When you think of children, what comes to mind? Innocent laughter, playful games, and the magic of growing up, right? But what happens when that innocence is twisted into something truly terrifying? Fiction, especially in TV and movies, loves to explore this dark side, giving us young characters who are far from harmless. Get ready, because we’re about to dive into a list of kids who trade bedtime stories for horror stories. Be warned, though – major spoilers lie ahead as we explore their dark deeds!
10. Brandon Breyer (Brightburn)
Imagine Superman, but as a horrifying tale. That’s the chilling premise behind Brandon Breyer in Brightburn. Like the Man of Steel, Brandon crash-lands on Earth as a baby in an alien ship and is raised by loving parents on a farm. He seems like any other kid growing up in a small town. However, when puberty hits, things take a drastically dark turn. Instead of just mood swings, Brandon develops incredible powers: super-strength, flight, super-speed, and terrifying laser vision.
These newfound abilities come with a disturbing shift in personality. Brandon finds himself drawn to violence and gore, tormented by sinister whispers in an unknown language while he sleeps. He quickly transforms from a seemingly normal preteen into an uncontrollable menace, stalking and brutally harming the residents of his town. In one particularly graphic scene, he terrorizes and then horrifically murders his own uncle, solidifying his status as a nightmarish version of a superhero.
9. Charlotte (The 100)
In the gritty, post-apocalyptic world of The 100, a group of juvenile delinquents are sent from their dying space station, the Ark, down to a radiation-soaked Earth. Among them is Charlotte, a young girl who initially appears scared, frail, and deeply traumatized. She’s haunted by recurring nightmares of her parents’ execution at the hands of the Ark’s Chancellor.
Another character, Bellamy, attempts to offer her some comfort and advice, telling her to “slay her demons” while she’s awake so they can’t haunt her sleep. Tragically, Charlotte misinterprets this counsel in the most horrifying way. Believing it will end her nightmares, she takes Bellamy’s words literally and fatally stabs the Chancellor’s son, Wells Jaha, in the throat. Her shocking act serves as a grim reminder of how trauma and desperation can twist even the youngest and seemingly most innocent minds in a brutal new world.
8. Hit-Girl (Kick-Ass)
Mindy McCready, famously known by her alias Hit-Girl, is far from your typical comic book kid sidekick in the movie Kick-Ass. Her early life was marked by tragedy: her father, a cop, was framed and imprisoned, and her mother later committed suicide. Upon his release, Mindy’s father, now “Big Daddy,” trained her from a very young age in advanced martial arts and various forms of weaponry.
Together, they became a ruthless crime-fighting duo. Hit-Girl is a brutally efficient fighter, an expert with firearms, knives, spears, and even explosives. Her lethal skills are showcased in a stunning, partially first-person perspective scene where she single-handedly decimates an entire room of armed mobsters attempting to kill her father. She proves that age is no barrier to being one of the deadliest vigilantes on the streets.
7. Ashley Oswalt (Sinister)
The 2012 horror film Sinister introduces us to the Oswalt family, who move into a house with a dark past. Young Ashley Oswalt initially appears as a sweet and artistic little girl, understandably frightened by the ghostly children who begin appearing after her true-crime writer father, Ellison, discovers reels of disturbing home movies in the attic.
These films depict the gruesome murders of previous families who lived in their new home and others, each scene featuring an ominous figure called “Mr. Boogie.” As Ellison investigates, he finds crude drawings by children accompanying each film reel. The horrifying climax reveals that an ancient pagan deity named Baguul influences children to murder their families and consume their souls. Ashley, having fallen under Baguul’s sway, drugs her family and then gruesomely murders them with an ax, documenting the act on film and using their blood to paint the walls. It’s a chilling descent from innocence to pure terror.
6. Number Five Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy)
Number Five is one of the standout characters in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. While he appears to be a 13-year-old boy due to a time-travel mishap, he is, in fact, a ruthless 58-year-old assassin. As a child, his attempt to jump through time went awry, stranding him for decades in a desolate, post-apocalyptic future. There, he was recruited by The Commission, a mysterious organization that governs the timeline, and was molded into one of their most efficient and notorious killers.
Five eventually defected and traveled back in time to prevent the apocalypse he witnessed, but an error in his calculations reverted him to his younger physical form. However, his pint-sized appearance doesn’t diminish his lethal capabilities. Throughout the series, Five displays shocking brutality, dispatching enemies with his bare hands by gouging eyes or snapping necks, and even embarking on gleeful killing sprees when necessary, including a particularly graphic massacre of Commission executives with an ax.
