appears first as a shadow, its transformation gets proper horror-film music, and Victor, the pompous hunter, keeps firing his gun at it. It's comic peril and nobody is really hurt, though a couple of bare-bottom gags and some cheeky innuendo are aimed at grown-ups.

  Where to stream →6+ Parents' guide

• Toy Story of Terror!

  TV special · 2013
  Scary for kids: 2 of 5

  A short special that teaches kids how horror movies work while it scares them: Mr. Pricklepants calls out each cliché as the toys go missing from a roadside motel. Expect deliberate jump scares, and Jessie, who dreads being shut in a box, panicking when she's trapped in one. The culprit turns out to be reassuringly ordinary. Six and up.

  Where to stream →6+ Parents' guide

• Goosebumps

  Movie · 2015
  Scary for kids: 2 of 5

  Every Goosebumps monster at once, more or less: knife-throwing lawn gnomes, a yeti loose at an ice rink, zombies rising in a cemetery and a giant mantis. Nobody dies on screen and there's no blood, but expect several jump scares, snarling werewolf close-ups and Slappy, the dummy behind it all; the teenage hero's father has died before the story begins. Eight and up.

  Where to stream →8+ Parents' guide

• Monster House

  Movie · 2006
  Scary for kids: 3 of 5

  Animated, but not gentle: the last twenty minutes are one long chase, partly inside a furious house with teeth and a tongue. Everyone it swallows turns up alive in the end credits. Parents should know about an old man collapsing in front of a boy, how a taunted woman fell to her death, a teen drinking beer and pawing at an unwilling girlfriend, and stolen cough syrup. Ten and up.

  Where to stream →10+ Parents' guide

• Frankenweenie (2012)

  Movie · 2012
  Scary for kids: 3 of 5

  A love letter to old monster movies, in black and white. After Sparky is hit by a car, young Victor digs him up and stitches him back together; classmates then try it on their own dead pets, and a giant turtle and a winged cat wreck the town. No blood, but Sparky seems to die a second time in the fiery finale, so dog lovers may need tissues. Eight and up.

  Where to stream →8+ Parents' guide

• ParaNorman

  Movie · 2012
  Scary for kids: 3 of 5

  For kids who like their scares with jokes. Eleven-year-old Norman chats with ghosts the way other kids chat with neighbors, and the zombies who rise later keep losing ears and arms. The heavier parts are bullying, a great-uncle dying of a heart attack in front of Norman, a child sentenced to death long ago, a mob ready to burn City Hall, and 'jackass' and 'pissed.' Ten and up.

  Where to stream →10+ Parents' guide

• The House with a Clock in Its Walls

  Movie · 2018
  Scary for kids: 3 of 5

  For a ten-year-old who loves magic stories and wants real chills. Lewis, orphaned by a car crash and punched by a school bully, breaks a promise to his uncle to impress a classmate, and a night in the graveyard ends with a corpse clawing out of its coffin. Expect lunging automatons and living dolls, a little blood when a warlock dies in an explosion, and a few uses of 'damn.'

  Where to stream →10+ Parents' guide

• The Witches

  Movie · 1990
  Scary for kids: 4 of 5

  Roald Dahl's witches on screen. After a car crash kills Luke's parents, his cigar-smoking grandmother warns him that witches are real. Luke spends much of the film as a mouse, which kids find thrilling, but his tail is chopped off and bleeds, a girl trapped in a painting ages and vanishes, and the witches' true faces are hideous. Nine and up.

  Where to stream →9+ Parents' guide

• Coraline

  Movie · 2009
  Scary for kids: 4 of 5

  Laika's stop-motion tale of a lonely eleven-year-old who finds a hidden door and, behind it, a home that seems perfect. What frightens kids is specific: buttons waiting to be sewn over Coraline's eyes, a boy whose mouth has been stitched into a smile, three ghost children whose eyes the Other Mother took, her real parents gone missing, and a villain who ends up skeletal and spider-like. Ten, with you nearby.

  Where to stream →10+ Parents' guide

• Nightbooks

  Movie · 2021
  Scary for kids: 4 of 5

  The top rung, and the bridge to real horror for an eleven-year-old who already loves being scared. Alex, mocked at school for his creepy stories, is trapped in a witch's apartment with another captive, Yasmin: children frozen into tiny screaming statues, slashing spider-like shredders and a witch burned alive in a furnace. Expect frequent jump scares, no romance and mild language. Eleven and up.

  Where to stream →11+ Parents' guide

Still can't decide? Let us pick →

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Picks are editorial recommendations. Streaming availability changes by region and over time — the “where to stream” links check current availability on JustWatch.