8 Surprisingly Scary Animated Films That Scarred The Kids

5. Toy Story

Some might argue that the third film, with its heightened emotional tone and it's ominous exploration of death should be the most scary of the Toy Story trilogy, but it was the first film that makes this list thanks to the underlying exploration of bullying and the cirque de freak sequence set in Sid's bedroom/laboratory of toy pain.

When Buzz and Woody find themselves trapped in Buzz's house, their plight is reminiscent of a typical house escape horror in which the approaching assailant is an unseen and ominous presence looming in the background and establishing an invisible ticking clock that makes their need to escape all the more pressing. Added to that are what we initially believe to be Sid's abominations, the assembled freakshow toys cobbled together from the bits remaining after Sid has had his fun.

Those monsters - as they first appear - are grotesques in the oldest sense of the word, and the embodied horrors of what faces Woody and Buzz as soon as Sid returns. Admittedly their appearance is changed entirely by the revelation that they are in fact inherently good, but it robs nothing from that initial impact, or indeed from the final pay-off to Sid's story where his victims rise from the Earth to teach him a lesson. Chilling, and not just for those kids who neglect their toys.