5. Lilith (Supernatural)
During the third season of the long-running dark fantasy series Supernatural, the powerful demon Lilith chose a particularly disturbing vessel: a sweet-looking little girl. While possessing this child (portrayed by Sierra McCormick), Lilith held the girl’s entire family captive in their own home. She subjected them to bizarre psychological torment, forcing her mother, father, and grandpa to celebrate her “birthday” every single day, complete with cake for dinner every night.
But her reign was far from just twisted games. The demon-possessed girl also killed the family pet, murdered a babysitter in cold blood, and later callously snapped her grandfather’s neck. Although Lilith eventually abandoned this young host, this particular incarnation of the character reappeared a season later as a terrifying hallucination, taunting one of the show’s protagonists during a supernaturally-induced heart attack, proving the lasting horror of her child form.
4. Eleven (Stranger Things)
Eleven, or El, is one of the most beloved and powerful characters from Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things. Abducted as a child by a secretive organization and subjected to relentless experiments by a figure she called “Papa,” Eleven developed extraordinary telekinetic and telepathic powers. Using these immense abilities often causes her nose, and sometimes her ears, to bleed.
Despite being a generally kind-hearted girl with a strong loyalty to her friends and a love for Eggo waffles, Eleven has a significant body count. She has used her psionic powers to kill guards who tried to confine her, and she was responsible for obliterating the Demogorgon, the primary monster of the first season. One of her most shocking displays of power occurred when she caused an entire room of government agents—the “bad men”—to fatally hemorrhage using only her mind. She has also demonstrated her capabilities by telekinetically flipping a moving van high into the air to protect her friends.
3. Janice (Annabelle: Creation)
Annabelle: Creation, the second installment in the Annabelle trilogy, delves into the terrifying origin of the titular possessed doll. Janice is one of several orphaned girls taken in by dollmaker Samuel Mullins and his wife after their previous orphanage closes. Janice, who suffers from polio and uses a leg brace and cane, starts as a kind girl, particularly close to her best friend, Linda. However, their new home harbors dark and deadly secrets.
Soon after arriving, Janice is targeted and eventually possessed by a powerful demon attached to the Annabelle doll. Her personality undergoes a chilling transformation; she even regains the ability to walk freely. The demon controlling her then goes on a murderous rampage, killing Mr. Mullins and later crucifying and mutilating his bedridden wife. The horror culminates years later, revealing that Janice (now using the name Annabelle Higgins) joined a satanic cult and returned to murder her adoptive parents, tying her gruesome past directly to the events of the first Annabelle film.
2. The Children (Village of the Damned, 1960)
The classic 1960 black-and-white horror film Village of the Damned features not just one killer child, but an entire brood of them. Based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, the story begins when an English village experiences a mysterious event during which everyone falls unconscious. Upon waking, all women of childbearing age find themselves inexplicably pregnant.
The children born from this phenomenon are eerie and unsettling. They possess striking platinum-blonde hair, strange, glowing eyes, and develop at an unnaturally rapid rate, appearing as nine or ten-year-olds by the age of three. These children are also exceptionally intelligent, share a telepathic hive mind, and exhibit a cold, unemotional, and often cruel nature. They use their powerful mental abilities to punish or eliminate anyone they perceive as a threat or an obstacle, forcing one of their “mothers” to scald her hand in boiling water, compelling a man to crash his car, and later making his brother shoot himself. They are a truly terrifying collective force.
1. Lizzie Samuels (The Walking Dead)
Lizzie Samuels, who appeared in the fourth season of AMC’s The Walking Dead, remains one of the most profoundly disturbing and tragic child characters in television history. Growing up in the zombie—or “walker”—apocalypse had a deeply damaging effect on Lizzie’s psyche. She struggled to comprehend the true nature of the undead, often viewing them not as threats but as different, misunderstood beings, even her “friends.” She would name walkers, attempt to play with them, and become distraught when they were killed.
Lizzie’s deeply flawed perception of reality culminated in one of the show’s most shocking and heartbreaking moments. In an attempt to prove her belief that walkers weren’t dangerous and that people were the same after turning, she fatally stabbed her younger sister, Mika. She calmly told Carol and Tyreese to wait, insisting Mika would be okay when she reanimated. Lizzie was about to do the same to baby Judith before Carol and Tyreese intervened, leading to an unforgettable and devastating conclusion to her storyline.
And there you have it – ten young characters from TV and film who prove that age is just a number when it comes to causing chaos and instilling fear. From demonic possessions to psionic powers gone wrong, these killer kids have left their mark on our screens and in our nightmares. They remind us that sometimes, the most unsettling monsters are the ones we least expect.
Which of these child terrors sent the most shivers down your spine? Do you have another pint-sized villain in mind that didn’t make our list? Share your thoughts and fears in the comments below!
