5 Non-Horror Movies That Scare the Crap Out of Me
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By Julia York
If anyone knows true horror it’s Millennials. We grew up with children’s films that were certifiably weird, dark, and chilling, as if for several decades an entire collection of filmmakers conducted some sort of rogue experiment on the minds of kids who just wanted a chill night with their VHS player. (Actually, this may be the root of why Millennials popularized openly attending therapy. But I digress.)
Here’s a list of five non-horror movies that actually scare the crap out of me.
E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)
When I was four years old, my parents thought it would be “fun” to take me to an outdoor movie. The movie in question was E.T., and my parents, being normal, probably thought their only child would enjoy a movie about other plucky children and their innocent alien friend. Unfortunately, consuming two bags of Peanut M&M’s was the only enjoyable part of the evening, and I will tell you why: E.T. is a nightmare.
As far as movie aliens go, E.T. himself is rather non-threatening. In fact, he’s supposed to be, well, adorable. Unfortunately, the film consists of several situations that render E.T. terrifying—aided by the fact that E.T. is an ‘80s-era lifesize puppet, and therefore moves with the same unsettling herky-jerky-ness of a Tim Burton claymation. First, in a scene that surely became the inspiration for M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, the young Elliott (Henry Thomas) encounters E.T. in a dark cornfield (yikes???). As Elliott’s flashlight beam falls upon the alien, E.T. lets out one of the most blood-curdling noises dedicated to cinema.
But perhaps the worst moment, and the one that burned into the crevices of my four-year-old brain, is the sequence when Mike (Robert MacNaughton) discovers E.T.’s limp and bleached body by a forest stream. It is haunting, to say the least, and I’m convinced this moment contributed to my lifelong fear of the woods. Even Spielberg himself claimed E.T. resembled something “only a mother could love.”
The Land Before Time (1988)
Frankly, it would be appropriate to include any Don Bluth film in a list of scary non-horror films (The Secret of NIMH, anyone?), as the former Disney animator with a knack for creating unnerving children’s fantasy films contributed many terrifying characters to the animation canon throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Therefore, choosing The Land Before Time—arguably one of Bluth’s least affronting films—may seem controversial, but hear me out: that T-Rex (Sharptooth) freaked me out.
When Sharptooth’s shadow falls menacingly across Littlefoot and Cera in the bog, and then all of the sudden starts prancing towards them, claws engaged? No thank you. (Only Don Bluth could make prancing a threatening movement.)
When Sharptooth’s glowing red eyes search for Littlefoot and Cera in the forest of thorns, nostrils flaring with the anticipation of eating two adorable baby dinosaurs? I’d rather not.
When Sharptooth leaps through the air with such horrifying ease, as if he doesn’t weigh eight tons? Get out of here with that.
Also, why doesn’t Sharptooth speak? Every other dinosaur in The Land Before Time does (besides Spike, of course), so this apparent lack of language skills makes him even more ominous and animalistic. The Land Before Time is a vibe, and that vibe is, “Why is this so effing scary?”
Jumanji (1995)
As a 32-year-old woman, I can freely admit the original Jumanji is not for the squeamish. I would also like to thank my parents, who may have failed by allowing me to watch E.T. but managed to prevent me from seeing Jumanji until I was a teenager. If I had been exposed to Jumanji as a child, my already weak constitution would have crumbled, leaving me in perpetual fear of both aliens and spiders.
Aside from the decades-long entrapment of a young boy within a supernatural jungle, Jumanji contains numerous moments that have no business being so creepy: a lion lurking in the darkness, a crocodile haunting dark waters, and those damn spiders (knowing those spiders are not CGI somehow makes them so much worse).
But for me, the most upsetting thing about Jumanji is that most of these frightening sequences take place inside a house, the very thing that is supposed to be, you know, free from jungle threats. While many traditional horror movies at least have the courtesy to take place either within the confines of a house or the woods, Jumanji instead chose chaos and made sure no place was safe.
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993)
We’re Back! What the hell is this movie! Whenever I try to explain this Land Before Time-adjacent monstrosity to someone, it sounds like I’m describing a dream I had while in the throes of a particularly nasty fever: after being “cured” of their violent tendencies by eating magic cereal, four prehistoric dinosaurs time-travel to New York City where they befriend some children and then sing a musical number in the Macy’s Day Parade, after which they are forced to perform in a dark circus. Oh, and an evil scientist gets eaten by crows.
The point is, We’re Back! feels deceptively lighthearted: once sentient, the dinosaurs’ harsh features soften and they find themselves involved in various formulaic mischief around the city, not unlike The Muppets Take Manhattan. Only while the Muppets (thankfully) maintain their proverbial cute and approachable Muppet-ness, the dinosaurs of We’re Back! suffer a different fate when they transform back to their natural, terrifying selves.
As a child, watching four friendly dinosaurs devolve into harsh-looking, roaring predators felt rightfully alarming. As an adult, I find the whole thing generally unnerving, made even more so by the fact that most of this plot point takes place in an other-worldy, creepy circus, which means clowns are present.
Babe (1995)
As far as I can tell, the team of people who made Babe—which includes the Mad Max franchise director George Miller, by the way—thought to themselves: “What would it be like to expose children to the brutal horrors of factory farming and meat processing, but within the setting of a storybook country village?” And that, my friends, is Babe (also, Chicken Run).
Babe is somehow both profoundly moving and jarringly violent, with a threatening undercurrent throughout nearly the entire film that at some point this absolutely enchanting little pig may become bacon. (On that note, Babe is the reason I will never be able to watch Okja.) A particularly bad moment (and there are several, including Babe’s own mother being sent to slaughter, and a kindly duck killed for Christmas dinner) is when Babe’s sheep friend, Maa, is viciously attacked by feral dogs.
I cannot decide what moment in this sequence makes me feel worse: Maa wailing and screaming in pain, her sheep compatriots singing an unsettling, cult-like chant around her as she bleeds to death, or Babe, covered in Maa’s blood, weeping in despair.
While Babe is not exactly scary, this film never fails to fill me with a low-grade anxiety and general unease. And though the plot ends on a happy note, it cannot make up for the fact that most of Babe is downright depressing. However, the filmmakers’ larger effort to address animal cruelty and meat-eating clearly worked, as Babe was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Julia York is a freelance writer and creative with a M.A. in Cinema Studies. You can find her on Instagram and at juliajyork.com.