10 Greatest Animated Movies That Are Actually Terrifying

Published Aug 22, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT

Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant,  CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.
 

Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor.

He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre.

To learn more, visit his website at shawnlealos.net.

While most animated movies are considered kids' flicks, there are also some animated films that are actually terrifying, often too scary for little kids to ever watch. Because animation allows a film to show anything without limitations, this means that animated filmmakers can conjure up horrifying imagery and then deliver stories that haunt people's nightmares, whether it's kids or their parents.

These terrifying animated movies range from classic traditional animation to hand-drawn 2D, performance-capture, stop-motion, and everything in between. There are also some studios that have specialized in scary movies, with Laika and its stop-motion releases being among the best in the business today. There are also animated releases marketed to children, like The Secret of NIMH, that scarred many kids' childhood memories.

Even Disney Animation is not exempt, as there are several classic Disney movies that are nightmare fuel, even though they are considered childhood masterpieces. What really makes these movies stand out are the single scary images from these films, from Coraline's Other Mother and The Black Cauldron's army to Watership Down's blood-soaked visions.

Monster House (2006)

Released in 2006, Monster House was an animated movie produced by Robert Zemeckis and shot using performance-capture technology, the same tech used for Zemeckis' Christmas movie, The Polar Express. This caused the movie to have a stylized, puppet-like look and offered a creepy appearance before the actor even played into the scares. The good news is that the story was scary as well.

The movie takes place right before Halloween, where three kids realize that the old house across the street is a living monster that eats anything that comes onto its lawn. The animated format allows the film to make the house terrifying, with its front door opening to reveal sharp teeth, the windows shining like eyes, and the carpet tongue rolling out and consuming anything. The uncanny-valley humans and terrifying house make this a very scary experience.

9 (2009)

9 is a unique animated movie because it originated as an Oscar-nominated short student film by Shane Acker. He then got a chance to turn it into a feature-length animated film thanks to producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. The movie was created using CGI technology despite the fact that Acker wanted everything in the movie to look like it was a puppet. However, it was a beautifully animated release.

Set in an alternate version of the 1940s after machines exterminated humans, the hero of the story is 9, a burlap rag doll. He is one of nine Stitchpunk creations hiding from roaming war machines. The villain is The Beast, a horrific machine that kills the dolls, ripping out their souls. Between the ash-washed wasteland and the on-screen deaths of the rag dolls, there are a lot of scares in this post-apocalyptic animated film.

Pinocchio (1940)

When Pinocchio was released in 1940, it was one of Disney's early animated releases. What most people don't seem to remember is that classic Disney animated movies were often very scary. Snow White's evil stepmother tried to kill her, an evil fairy named Maleficent wanted to kill Sleeping Beauty, and Fantasia was nightmare fuel at times. However, Pinocchio was one of the scariest animated movies Disney released.

Pinocchio is a wooden puppet made by a toy maker named Geppetto, and then a fairy brought the puppet to life. There are so many things in this movie that are terrifying, from Pinocchio going to Pleasure Island, where bad boys were turned into donkeys, to the whale eating Geppetto. Threatening a child, even a puppet, was a shockingly scary moment then and remains so to this day.

Kubo And The Two Strings (2016)

Released in 2016, Kubo and the Two Strings is a Laika stop-motion animated movie that is one of the best animated movies of the entire 21st century. The movie barely made back its box office at the theaters, but it is a movie that has aged well and remains a masterpiece. Directed by Travis Knight, the film takes place in ancient Japan, and it follows a one-eyed boy named Kubo and his ill mother.

Kubo has magical powers that let him control things like origami, which he uses to make a living. When he learns his grandfather is the Moon King, and he learns that his grandfather wants his second eye, he goes on the run with a monkey totem turned real, and a former samurai cursed to be a humanoid cockroach. The horror here involved a child in danger and some horrific imagery.

