Casey Chong with a selection of killer kid movies you might have missed…
Children are generally pure and innocent, but they can be scary too. This is especially true with plenty of movies depicting these kids as horror antagonists. We’ve seen them in notable titles like The Bad Seed, The Omen and of course, the Children of the Corn film franchise. Instead, our curated selection here focuses more on some underrated and even obscure choices of seven killer kid movies that you need to see…
Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
If you watch Who Can Kill a Child? for the first time, chances are you might find yourself thinking it’s the wrong movie. This is especially true with the opening stretch, and it’s definitely not a brief one, with a long documentary montage of how children are psychologically scarred from the horrors of war. Not to worry, though, since the movie subsequently transitioned to the story of Tom (Lewis Fiander) and the pregnant Evelyn (Prunella Ransome), an English couple on vacation in Spain, who later decide to travel to a quiet island far away from the usual tourist attractions.
Director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador keeps things deliberately slow, taking his time to delve into the interaction between the couple. It takes a long while before anything happens as Serrador prioritizes slow-burning tension, first with the laidback moments of watching the couple spending their quality time together. And later, after they arrive on the island, strangely dominated by children with no other adults around, the story gradually builds up to the point where they witness the children committing violence.
Serrador prefers to maintain the fear of the unknown to depict the children’s unusually violent tendencies towards the adults, making them a lot more formidable. Motivations are purposely vague with no flashbacks or even an expository-heavy scenario. Just a brutally stark story of survival as Tom and Evelyn, who are stranded on the island, and must find a way out at all costs. The movie doesn’t shy away from graphic violence, particularly during the increasingly harrowing third act, right up until the pessimistic finale.
Bloody Birthday (1981)
According to the story written by Ed Hunt, who also served as the director, and Barry Pearson, children born during a solar eclipse resulted in homicidal personalities. Preposterous? Yes, but Hunt embraces the otherwise silly concept wholeheartedly to turn these children – three of them, to be exact – into killer kids, who begin their murder spree on their 10th birthdays.
This includes Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jayne) and Steven (Andy Freeman). They may look like harmless and innocent-looking kids, but they show no remorse when they decide to kill someone – even if it means in a cold-blooded manner. The three child actors did great jobs portraying the antagonists, while Hunt deserves equal mention for throwing in enough violence to satisfy the horror fans. Bloody Birthday may have met with mixed responses at the time of its release, but it has since developed a cult following.
The Good Son (1993)
It’s hard to imagine the actor who plays the bratty kid Kevin McCallister from the first two Home Alone movies transitioned into a dark role in The Good Son. The kind of role where Macaulay Culkin plays a manipulative Henry, whose psychopathic tendencies scare his cousin, Mark (Elijah Wood). He wouldn’t hesitate to kill an animal, and at one point, even tosses a human-sized dummy off a bridge, causing a multiple vehicle pile-up. It’s a 180-degree career shift for Culkin, proved he was up for a challenging role after his blockbuster successes..
Credit also goes to Joseph Ruben, no stranger to directing thrillers, including The Stepfather and Sleeping with the Enemy, for bringing out the best in his child actors while keeping the gradual suspense and tension in check. The Good Son was a modest hit worldwide, grossing over $60 million and even earned Culkin a nomination in the Best Villain category for the MTV Movie Awards.
There’s Something Wrong With the Children (2023)
This straight-to-streaming horror film gets off to a slow start, focusing on two couples – Margaret (Alisha Wainwright) and Ben (Zach Gilford), along with Ellie (Amanda Crew) and Thomas (Carlos Santos) – on a weekend trip at the campsite. The latter two bring along their young children, Lucy (Breilla Guiza) and Spencer (David Mattle). Director Roxanne Benjamin, who produced the first two V/H/S anthology films, prefers not to rush things by maintaining a thorough, deliberate pace.
This might come across as a turn-off for some viewers, but Benjamin does a good job navigating T.J. Cimfel and David White’s screenplay. The movie’s turning point finally begins once the children behave strangely after one of the couples witnesses them falling below the depth inside a mysterious cave, but they somehow return as if nothing had happened to them. The children’s sinister intent and mysterious behavior soon become the movie’s psychological build-up, and kudos to Benjamin for sustaining the creepy dread right until the unsettling finale.
Mikey (1992)
You don’t want to mess with someone like Mikey, played with sinister perfection by then-newcomer Brian Bonsall. He has violent tendencies, and won’t hesitate to kill the entire family, as seen in the opening scene. The movie then focuses on Mikey, who is now under the foster care of a new family, and of course, his adopted parents, Neil (John Diehl) and Rachel (Mimi Craven), know nothing about his past. Except for Mikey’s teacher, Gilder (Ashley Laurence), who begins to suspect something is off about the little kid.
Director Dennis Dimster approaches Mikey like a kid version of The Stepfather, and he brings out the best in Bonsall, who steals the show here. He fills in with the slasher-movie trope, mixing mean-spirited gore and violence. The controversial nature of Mikey, particularly the disturbing aspect of a child killer seen in the titular character, mirrored the 1993 real-life murder of James Bulger, resulting in a ban in the UK. It wasn’t until 2025 that the ban was lifted, with the movie getting a 15 rating.
The Paperboy (1994)
This lesser-known Canadian horror film, under the direction of veteran TV director Douglas Jackson, follows the titular 12-year-old paperboy, Johnny McFarley (Marc Marut), who has been longing for a perfect family. Right from the onset, the movie sets the ominous tone by showing him committing a murder, and later, finds himself increasingly obsessed with his next-door neighbors: a woman (Alexandra Paul’s Melissa) and her daughter Cammie (Brigid Tierney).
This is where Johnny begins to grow too attached to them, like he’s part of the family, before Melissa becomes more uncomfortable. Marc Marut’s creepy performance playing the persistent, yet mentally unstable paperboy, anchors the movie. His role tends to veer into a scenery-chewing angle, but at least Marut has a field day portraying the “killer kid” antagonist in a thrilling B-movie style.
Brightburn (2019)
Ever wonder what if Superman, in his younger years, turned out to be evil? That’s a wicked what-if premise explored in Brightburn, written by Brian and Mark Gunn. The flip-the-script angle of subverting the familiar Superman-like story into something dark and sinister resulted in one of the best genre hybrids that combines the best of both worlds: superhero movie and sci-fi horror.
The movie goes as far as mirroring Superman’s age-old backstory: a mysterious child crash-landed on Earth, and a couple (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) who have been longing to have a kid, finally get their wish by raising him like their own. The child eventually grows up as a 12-year-old boy (Jackson A. Dunn), and here is where he begins to behave differently. Director David Yarovesky keeps the pace fairly taut in the movie’s 90-minute runtime, while he doesn’t shy away from explicit gore and graphic violence. Brightburn did well at the worldwide box office of $33.2 million, considering its relatively low-budget production at just $6 million.
What are your favourite killer kid movies? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Casey Chong
