Kids films that make you feel inexplicably uneasy

[HowDairy]

The original 1971 version of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is on, and I’m just keeping half an eye on it (no one is really watching it, it’s just on!)
I can’t exactly explain why, but this film makes me feel on edge,
like it has a menacing undertone to it.
Anyone else feel the same? Or any other films make you feel this way?
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is another, it has that awful Child Catcher in it!

Gene Wilder's Wonka is definitely menacing, he would definitely watch those children die and not give a fuck.

Mine's The Polar Express, I find the animation so disturbing I've never watched it a second time.

Bambi's mother?

Mrs Dumbo having a baby taken away?

Pinocchio and the little boys turned into Donkeys?

Read the Brother's Grimm, lots of dark tales that children absolutely love!

Peter Pan and the lost children....

The Amazing Mr Blunden.

Yes Willy Wonka definitely feels creepy… I think that’s the point? He’s a complicated character, sort of hides out in the wonder and magic of chocolate but isn’t really fulfilled perhaps?

I always found Dumbo creepy too… especially the LSD trippy dream bit.

ET. The mother was a high functioning alcoholic who never noticed an alien was living in her house.

The Water Babies.

I just read a book by Brenee Brown called Daring Greatly (highly recommend) and she uses the Willy wonka sequence where the boat goes in the spinny tunnel and the song goes faster and faster, and they see horrible images like bugs going up peoples noses to help explain spiralling anxiety. It’s absolutely spot on! No wonder you feel uneasy OP.

I thought of polar express immediately - it's awful!

All of the above. Many classic children’s films are dark and menacing. The Disney Pinocchio is absolutely terrifying.

I felt disturbed by Coraline when I saw it in the cinema - really unsettling

Isn't Willy Wonka meant to be weird. Coraline is a bit scary.

Polar Express Animation is horrible

Pinocchio definitely, it still creeps me out. And I could murder that little Jiminy Cricket fucker.

Yeah that Willy Wonka boat scene that has a headless chicken in it. That said, I only noticed that as an adult!

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

And of course that original Willy Wonka is frightening! Gene Wilder plays him like a maniac, but how else would you do it? He’s a reclusive fruitloop with an obsessive loyal slave workforce, who has arrived at a bizarre way of finding a child to inherit his factory, which involves a day of tests in which one child is nearly drowned, one nearly incinerated and thrown down a rubbish chute, one shrunk and stretched, one left bright purple all over, and even the ‘good’ child is primarily good because he’s literally starving throughout most of the novel.

(And that first film adds weirdness by being obviously partly set in Germany with a mostly US cast, that whole bad LSD trip on the boat, the Oompa Loompas’ little moralistic songs every time a child is lost, and Gene Wilder playing a blunder as a madman.)

I have 6 year old twin girls, they’ve not managed to watch any of the “classic” Disney films as they find them too scary 😦

tells you everything really

All of this sums up why I love that film so much! One of my all time favourites, and yes it scared me as a kid but I liked being scared 😂

Don’t know if it’s classed as a kid’s film - but Big always makes me feel uneasy with the implied sex between a woman and a thirteen year old boy in a man’s body

Hunchback of Notre dame!

It's my favourite Disney movie, but it's very dark! About an abusive and racist religious figure, who wants to sexually possess the very woman he is racist towards, whilst locking the main character in a castle due to his disfigurement!

I don't think I've ever watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang all the way through. The child snatcher scares me!

Don't forget that grandpa Joe is a complete scumbag! Pretending to be disabled, then makes a miracle recovery when invited to the chocolate factory (Roald Dhal obviously never heard of deconditioning syndrome). All while the family is close to starvation. Yet he still has money for tobacco. Also he gropes Mike TV's mum in the lift 😬

Goodnight Mr Tom was a kid's book and the TV movie was for families. But the harrowing themes of child abuse, infanticide, civilian deaths in air raids and antisemitism make it disturbing. Still a great film otherwise.

Monster House.
Say no more.

And Breakout. About these brothers who get kidnapped by escaped convicts. They end up becoming friends, but the thought of stranger danger scared me. You thought something bad was going to happen to the brothers