Don't Be Afraid of the DarkMovies like Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
- Key Features:
- Supernatural horror, Creature feature, Isolation, Haunted house, Child in peril, Gothic horror, Ancient evil, Psychological horror, Monsters, Renovation, Hidden secrets, Vulnerability, Paranoia, Fear of the unknown
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Supernatural thriller enthusiasts, Gothic horror aficionados, Suspense seekers
- Emotional Arc:
- Curiosity → Dread → Terror
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

A young girl sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend discovers creatures in her new home who want to claim her as one of their own.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Every culture has one – the horrible monster fueling young children's nightmares. But for Tim, the Boogeyman still lives in his memories as a creature that devoured his father 16 years ago. Is the Boogeyman real, or did Tim make it up to explain why his father abandoned his family?

Not long after John Chambers and his family arrive at their new home in a small country town of Pennsylvania, John begins to experience sleep paralysis. Lying there paralyzed, trapped within his own nightmare, other-worldly beings visit John. They are entities which exist in the darkest shadows of the night and can only be seen out of the corner of one's eye. These encounters begin to haunt John, transforming to complete terror as he discovers the entities' sole purpose... the abduction of his seven year old son. In the end, John will uncover the town's horrific secret, a portal on his land, and make one last attempt to save his son before the shadow people permanently take him away to their world.

After moving into a cottage together, two young lovers confront horrors of a forgotten childhood.

A teenage girl moves into a remote country home with her family, only to discover that the gloomy old house has a horrifying past that threatens to destroy them.

Ten-year-old Willow follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of an ancient forest. After witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret that they've so desperately tried to conceal.

After a tragic turn of events at the new home he's fixing up, Daniel hears a ghostly plea for help, spurring him to seek out a famous paranormal expert.

Silvia is a young girl marked by a dark childhood. When she is barely twenty-five, she decides to start over and to face the people, feelings and emotions that keep her bound to the past. In her fight against adversity and against herself, she will learn to control her fears and become an adult, responsible for her own actions.

A man emerges with his autistic daughter and three others from a hospital elevator to find themselves trapped in the building with devilish monsters.

A couple and their daughter moves to Colombia to take over a family manufacturing plant, only to realize their new home is haunted.

Monsters under the bed are scary enough, but what happens when an entire house is out to get you? Three teens aim to find out when they go up against a decrepit neighboring home and unlock its frightening secrets.

A murderous, flesh-eating undead young girl haunting the remote stretch of woods where she was murdered decades earlier, discovers a kidnapped and abused boy hiding in the trunk of one of her victim’s cars. Her decision to let the boy live throws her aggressively solitary existence into upheaval, and ultimately forces her to re-examine just how much of her humanity her murderer was able to destroy.

Twelve year old Ryan Billings has been diagnosed with an acute fear of the dark. He spends each night lying awake in torment, waiting and watching as the evil in the darkness grows stronger, feeding off his fear. His older brother Dale, suspects that there is nothing wrong with Ryan and that this is just a ploy for more attention. Regardless, he promises to watch over his little brother as their parents head off to a party for the night. Outside a storm rages and when the power goes out, darkness envelops the house. Ryan knows that tonight the evil has finally come to claim him. Dale desperately tries everything to try and calm him down, until the horrors in the dark make him realize Ryan had good reason to be so afraid!

In an attempt to pull her family together, Adèlle travels with her young daughter Sarah to Wales to visit her father. The morning after they arrive, Sarah mysteriously vanishes in the ocean. Not long after, a little girl bearing a striking resemblance to their missing daughter reveals that she has retuned from the dead — and that Sarah has been taken to the Welsh underworld.

A couple and their twelve-year-old son move into a giant house for the summer where things aren’t quite what they seem. Every time someone gets hurt on the grounds, the beat-up house seems to repair itself…

As her world is shrouded in darkness, a young girl must overcome her fears and travel to a mysterious city of light, save her father from a dangerous scientist and prevent the destruction of her planet.

After losing their baby, a married couple adopt 9-year old Esther, who may not be as innocent as she seems.

The Freelings' suburban home becomes the center of paranormal activity that opens a portal to the 'other side'. With help, they must cross over to get their daughter back.

Laura, traumatized by an abusive relationship, runs away from her former husband with her seven-year-old son Cody. But in their new, idyllic and remote sanctuary, they find they have another, bigger and more terrifying monster to deal with…

John James is a writer; his wife has left him. He moves with his two middle-school children to an isolated house off a dirt road in South Carolina. The property has an Indian burial mound, which fascinates his daughter, Louisa, who's entering puberty.

John Reilly discovers that his family's newly inherited castle in Italy is haunted by a relentless, bloodthirsty creature.

June is different from all other nine-year old girls. She is an orphan hiding a secret. Bad things happen when she gets upset, supernatural things. June has been in many foster homes usually leaving them destroyed. But this time it will be different. June has a new foster home and she really likes her new parents. She will have to face the force within her to protect her new parents and to save herself.

