Buzz
By now, most horror aficionados have likely rewatched their favorite horror flicks numerous times or, at the very least, are planning their next horror movie binge if lockdown continues. Films featuring sinister children tend to be more popular than slasher films or other horror sub-genres. Think of Regan from The Exorcist, unforgettable for her eerie performance, or the unsettling kids from Children of the Corn. And who could forget the wicked Damian from The Omen or the ghostly twins from The Shining? The chilling jump-rope girls from Nightmare on Elm Street, singing 'One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…' still send shivers down many spines.
Here are 10 more child characters who might haunt your dreams. Warning – spoilers ahead.
10. Mercy and Jonas
In The Witch, we meet perhaps the most sinister set of twins since the Grady sisters from The Shining. Mercy and Jonas, fraternal twins, seem like ordinary children at first, but it doesn’t take long to realize something is terribly off about them. They accuse their older sister, Thomasin, of being a witch and torment her at every opportunity. They enjoy claiming they’ve forgotten their prayers, which deeply upsets their devout parents. At one point, they writhe on the ground during prayers as though possessed. They also engage in disturbing chats with the family’s goat, Black Phillip, who is later revealed to be Satan in disguise. The twins’ innocent appearance hides their malicious intent, making their true nature all the more chilling to witness.
9. Doris Zander
Doris Zander stands out as an unusual character from the start. Even before her possession, her chilling behavior raises suspicions. In Ouija: Origin of Evil, her eyes turn white, terrifying another character as she chillingly describes the sensation of being strangled: 'First, you feel the pressure in your throat. Your eyes water, and you taste something incredibly sour in your mouth. Then it’s as if a match is lit in your chest, and the fire spreads. It fills your lungs, your throat, even behind your eyes. Finally, the fire turns to ice, as if needles of cold are piercing your limbs. You see stars, then darkness. And the last thing you feel… is cold.'
Doris then goes on to draw stitches on one of her dolls’ mouths, claiming her late father did this 'to stop the voices.' She becomes responsible for two deaths, and just when it seems like the curse is over, after her mouth is sewn shut, she shocks viewers by running upside down on the ceiling of a mental hospital, delivering an unforgettable jump-scare.
8. Rhoda Penmark
In the 1956 film, The Bad Seed, the seemingly innocent Rhoda Penmark is revealed to be a manifestation of pure evil. Released four years before the iconic Psycho, the film delves into the psychopathic tendencies of a young girl who treats others with complete disregard, seeing human emotions as something alien and inconsequential.
Eight-year-old Rhoda commits three murders using drowning, arson, and a staircase as her tools. Although these crimes happen off-screen, the black-and-white film still creates an unsettling atmosphere, as viewers slowly realize that Rhoda is a psychotic child, despite her wide-eyed, innocent appearance. After she assaults a classmate and leaves him to drown, Rhoda returns home early, casually asking for a peanut butter sandwich and milk before heading out to roller-skate as though nothing occurred. Meanwhile, the handyman perishes in the cellar after she locks him in while setting a fire. As he screams in agony, Rhoda nonchalantly plays 'Au clair de la lune' on the piano, oblivious to the horror unfolding.
7. Samara Morgan
No list like this would be complete without mentioning Samara Morgan, everyone’s favorite eerie child. While she might not scare most people in 2020, back in 2002, when Samara crawled out of TV screens, she terrified anyone who saw her.
True, she has a reason for her malevolent actions—being cast into a well to die. However, this doesn’t exactly earn her much sympathy, especially since she returns as a vengeful spirit with wet, black hair draping over her twisted face. Even before her transformation into this haunting apparition, Samara left disturbing images burned into the minds of her adoptive parents. She also had the ability to imprint those images onto transparent film. She caused horses to commit mass suicide and ultimately met her end after being suffocated by her adoptive mother, only to be thrown into the well.
Samara didn’t rest in peace after her death. Instead, she created a cursed videotape that doomed anyone who watched it to die seven days later.
6. Stephanie
Stephanie appears to be just another innocent little girl, but beneath the surface, there's darkness. Not only is she abandoned by her parents during an apocalyptic disaster (after they realize something is terribly wrong with their daughter), but she also keeps her brother's dead body in his room after she kills him.
