10 Most Emotionally Devastating Kids' Films

4. The Land Before Time

The Land Before Time is basically the story of children separated from their parents while fighting for their survival during a mass migration. You know, not anything that children legitimately have fears about. Because no one thought that might be a little hard for the kidlets to watch. There's one particularly horrifying scene where a young triceratops is separated from her family during an earthquake. As in, she is literally on a different tectonic plate from her parents and has to watch as they drift further and further away. I know people who, after watching this scene as a kid, had nightmares about this happening to them.

But of course, no discussion of The Land Before Time would be complete without Littlefoot, and the sh*tstorm he has to wade through in this film. First his mother is killed by a T-Rex, then he gets separated from his grandparents, then he has to lead a ragtag group of whiners to the Promised Land. Surprisingly, despite the large number of sequels to this film that were made, none of them detailed Littlefoot's time in dinosaur therapy.