A family discovers that dark spirits have invaded their home after their son inexplicably falls into an endless sleep. When they reach out to a professional for help, they learn things are a lot more personal than they thought.

After the premature death of her estranged husband, Emma (Winter) regains custody of their young daughter Isla (Jones) and hopes to rebuild their relationship after many years apart. But when an evil entity begins to torment them, mother and daughter are forced to face the inexplicable presence that inhabits the walls of their new home.

A boy with an active imagination faces his fears on an unforgettable journey through the night with his new friend: a giant, smiling creature named Dark.

A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

When a group of rambunctious teens take refuge in Hull House to escape the law, they soon realize their grave error upon meeting Angela.

Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution.

When Keira Woods' daughter mysteriously vanishes in the cellar of their new house in the country, she soon discovers there is an ancient and powerful entity controlling their home that she will have to face or risk losing her family's souls forever.

Don Koch tries to renovate a rundown mansion with a sordid history for his growing family, only to learn that the house has other plans.

Kept locked inside the house by her father, 7-year-old Chloe lives in fear and fascination of the outside world, where Abnormals create a constant threat—or so she believes. When a mysterious stranger offers her a glimpse of what's really happening outside, Chloe soon finds that while the truth isn't so simple, the danger is very real.

Several scary black-and-white animated segments in different styles appeal to our fear(s) of the dark.

Sarah returns with her father and uncle to fix up the family's longtime summerhouse after it was violated by squatters in the off-season. As they work in the dark, Sarah begins to hear sounds from within the walls of the boarded-up building. Although she barely remembers the place, Sarah senses the past may still haunt the home.

Grace is a religious woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

Dahlia Williams and her daughter Cecelia move into a rundown apartment on New York's Roosevelt Island. Dahlia is in the midst of divorce proceedings, and the apartment, though near an excellent school for her daughter, is all she can afford. From the time she arrives, there are mysterious occurrences—and there is a constant drip from the ceiling in her daughter's bedroom…

A nurse taking care of her daughter's mysterious affliction struggles to hide her secrets when uninvited strangers take shelter in her house during a lethal blizzard.

A group of teens break into a blind man's home thinking they'll get away with the perfect crime. They're wrong.

A family moves from New York into an old mansion in the countryside, still filled with the previous owner's things. As they begin to make it their own, a series of events begin to occur that makes them believe that the former inhabitants are not yet gone.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

A boy and his stepmother fear for their safety after an eerie creature resembling the boy's recently deceased father visits them.

After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the truth about her pet and fight for her family's survival.

A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.

A mother desperate to reconnect with her troubled daughter becomes embroiled in the urban legend of a demonic witch.

After the traumatic loss of her mother, a teenaged girl tries to uncover the dark secrets behind her new home, in spite of her father's disbelief.

Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.

When a huge hurricane hits her hometown in Florida, Haley ignores evacuation orders to look for her father. After finding him badly wounded, both are trapped by the flood. With virtually no time to escape the storm, they discover that rising water levels are the least of their problems.

A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.

Looking for a fresh start after a miscarriage, a couple find themselves being gifted the house of their dreams with one caveat - they can never open the cellar door. Whether they can live without knowing triggers shocking consequences.

A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.

The disturbed arts teacher, Anna Veigh, is hired by Mr. Laing as a governess to raise Flora and her brother Miles. Anna believes that the ghosts of the former governess, Miss Jessel, and housekeeper, Peter Quint, are in the property haunting the children, and she decides to help them to face the spirits and get their souls free.

Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, Halloween night, 1968. After playing a joke on a school bully, Stella and her friends decide to sneak into a supposedly haunted house that once belonged to the powerful Bellows family, unleashing dark forces that they will be unable to control.

A strange man named Karl Rhamarevich dies shortly after discovering a way to become even more powerful in death through telekinesis. On the night of his burial in a crypt, Julie is to spend the night there as part of an initiation rite, supervised by two other girls. The crypt becomes a scene of horror as Raymar returns to life and deploys his horrifying telekinetic powers.

A family moves into a secluded mansion where they soon find themselves being targeted by an entity taking the form of a giant spider.

After a mysterious global crisis, a young girl is left alone to hide from a malevolent power that stalks her home. Her parents eventually return and the struggle begins to save their daughter.

Niamh is the lone survivor of a mysterious massacre in which the furniture and objects in her family’s isolated house took on a monstrous life of their own. The police ignore her wild stories, and the neighbours and social worker who take her into their care try to introduce her to a new life. But Niamh is unable to leave her violent past behind her, endangering everyone who crosses her path.

An evil is unleashed in a small town when a logging company sets up shop in the neighboring woods. Isolated and threatened, a mysterious force hidden within the trees outside the small town of Maiden Woods, strikes fear in the townspeople as Sheriff Paul Shields attempts to overcome the demons of his past while protecting those that he loves.

A girl calls on her brother's imaginary friend to banish a mischievous boogeyman who has framed her for his pranks.

When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the beginning of a new life for them.