When her parents eventually return and bury their son’s body, the corpse finds its way back into the house through the attic window, but Stephanie remains unfazed. Soon, it becomes clear that there is no apocalyptic monster wreaking havoc—Stephanie herself is the true monster. And she's not alone. After torturing and murdering her parents, leaving their bodies near her brother’s grave, she uses her telekinetic abilities to destroy the neighborhood, alongside other telekinetic children across the globe.
5. Brandon Breyer
What if Superman used his incredible powers for evil rather than good? Although the film Brightburn never directly states that its protagonist is a malevolent version of Superman, the backstory of Brandon Breyer strongly mirrors that of Kal-El. He crash-lands, presumably from another planet, and ends up in Brightburn, where a couple finds him and raises him as their own.
Yet, these similarities to Clark Kent stop here. Brandon retaliates when a girl calls him a pervert in front of his classmates by crushing her hand. He uses his abilities to kill the girl’s mother, stabbing her eye with a shard of glass before attacking her. He picks up a truck with his uncle inside and slams it into the ground, ripping the man's jaw off, leaving him to bleed out. Brandon also murders his adoptive parents and causes a passenger plane to crash, killing all 268 people aboard. And, throughout the film, he wears a disturbingly eerie laced mask.
4. Luke Lerner
Babysitting will never be quite the same after this. 17-year-old Ashley, while babysitting, is terrified by what seems like a home invasion. However, she soon discovers that the 12-year-old boy she’s looking after, Luke Lerner, is the mastermind behind the entire 'attack'. Luke has a crush on Ashley and tries to seduce her. When she turns him down, he becomes enraged, especially after she calls him 'mental' for orchestrating the home invasion prank.
Luke escalates things by hitting Ashley with a gun, and with the help of his friend Garrett, they also knock out and tie up Ashley’s boyfriend when he arrives at the house. Luke eventually murders his friend and stabs Ashley. When she doesn't die, Luke goes to his mom, expressing concern about his babysitter and suggesting they take her to the hospital. This unsettling scene plays during the credits, leaving viewers to interpret the grim conclusion.
3. Charlie
Everything that 13-year-old Charlie does in *Hereditary* sends chills down your spine. From the unsettling clicking sound she makes with her tongue to her desperate gasps for air when she eats peanuts (a serious allergy), her behavior is deeply disturbing. She even decapitates a bird with a pair of scissors, storing its head in a box along with other animal heads. And when she loses her own head—literally—she continues to haunt her brother in the afterlife, with the eerie clicking sound echoing when he least expects it.
As the film nears its end, it is finally revealed that Charlie’s disturbing behavior wasn’t the result of an inherently strange child. She was temporarily possessed by the demon Paimon, and her soul was liberated only when she was decapitated during a drive to the hospital with her brother.
2. Eli
In *Let The Right One In*, 12-year-old Eli befriends Oskar, another 12-year-old who is relentlessly bullied. She shares her dark secret with him: she is a vampire, and she has been 12 years old for far longer than she cares to admit. Eli feeds on her neighbors, living with a much older man.
In one chilling moment of the film, Eli scales the wall of a hospital, searching for a patient’s blood. She cannot tolerate sunlight and is unable to consume regular food. As a vampire, she must be invited in to cross any threshold. When Oskar refuses to invite her inside, she begins to bleed from her eyes, nose, and mouth in an incredibly unsettling scene. Eli later takes revenge on Oskar’s bullies, decapitating one of them and severing another’s arm. Throughout the film, Eli’s need for blood results in numerous casualties. Although marketed as a romance horror, the horror far outweighs any romance.
1. Michael Myers
Michael Myers stands out as one of the most chilling and unsettling figures in horror history. Silent and emotionless, he never utters a word, relying instead on his terrifying white mask and heavy breathing to send fear into his victims before he strikes with either a knife or by choking them.
What makes Myers even more terrifying is his ability to track you down when you feel the safest. This sense of dread is compounded by the fact that his murderous journey began at the age of six when he killed his own sister in cold blood, all while wearing a clown mask. Sam Loomis, Michael's psychiatrist, described the young boy as having the 'devil’s eyes' and a blank, emotionless face. Loomis spent seven years trying to keep Michael confined, knowing that pure evil resided behind those eyes.
Loomis's fears were justified. After spending 15 years locked away in an asylum for the murder of his sister, Michael Myers escapes and embarks on another 23 years of terror, relentlessly hunting down his family and killing anyone who stands in his way.
