Random Horror Movies That Scarred You As A Kid But Are In No Way Scary To Watch As An Adult (14 items)

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  (#1) Child's Play

  • Brad Dourif, Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Dinah Manoff, Jack Colvin, Alex Vincent, Robert Minkoff, Ed Gale, Neil Giuntoli, Edan Gross, John Franklin, Juan Ramírez, Tommy Swerdlow, Alan Wilder, Michael Patrick Carter, Bo Kane, Ted Liss, Roslyn Alexander, Richard Baird, Leila Lee Olsen, Tommy Gerard, Jamie Gray, Tyler Hard, Michael Chavez, Lena Sack, Suaundra Black, Jana Twomey, Raymond Oliver, Aaron Osborne, Erin Munz

  What's scarier than one of your toys coming to life and trying to murder you? It turns out tons of things are scarier than this concept.

  Child's Play follows Chucky, a doll inhabited with the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray. Throughout the film Chucky does some truly horrific things. He hits a woman in the face with a hammer, he bites another woman, and he even tries to possess the body of a child. 

  Unfortunately because all of this menace is coming from a doll it never goes beyond the level of interesting concept. While you were most likely scared of this movie as a kid, it's far from frightening decades later when your (probably) don't personally own an abundance of kids toys.
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  (#2) Leprechaun

  • Jennifer Aniston, Warwick Davis, Ken Olandt, Robert Hy Gorman, Mark Holton, Shay Duffin, John Voldstad, John Sanderford, William Newman, David Permenter, Klexius Kolby, Brandon Sachs, Alexandra Sachs, David Tripet, Pamela Mant, Tim Garrick, Raymond C. Turner, Heather Kennedy

  The first Leprechaun film is an anomaly when placed next to the rest of the films in the franchise. Tonally it's still ludicrous - at one point the Leprechaun rides a tricycle down the highway and gets pulled over by a state trooper - but it feels like the filmmakers were trying to make a scary movie.

  People have their stomachs cut open, a guy is beaten to death with a pogo stick, and there are jump scares galore. It's definitely a horror movie, it's just not scary. 
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  (#3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  • Ben Affleck, Hilary Swank, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, David Arquette, Kristy Swanson, Thomas Jane, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, Stephen Root, Alexis Arquette, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Candy Clark, Randall Batinkoff, Andrew Lowery, Sasha Jenson, Michele Abrams, Paris Vaughan

  There's a scene early on in this precursor to the Joss Whedon TV show where Pike (Luke Perry) is woken up by his friend Benny (David Arquette) who's recently been turned into a vampire. In less than a minute Pike realizes his friend has changed because he's floating outside his window and screaming "I'm hungry!"

  You might remember this scene being incredibly frightening. You may have even cowered behind your mom's couch and begged her to turn the movie off. 

  If you watch that scene now you'll see it's played completely for laughs; even though David Arquette is unhinged, he's not particularly scary. 
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  (#4) Tremors

  • Kevin Bacon, Reba McEntire, Fred Ward, Ariana Richards, Michael Gross, Victor Wong, Bibi Besch, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tony Genaro, Conrad Bachmann, Charlotte Stewart, Robert Jayne, Sunshine Parker, Richard Marcus, John Goodwin, Finn Carter, John Pappas, Michael Dan Wagner

  There's a distinct possibility that even as a child you weren't frightened by this Kevin Bacon horror movie about giant sandworms traveling underground and eating anything that dared walk above them. The film definitely has all the calling cards of a horror film that could be scary: people get eaten, a dog is killed, and the heroes have to devise a clever way to defeat the villain(s). 

  If nothing else Tremors served as a way for young people to ease themselves into the horror genre even if it isn't all that scary. 
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  (#5) Scream

  • Drew Barrymore, Rose McGowan, Courteney Cox, Liev Schreiber, Neve Campbell, Henry Winkler, David Arquette, Linda Blair, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy, Skeet Ulrich, W. Earl Brown, Roger L. Jackson, Frances Lee McCain, Joseph Whipp, Kevin Patrick Walls, David Booth, Lawrence Hecht, Lois Saunders, Carla Hatley

  Scream suffers from being the first of its kind. It's a smart meta-horror film that inspired a generation of copycats. It's still fun to watch (the opening scene is truly brilliant) but upon rewatching you can't help but notice the lack of scares. The film still works as a piece of entertaining cinema, but it's more of a movie about movies than an actual horror flick. 

