22 Scary Movies To Watch With Your Kids So You Don't Have To Be The Only Scaredy Cat In The Family

You don't have to have read every single Goosebumps book to appreciate the Jack Black movie adaptation, but it helps if you want to be able to appreciate every Easter egg. For me, these books are probably where my love for horror began.

Like a lot of movies from the '80s, the PG rating on Gremlins is a little questionable when you look back at the alcohol-swigging wild gremlin creatures. But for a lot of people, this was the first *appropriate* scary movie they could watch.

The '80s were a different time. But acid wash jeans and blown out hair aren't the only things that have changed since then. Today, a movie about a family terrorized by spirits and demons like Poltergeist would definitely garner a PG-13 or R rating. But if your older kid is ready for some genuine jump scares, Poltergeist will deliver.

Beetlejuice is more creepy than terrifying, even for some younger viewers. But there is always going to be something scary about the demons in the movie, despite the '80s special effects making things a little more cartoonish.

The 2018 sequel to Goosebumps didn't include a return of Jack Black for the entire movie, but it did prominently feature Slappy the dummy. I'm a 30-year-old woman and that doll still scares me.

Even though Coraline is an animated movie, the overall tone is dark, so it's going to depend on your kid if they can handle it or not. The premise of a lonely girl with busy parents finding a parallel universe starts off innocently enough, but quickly turns dark as she loses her way back to her own dimension.

The Witches still gives me nightmares. Not only because of the true form the witches take when they curl their toes and remove their masks and wigs, but because it forces me to see Anjelica Huston as ~not~ glamorous.

Casper has a couple of scenes where the scares are legit, but for younger viewers who you are eager to introduce to horror, this is a solid movie to start them off with.

Monster House is another animated movie that is surprisingly creepy from start to finish. The animation looks like a cross between stop motion and computerized animation and it makes for some unsettling scenes. As the title suggests, it is literally about a house that comes to life to eat passersby, including a couple of police officers and a little girl on a bike. I promise it has a less sinister ending.

Gone are the days of the true Disney Channel Original Movies, but you can't embark on a scary movie marathon with your kids without including a classic like Halloweentown.

The ‘Burbs has everything you could possibly need in an ‘80s thriller. Tom Hanks plays a guy who is suspicious of his new neighbors and sends his family away while he tries to figure out who (or what) they are. His wife is played by Carrie Fisher and Corey Feldman plays a neighborhood kid.

Like a lot of Tim Burton’s movies, Edward Scissorhands is more whimsical than scary, but to a kid, that can equate to a scary movie. Just be prepared for all kinds of questions about what a waterbed is when Edward and his finger blades do a number on one.

I still don't know where I stand on the debate of whether The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie, but I do know that either way, Jack Skellington is terrifying with his black abyss eyes and that’s enough to make it scary for any kid.

My son’s obsession with the original Ghostbusters started when he was three years old, so some toddlers can totally handle the ghostly characters in the movie. There are some *adult* themes, especially where Bill Murray’s character is concerned, but with a harmless PG rating, it's a mild version of what could have been a much scarier movie.

This Addams Family movie starts with the return of Uncle Fester, who had been missing for several years and was brainwashed to cheat the Addams family out of their fortune. Wednesday and Pugsley are more charming than scary as warring brother and sister who use a guillotine for fun, but the minor kid-friendly horror elements come into play thanks to characters like Lurch and Thing.

I wouldn't be a fan of literally everything Kate McKinnon does if I didn't call out the Ghostbusters reboot for its own contribution to the world of horror for kids. As an updated version of the original movie with a few modern twists of its own, the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot has more genuinely scary moments, but that’s what helped set it apart from its predecessor.

There is something absolutely horrifying about the non-CGI characters in scary movies from the ‘80s. The makeup and costumes end up being a lot scarier and that’s the case in Labyrinth with Hoggle and Sir Didymus.

I will never see Howie Mandel as anything other than Maurice, no matter how many game shows he hosts. But once your kid gets over the fact that the movie is primarily made up of monsters whose goal it is to scare children and live under their beds, they will (hopefully) come to love the blue-faced monster.

My Babysitter's A Vampire is your classic made-for-kids scary movie, which is why it works so well for a younger audience. It follows a brother and sister who find out their new babysitter is — you guessed it — a vampire. It blends the sort of scary and silly in a way to help bring in new scary movie fans.

Based on a book series of the same name, R.L. Stine's Mostly Ghostly is about an 11-year-old girl who meets two young ghosts and launches an investigation about how they died.

The second installment of the Addams Family movies follows Wednesday and Pugsley to camp. Like the other Addams Family movie, this one doesn't have any major jump scares, but these are the Addamses we’re talking about. Being scary is their nature, so the creepiness comes naturally.

I can't promise that your kids will be able to handle all of these scary movies, because I know that mine needed me to walk him down the hall to the bathroom after watching Monster House for the first time. Part of the fun in watching scary movies is getting scared, though, which my guy learned soon enough. Start them off with something tame like Halloweentown and work your way up to Poltergeist and you will have a horror cinephile on your hands in no time.