ParaNorman (2012)

ParaNorman is another Laika movie, this one a pure horror movie that is directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, the former story artist on Coraline. This is another stop-motion animated film by the studio, and it was the first stop-motion feature to use a 3D color printer to create the characters' faces. The film follows Norman, a pre-teen who can see and speak to the dead. He then learns he has to stop a 300-year-old witch who has cursed his town.

This leads to several scary moments in the movie. The dead rising and tormenting the town was scary, especially with the brilliant stop-motion work by Laika. That said, the scariest moments came when Norman battled the witch, Agatha, a child executed for her powers in the ancient past. The images during this battle were unlike anything in stop-motion animation.

The Plague Dogs (1982)

The Plague Dogs was released in 1982, a British-American animated drama that was never meant for kids. This was not a horror story about monsters, demons, or witches. Instead, this was a movie that was about real-life horror. The plot follows two dogs named Rowf and Snitter who escape a British animal-testing laboratory and flee across the Lake District countryside.

What makes this animated movie so scary is that the movie is about watching the two dogs and their struggle for survival. The opening is horrific as the laboratory repeatedly drowns and revives Rowf in a survival experiment, which shows the cruelty that these dogs need to escape from. When they escape, they are considered carriers of a plague and are hunted down to be killed. It is a terrifying movie and a very hard one to watch.

The Secret Of NIMH (1982)

Released in 1982, The Secret of NIMH was marketed towards kids, even though this movie was a terrifying experience. Produced by Don Bluth after he left Disney, the story follows a widowed field mouse named Mrs. Brisby, who seeks help from a colony of intelligent rats so she can save her sick son and move her home before a farmer's plow destroys it.

One of the scariest moments in the movie came with the Great Owl sequence, when Mrs. Brisby goes into a pitch-black tree hollow full of spiders, and then the glowing-eyed owl flies out of the dark. The villain in this movie is Jenner, who plots a murder, and this all leads to a bloody knife fight in the climax. It shockingly received a G rating, despite its ominous atmosphere and the deaths.

Watership Down (1978)

Watership Down is an animated British movie that is based on Richard Adams' 1972 novel. The movie has an incredible voice cast that includes names like John Hurt, Richard Briers, Nigel Hawthorne, and Zero Mostel. The plot follows an apocalyptic vision, with a rabbit named Hazel leading a band fleeing their doomed warren to find a new home on Watership Down.

Parents who thought this was a movie about cuddly rabbits had to be shocked when their kids watched a film loaded with grim, bloody violence and mangled bodies. The animation was relentless and didn't let up on the violence. The villain, General Woundwort, is a brutal tyrant, and this is a movie about fascism more than it is a movie aimed at kids.

The Black Cauldron (1985)

The Black Cauldron is a Disney movie from 1985, which is one of the scariest movies the animation studio ever released. This was the first animated movie by Disney to receive a PG rating, and much of that is thanks to the dark story, the violent imagery, and the very scary sequences. The plot takes place in the mythical Dark Ages land of Prydain, where the young Taran and his friends try to keep the evil Horned King from claiming a cauldron of unstoppable power.

The Horned King is one of Disney's most demonically scary villains, a glowing-eyed sorcerer who radiates malevolence. There is also the Cauldron-born army, a wave of undead warriors that the black cauldron raised, which are grotesque and deliver some of the scariest moments in any animated movie. There were several minutes that had to be cut from the film before its release.

Coraline (2009)

Image by Everett Collection

One of the scariest animated movies in history came in 2009 with Coraline. This was Laika's first feature-length animated film, and the stop-motion only added to the horrific story and the unease of anyone who watched it when it was the first stop-motion film ever shot in 3D. Coraline was directed by Henry Selick, who previously directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it was based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.

The movie follows a young girl named Coraline who is neglected by her parents after they move to a new town. She then finds a passageway in her new house that leads to a parallel world with a doting Other Mother who has devious intentions for the young girl. The ghostly atmosphere and the terrifying Other Mother make Coraline one of the scariest animated movies ever made for kids.