  The thing that makes Scream so watchable is the combination of the nuanced performances and Wes Craven's directorial control. The cast somehow manages to play things straight and ham it up at the same time, and murder scenes are clearly crafted by someone who has their finger dug into the pulse of the horror genre. 

  It's best to watch this movie as a cultural artifact and not an actual horror film. 
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  (#6) The Gate

  • Stephen Dorff, Kelly Rowan, Ingrid Veninger, Jennifer Irwin, Linda Goranson, Deborah Grover, Sean Fagan, Scot Denton, Louis Tripp, Christa Denton, Andrew Gunn, Carl Kraines

  The Gate is a nice piece of PG-13 horror from Canada about two kids who accidentally open a portal to Hell by digging a hole in the backyard. This movie definitely has all the hallmarks of a horror film that could freak out a child; there's a dead dog, kind of creepy looking monsters, and things that grab children from under their beds. 

  On reevaluation the movie is pretty cheesy, but it's a film that definitely turned fans onto the horror genre. 
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  (#7) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

  • Patricia Arquette, Laurence Fishburne, Zsa Zsa Gábor, Robert Englund, Dick Cavett, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Jennifer Rubin, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, Nan Martin, Brooke Bundy, Ken Sagoes, Ira Heiden, Penelope Sudrow

  When you were a kid was there anything scarier than Freddy Krueger? Throughout the '80s and '90s he was the de facto boogeyman for anyone under the age of 15, but who knew his movies would age so poorly? The first Nightmare on Elm Street film holds up similarly to a bad dream you can't shake, but the rest of the franchise plays like comedies when you rewatch them. 

  The best of the bunch is the third film in the series, Dream Warriors, remembered as a return to form after the abysmal Freddy's Revenge. Dream Warriors is probably the first Nightmare on Elm Street film you saw, and while it has some creepy imagery (track marks turning into hungry mouths, a kid's veins being ripped out of his arms, and the giant Freddy penis snake) it's also the first film to lean into the goofy nature of the character. 

  If you want to remember being scared of this movie it's best to never watch it again. 
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  (#8) Children of the Corn

  • Linda Hamilton, Peter Horton, R. G. Armstrong, Courtney Gains, John Philbin, Julie Maddalena, John Franklin, Mitch Carter, Robby Kiger, Eric Freeman, Anne Marie McEvoy, Jonas Marlowe, Corey Frizzell, Teresa Toigo, Dan Snook, Patrick Boylan, Dennis Carl, Suzy Southam, D.G. Johnson, Elmer Soderstrom, David Cowen

  For some reason most of the Stephen King adaptations from the '80s and '90s just don't hold up. When they're held up against films like The Shining and Carrie most of the other adaptations feel like an afterthought. Children of the Corn definitely has a lot of stuff to scare a kid: spooky Amish boys, a corn monster, and ominous shots of corn, but there's nothing here for an adult to really be afraid of. 

  Admittedly no one wants to deal with large groups of children, but when you realize everything in this movie could have been avoided if the main characters had simply left town it makes the whole affair much more tedious. 
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  (#9) Fright Night

  • Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall, Chris Sarandon, Art Evans, Heidi Sorenson, Ernie Holmes, Amanda Bearse, William Ragsdale, Jonathan Stark, Stephen Geoffreys, Stewart Stern, Joy Michelle Moore, Lene Hefner, Dorothy Fielding, Nick Savage, Bob Corff, Prince Hughes, Chris Hendrie, Irina Irvine, Pamela Brown

  Fright Night is about growing up and getting over your childhood fears. In the film, a vampire moves nextdoor to horror movie nerd Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) and turns his life upside down. Over the course of the film he loses his best friend, his first love, and his car. He also finds out vampires are real and murders a guy with his hero turned friend/co-conspirator Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall). 

  If you watched this movie as a kid you definitely remember watching Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) getting impaled on a bed post and the way all the vampire's faces morph into wretched versions of what they present to the outside world.

  Sadly the movie doesn't play the same way when you watch it as an adult. It's still really fun, but there are no scares to be had. 
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  (#10) The Blair Witch Project

  • Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams, Patricia DeCou, Mark Mason, Jim King, Bob Griffin, Jackie Hallex, Ed Swanson, Sandra Sánchez

  The Blair Witch Project was the pinnacle of terror for anyone who came of age in the '90s. When the runaway horror hit was in the theaters everyone was suddenly horrified of small stick figures and the creatures that lurked in the darkness of the Burkittsville, MD, woods. If you've watched this film recently you've no doubt wondered why you were scared in the first place. 

