{"id":60905,"date":"2025-08-11T21:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60905\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T21:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:22:07","slug":"8-movies-about-freaky-kids-to-stream-after-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60905\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Movies About Freaky Kids to Stream After ‘Weapons’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weapons<\/a> topped the box office<\/a> this weekend, which is fantastic news for fans of original horror movies. The movie follows a town grappling with the unbelievable truth that an entire classroom of kids has vanished en masse\u2014and the discovery of the sinister reason behind their disappearance. If Weapons has you in the mood to take in more tales of freaky children, the horror genre has many to choose from<\/a>. Here are 10 cult classics featuring that same theme, which remains as evergreen as it is consistently terrifying.<\/p>\n

Who Can Kill a Child?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This deliciously grim 1976 Spanish film follows a vacationing couple who drifts onto an island populated only by children\u2014hostile, homicidal children. The movie\u2019s title sets you up for its central dilemma, though the answer quickly becomes, \u201cAnyone who wants to survive this hellscape better start shooting.\u201d There\u2019s plenty of horror baked into this concept even before you consider the woman is pregnant\u2026 and the kill-crazy affliction extends to unborn children as well. Even worse, the kids find a way off the island at the end, suggesting adults of the world should start watching their backs immediately. (Available to rent or buy on Prime Video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Something Wrong With the Children <\/p>\n

This 2023 chiller<\/a> follows two couples on a glamping getaway. The pair with two young kids brings them along, and while you hate to blame that choice for turning a relaxing vacation into nightmarish terror, it\u2019s definitely the root cause. When the young \u2018uns go briefly missing, they return alarmingly transformed, and There\u2019s Something Wrong With the Children does an admirable job wringing frights from that fact while it digs into the ways the adults react to this sudden dreadful change in circumstances. (Streaming on Prime Video<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Children of the Corn <\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be a gathering of scary kids without some Stephen King flavor, and 1984\u2019s Children of the Corn remains the most effective adaptation in this unnecessarily prolonged cinematic franchise. It\u2019s the scariest and the simplest: Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton (The Terminator came out a few months after this) star as a married pair whose road trip takes a malevolent turn in rural Nebraska. They\u2019re soon stranded in a community where nobody seems to be over 18\u2014John Franklin, who was actually in his 20s at the time, is memorably eerie as their leader, Isaac\u2014and everyone worships a demonic, bloodthirsty presence that lurks in the cornfield. Or else. (Streaming on AMC+<\/a> and Tubi<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Citadel <\/p>\n

This 2012 Irish film (not to be confused with the same-named Prime Video spy series) is full of disturbing imagery that will linger long after you finish watching it. Director Ciar\u00e1n Foy went on to make Sinister 2 and help with episodes of Sweet Tooth and The Haunting of Bly Manor, but even if he\u2019d never made anything else, he could be confident about creating plenty of nightmares with his feature debut. It\u2019s about a man who struggles to put his life back together after his pregnant wife is attacked by a mob of mysterious, hoodie-clad teens in their run-down apartment building. After he moves to another run-down building, he soon comes to realize there\u2019s something terribly off about those \u201cteens.\u201d (Rent or buy on Prime Video<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Village of the Damned <\/p>\n

The 1990s John Carpenter remake is fine, but the coldest chills come from the 1960 original, which taps into post-war fears to explore what happens when a town first experiences an unexplained cosmic event, then a few months later all the women of the right age realize they\u2019re pregnant. The unusual children are all born on the same day and have the same eerie appearance, as well as the power to read and control minds, especially when it comes to adults who question just what in the (alien in origin) hell is going on. (Rent or buy on Prime Video<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The Omen, The Bad Seed, and Pet Sematary <\/p>\n

While the rest of this list focuses on groups of children\u2014and indeed, most of the time, freaky kids are scarier in numbers\u2014there are some horror-movie tots who do just fine menacing adults on their own. These include Satan\u2019s own spawn, Damien, in 1976\u2019s The Omen (baby-swapped at birth to torment a diplomat while ladder-climbing toward world domination); Rhoda Penmark, the murderously competitive moppet of 1956\u2019s The Bad Seed; and, for one more dose of Stephen King, resurrected toddler terror Gage in 1989\u2019s Pet Sematary. (The Omen is available to\u00a0rent or buy on Prime Video<\/a>, also on Tubi<\/a>; The Bad Seed rent or buy on Prime Video<\/a>; Pet Sematary streaming on Paramount+<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Weapons topped the box office this weekend, which is fantastic news for fans of original horror movies. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,49298,134,344,22363,49299,15466],"class_list":["post-60905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-children-of-the-corn","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-stephen-king","tag-village-of-the-damned","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}