14 Best Horror Movies For Kids
8. Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Watcher in the Woods wasn't the only spooky feature Disney produced in the 1980s. This 1983 adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel centres on a mysterious carnival which rolls into a sleepy American town and quietly seizes the souls of the adult population, leaving young friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade to save the day.
Bradbury's haunting and poetic novel is arguably less interested in being a fantasy adventure than it is in lamenting the ephemeral pleasures of childhood, and the adult anxiety of encroaching death. Naturally, this was always going to be challenging stuff to transfer to the screen in a marketable fashion. As such, it's hardly surprising the film is a little uneven at times, and reportedly suffered a lot of strife behind the scenes.
Even so, director Jack Clayton did a fine job capturing the essence of the novel, and while Jonathan Pryce was perhaps a little young for the role of sinister ringmaster Mr Dark (Bradbury had reportedly wanted Peter O'Toole or Christopher Lee), he does prove a suitably imposing antagonist. There are a great many genuinely creepy sequences which may prove a bit too much for younger viewers - and, young and old alike, best beware if you're afraid of spiders, as one particularly nightmare-inducing sequence sees a child's bedroom besieged by hundreds of tarantulas.