10 Best Animated Horror Movies
The creepiest, funniest, and best 2D, 3D, and stop motion scare-fests in cinema history...
Horror and animation go together like chicken and peanut butter, in that you don't need one to enjoy the other and a lot of people wouldn't expect them to work, but the combination is surprisingly successful.
Okay, not every simile can be Pulitzer-worthy. But the dream team of cartoons meets creepy chilling stories is actually a pretty well-established sub genre, despite the paucity of contemporary examples. In the world of anime, where the medium of animation has never been viewed as a necessarily family-friendly phenomenon, horror geared toward adults is common and widespread.
European and American studios may be slow to catch up, but even kid-friendly animation houses have occasionally offer scarier efforts in the hopes of winning over genre audiences by blending cartoons with horror.
These flicks are mostly aimed at younger audiences, but like the PG-rated Poltergeist they can still pack a spooky punch at times. Meanwhile the likes of legendary experimental Czech animator Jan Švankmajer's classic Alice might be nightmare-inducing, but the film wasn't even intended to be a horror.
With this in mind this list is a collection of the ten best horror animations out there, ranging from distinctly adult psychedelic trips all the way through to spooky childhood classics.
10. Monster House
Proof that the future of the Ghostbusters franchise is in safe hands (sorry, Bridesmaids helmer/ reboot fumbler Paul Feig), Monster House is the 2006 feature length debut of Poltergeist remake-r Gil Kenan.
The film, written by Rick and Morty co-creator/ infamous genre subverter Dan Harmon, is a fun and surprisingly spooky throwback to eighties kids horror which takes the recognizable formula of The Monster Squad and Goonies and gives it a twenty first century 3D animated update.
The simple story of a couple of kids who discover their neighbour's house is not haunted but instead an actual monstrous people-eater, this funny and charming horror comedy is a perfect early horror for kids who have outgrown the likes of Scooby Doo but aren't quite ready for Poltergeist yet.
Apologies to all the poor young ones who saw it upon release and were scarred by the genuinely scary sequences dotted throughout the flick, though.