  The most glaring problem with the film is that nothing happens for 3/4 of its runtime. Someone loses a map, Heather (Heather Donahue) gets upset, and that's about it. Even though the finale of the film is still potentially scary, it loses something in translation by being filmed with such a shaky hand. 
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  (#11) Arachnophobia

  • John Goodman, Brandy Norwood, Jeff Daniels, Julian Sands, Frances Bay, Kathy Kinney, Peter Jason, Harley Jane Kozak, Carl Nasland, Henry Jones, Mark L. Taylor, Stuart Pankin, Roy Brocksmith, James Handy, Juan Fernández de Alarcon, Robert 'Bobby Z' Zajonc, Lois de Banzie, Garette Ratliff Henson, Jane Marla Robbins, Mary Carver, Warren Rice, Theo Schwartz, Marlene Katz, Chance Boyer, Fiona Walsh, Jay Scorpio, Michael Steve Jones, Terese Del Piero, Nathaniel Spitzley, Mai-Lis Kuniholm, Robert Frank Telfer, Cori Wellins

  This movie grossed out an entire generation when it was released in 1991. The sight of a cat corpse encased in spiderwebs is no doubt seared into the brains of every young person who watched the movie during a sleepover. But that's all Arachnophobia is - sleepover horror.

  The movie doesn't speak to any fears beyond, "YIKES! Look at all these spiders!" John Goodman and Jeff Daniels are great, and it's a lot of fun to revisit from time to time, but there are no real scares to be had. 
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  (#12) Phantasm

  • Angus Scrimm, A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Kate Coscarelli, Lynn Eastman, Bill Thornbury, Kathy Lester, Terrie Kalbus, Ralph Richmond, Dac Coscarelli, Kenneth V. Jones, Bill Cone, Mary Ellen Shaw, David Arntzen, Laura Mann, Susan Harper, Myrtle Scotton

  Phantasm is a film that taps perfectly into the subconscious of a 13-year-old. It has a surreal, dream-like logic that allows a super tall gravedigger to exist alongside a metallic ball covered in knives and an alien planet filled with dead bodies.

  The film's imagery is enough to give any young person nightmares, but once you age out of its target audience Phantasm loses any grasp it has over you and becomes something for another generation to discover. 
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  (#13) Event Horizon

  • Laurence Fishburne, Jason Isaacs, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan, Sean Pertwee, Emily Booth, Richard T. Jones, Teresa May, Jack Noseworthy, Noah Huntley, Peter Marinker, Robert Jezek, Holley Chant, Barclay Wright

  If you haven't seen Event Horizon, you should watch it just so you can see how easy it is for a great concept (Hellraiser in space) to get muddled in the execution. The film's nightmarish imagery and gothic design are enough to frighten any kid, and there are still a few haunting shots on a rewatch. However, it's impossible to watch this movie with mature eyes and not notice the asteroid-sized holes that penetrate the plot. 

  Why is the Event Horizon (a spaceship) shaped like a giant castle? Why does every character make the dumbest decision possible? Why is it so bloody in space? This movie is very fun, but it's also very bad and not scary. 
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  (#14) Pet Sematary

  • Stephen King, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Susan Blommaert, Miko Hughes, Dale Midkiff, Blaze Berdahl, Mary Louise Wilson, Brad Greenquist, Chuck Courtney, Michael Lombard, Kavi Raz, Kira Willoughby, Peter Stader, Beau Dakota Berdahl, Mara Clark, Liz Davies, Lisa Stathoplos, Richard Collier, Matthew August Ferrell, Donnie Greene, Mary R. Hughes, Elizabeth Ureneck, Chuck Shaw, Andrew Hubatsek, John David Moore, Dorothy McCabe, Kara Dalke, Eleanor Grace Courtemanche, Lila Duffy

  You probably remember Stephen King's Pet Sematary as one the scariest movies you watched as a child. If that's how you'd like to remember it then please don't ever watch it again.

  Everything about the movie feels like it was made-for-TV. The actors don't seem like they want to be there, and nothing is particularly frightening. The only thing that holds up from this movie is the bangin' Ramones track recorded specifically for the film. 

   

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