Disney movies are often associated with childhood innocence, though many are scarier than people realize, especially when there are small children in the audience. Some adults find the movies saccharine and annoying, which makes them ripe for parodies — including turning these classics into horror flicks.
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This trend began as some of the oldest Disney films, including Mickey Mouse’s introduction in Steamboat Willie, moved into the public domain, allowing filmmakers to use the characters without running afoul of copyright laws. For this reason, there are several horror film remakes of Disney films, with more planned for 2026 and beyond.
5) Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare
Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is a Twisted Childhood Universe film that turns Peter Pan into a kidnapper and murderer who uses the idea of taking children to Neverland as a euphemism for killing them.
This irreverent film touches on sensitive topics, as the title character lures children to him, exposes them to drug abuse, and eventually kills them. It will be of interest to those fans who enjoy violent and sometimes gory horror movies — the film includes the wholesale slaughter of a bus full of children and the mutilation of children.
4) Winnie-The-Pooh Blood and Honey 2
The sequel to the original horror version of Winnie The Pooh is enjoyable, but it is not as good as the original and largely falls under the category of sequels that did not need to be made. After the original Winnie-The-Pooh Blood and Honey movie became a runaway success, Twisted Childhood Universe decided to capitalize on it by making a sequel in which Christopher Robin escapes the Hundred Acre Woods and tries to get help.
The evil animals of the Hundred Acre Woods regroup and begin hunting humans while Christopher Robin deals with what appears to be PTSD from the experience, but eventually returns to the Hundred Acre Woods for an epic showdown with Pooh and Piglet. Like its predecessor, it appeals to fans of slasher films, with the added bonus of the monsters having once been beloved children’s book characters.
3) The Mouse Trap
The Mouse Trap, which is a slasher-horror version of Steamboat Willie, was announced on the same day the original went into the public domain. The film had to be careful only to imitate the original design of Mickey Mouse, as later iterations of the character are still under copyright.
Unlike the Winnie The Pooh parodies, The Mouse Trap doesn’t directly suggest that the beloved character is a murderer. Instead, the slasher is an amusement park manager who is under the control of a Mickey mask. The film is mostly standard slasher movie fare, with people trapped in an amusement park with the villain, and doesn’t have much that is original besides the use of a Disney character as the bad guy. Nevertheless, a sequel to Mouse Trap will debut in 2026.
2) Winnie-The-Pooh Blood and Honey
The original Winnie-The-Pooh Blood and Honey is a clever reshaping of the classic children’s story into a slasher film. It’s somewhat disturbing that the characters turn evil after being so desperate for food that they eat Eeyore, who has always been an underrated character, but at least their motivations for violence later in the film make sense.
The characters wage war on humanity after Christopher Robin goes off to college and abandons them, leaving them to starve. The film is rather gory and focuses mostly on extreme violence against a group of female university students who rent a cabin in the Hundred Acre Woods.
1) Bambi: The Reckoning
Bambi was always a more disturbing movie than it seemed, considering that it began with the murder of Bambi’s mother, so it made sense for Twisted Childhood Universe to turn it into a horror movie. Bambi: The Reckoning begins in the same way as the Disney version, with Bambi’s mother being killed, but a future series of tragic events culminates in Bambi drinking contaminated water that turns him into a killer mutant.
This is a clever reversal of the original premise of the Disney movie, as Bambi now hunts humans instead of living in fear of being hunted by them. This quickly becomes a battle between Bambi and the humans he attacks, with it unclear who will survive, and this premise makes the film more interesting and original than most slasher or monster movies.
What is your favorite horror remake of classic Disney movies? Leave a comment and join the conversation at the ComicBook Forum.
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Image courtesy of Focus Features.
