Kids Need More Scary Movies

Disney's Haunted Mansion (2023) is looking like a big box office flop – but there is something to be admired about how the film tried to re-plant the flag for scarier YA stories being told in films. The modern era of movies tends to cater more to kids' emotional health (Pixar), their need for rapid-fire spectacle, and tickling their funnybones. Few films aimed at kids seem willing to expose them to the scarier sides of life – be they real or imaginary. It didn't always used to be that way – and perhaps its time to repeat a little history. 

The generation of kids raised in the 1980s and 1990s remember all too well just how much the times have changed, in terms of what kids are exposed to in films. Films that many viewers still consider (cult-)classics to kids of that time – Goonies, Gremlins, Labyrinth, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Bambi – all stick out in mind because they each had moments that were mildly traumatic in their depiction of violent threats, tragic loss, or sci-fi/supernatural scares. Goonies had a homicidal family chasing down kids, and deadly (and frightening) traps; Labyrinth is built on the idea of infant abduction; Bambi introduced small children to the idea of parent death; Raider of the Lost Ark (a PG film) featured a man's head getting sliced to bloody pieces by an airplane propeller and faces melting off – while Gremlins' little monsters (and scene of one exploding in a microwave) forced the entire movie rating system to be revised, with PG-13 being added.

Were some of these movie scenes possibly regrettable choices to show moviegoers of such a young age? Possibly. However, it's also become apparent to many older moviegoers – many of whom are now parents themselves – that there was a value in being shocked, frightened, or faced with the concept of real tragedy, at such a young age. If nothing else, kids were forced to learn how to at least begin to process these concepts through limited, fictitious exposure, and in doing so, start to form the processes of coping with these darker, harder, aspects of life. 

Maybe Haunted Mansion wasn't quite the film to hold up as an example, but adaptations of YA horror anthologies like Goosebumps ($158.3 million) and Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark ($104.5M) have all done modestly well; if more YA-themed material aped the edgier tone of Amblin films, it would arguably lure more older kids and/or families in to see them, as well. 

Most importantly, movies once again challenging younger minds with concepts beyond their own everyday safe bubbles is entirely part of the point of movies – or stories – in the first place. So let the kids get scared a little...