People Are Sharing The Movie That “Traumatized” Them As A Kid, And I’m Curious If Experienced The Same Thing

1. Fantasia: “It messed me up as a little kid I had nightmares for weeks. To me, Mickey was a chill, safe dude. Not the main protagonist in a drug-fuelled nightmare.”

Disney / Everett Collection

2. The Polar Express: “GOOD GOD, who let Robert Zemeckis make motion capture animated movies?!”

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

3. An American Tail: “Anything made by Don Bluth. It’s like he was trying to break a whole generation of children.”

4. A Little Princess: “Without giving spoilers, everything from when she has to become a servant at her school to pay her father’s debts onward was so awful to watch as a kid. I remember crying every time, and I still do as an adult.”

5. Alice in Wonderland: “When the Walrus tricks the baby oysters — who are drawn dressed as ACTUAL babies in bonnets — to leave the safety of their home and then the Walrus EATS THEM ALIVE. What the actual heck?!”

6. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure: “Large Marge! Still haunts me to this day.”

7. James and the Giant Peach: “The rhino storm cloud freaked me out as a kid and its entire reason for being is incredibly dark if you think about it.”

8. Toy Story: “Toys coming alive is a HORROR, not something to be all mystical about. I thought to myself, ‘These things were really in my room, watching me while I sleep and who knows what else?’ I couldn’t have any human or animal-looking toys after that, it was too creepy.”

9. The Little Mermaid: “Ursula terrified me as a child, and whenever she would grow all big, I would legit just turn off the movie because it was too scary. It’s funny comparing my experience with Ursula to my four-year-old niece’s because the kid is obsessed with Ursula and just absolutely loves her.”

10. Anastasia: “Rasputin’s song comes out of NOWHERE and is a NIGHTMARE. It’s literally a song about wanting to murder a child sung by a corpse-man who’s falling apart.”

11. Ernest Scared Stupid: “I think I may have walked out halfway through. I’m 43 now and my mom still makes fun of me.”

12. The Mummy: “I thought insects would crawl into my room while I was sleeping and devour me.”

13. Time Bandits: “The end with the parents is what did it for me.”

14. Frankenweenie: “My parents took me to see it in theatres and I was traumatized for life.”

15. Monsters, Inc.: “Honestly? The big scream-sucking machine scared the shit out of me as a kid. No one thinks about it, but like…forcing kids to scream and then collecting it??? It’s dark. It still scares me. It’s horrifying.”

16. Madeline: Lost in Paris: “Does ANYONE remember this movie?! The whole premise of the movie was so messed up — Madeline gets kidnapped by this guy who is pretending to be her uncle, and he forces her into slave labor with these orphaned girls in a lace shop. They added musical numbers throughout the movie as if to try and make it ‘cute’ or something. I can’t believe that was a real children’s movie that got made!”

17. Born Free: “To this day, when I hear that song, I BAWL! I mean, BAWL! And even though I haven’t seen the movie more than twice because it IS so heart-wrenching, just thinking about the couple reuniting with Elsa the lioness (and also her cubs) is enough to bring tears to my eyes.”

18. Jurassic Park: “I had nightmares about dinosaurs for years. I couldn’t even watch Land Before Time because of it!”

19. The Birds: “I’ve never liked any bird since.”

20. The Watcher in the Woods: “It really scared the hell out of me, and it still kind of does.”

21. Matilda: “To this day, I can’t finish watching it. It freaked me out so much as a child. The coffin-sized closet filled with nails, and the awful principal that would throw kids out of windows or grab their pigtails to hammer throw them for fun. The principal showed up in my nightmares for a month.”

What other movies completely traumatized you as a child? Let us know in the comments!

Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.