When her mother suddenly disappears with no one to care for her, young Estrella ends up on the street and joins a gang of children, triggering a dangerous and tragic chain of events.

After moving into a new house, a young girl begins displaying strange and disturbing behavior until, one day, she disappears behind a closet. While the devastated father is left with no clue about his daughter's disappearance, an exorcist shows up to help.

Alex, a boy obsessed with scary stories, is trapped by a witch in her modern, magical New York City apartment. His original hair-raising tales are the only thing keeping him safe as he desperately tries to find a way out of this twisted place.

George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and their three children have just moved into a beautiful, and improbably cheap, Dutch colonial mansion nestled in the sleepy coastal town of Amityville, Long Island. However, their dream home is concealing a horrific past and soon each member of the Lutz family is plagued with increasingly strange and violent visions and impulses.

Dr. David Marrow invites three distinct individuals to the eerie and isolated Hill House to be subjects for a sleep disorder study. The unfortunate guests discover that Marrow is far more interested in the sinister mansion itself — and they soon see the true nature of its horror.

The Blind Man has been hiding out for several years in an isolated cabin and has taken in and raised a young girl orphaned from a devastating house fire. Their quiet life together is shattered when a group of criminals kidnap the girl, forcing the Blind Man to leave his safe haven to save her.

A monster from a little girl's nightmares comes to life and attacks anyone who would harm her.

A widower, his daughter, and his new wife move into a peaceful neighborhood. At first it appears to be a perfect neighborhood but the family quickly realize that something is not right about their new home.

Eight years have passed since Sara Wolfe and Eddie Baker escaped the House on Haunted Hill. Now the kidnapped Ariel, Sara's sister, goes inside the house with a group of treasure hunters to find the statue of Baphomet, worth millions and believed to be the cause of the House's evil.

A horrified teen mutates into a crazed cannibalistic swamp creature, and must uncover the terrifying secret identity of his father before his nasty natural tendencies force him to make jambalaya out of the locals.

Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, a teenage girl and her younger sister find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late.

Trying to recover from the nearly marriage-breaking stress following the death of their child, Jack and Stephanie spontaneously take off on a road trip. But when their car breaks down in a remote area, they find themselves in a horrific nightmare. Seeking shelter in a house, they soon realize that more danger lurks inside than outside in this spine-chiller based on Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti's best-seller.

In post–civil war Spain, 10-year-old Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to live under the control of her cruel stepfather. Drawn into a mysterious labyrinth, she meets a faun who reveals that she may be a lost princess from an underground kingdom. To return to her true father, she must complete a series of surreal and perilous tasks that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

When a new family moves to an old house in Amityville, they are tormented and tortured by an evil spirit living in the home while trapped by the malicious townspeople who want to keep them there.

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives.

Kit, a troubled girl, is sent to the exclusive Blackwood boarding school, where she discovers that only four other female students have been admitted to learn the four pillars of knowledge under the ominous wing of the mysterious headmistress Madame Duret.

A mother and her 10-year old daughter are trapped in a forest. There is something in this forest. Something unlike anything they have heard before. Something that lurks in the darkness and it’s coming after them.

Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.

Heather Mason and her father have been on the run, always one step ahead of dangerous forces that she doesn't fully understand. Now on the eve of her 18th birthday, plagued by horrific nightmares and the disappearance of her father, Heather discovers she's not who she thinks she is. The revelation leads her deeper into a demonic world that threatens to trap her forever.

After receiving word about a mysterious carcass/skeleton unearthed in the Arizona desert, a father and his daughter decide to remove it from the burial grounds for further study. Once they do so, they, as well as the town, are besieged by a colony of gargoyles living in some nearby caverns.

Rebecca must unlock the terror behind her little brother's experiences that once tested her sanity, bringing her face to face with a supernatural spirit attached to their mother.

A team of paranormal investigators go on one last job to a haunted mental institution where children have reportedly gone missing. While searching for evidence of what is haunting the abandoned building, they stumble upon clues that reveal what made the former head doctor snap and go on a killing spree through the halls decades earlier. Unfortunately, the more they uncover, the more they struggle to make it out of the asylum alive because something inside wants that mystery to stay dead and buried.

During a bachelorette party in a secluded California farmhouse, masked intruders launch a brutal attack, forcing eight women to fight for survival. Led by Tess, a troubled military veteran, they unite to defend themselves throughout a harrowing night.

A man receives a mysterious box containing a terrible secret, a creature that will kill everyone else in his family unless he passes it on to someone he loves to continue its never-ending circulation.

A young woman accepts a job on a property with a traumatic history. Upon her arrival, she soon realizes that the nightmares of her childhood are connected to the evil in the house.

A young woman inherits her estranged father's estate after his mysterious death. Once she and her friends arrive at the mansion, they discover that the home is on an old cemetery, which has the power of opening a portal to another realm, which contains the creatures foretold to the world by writer H.P. Lovecraft.

After a young mother murders her family in her own house, a detective attempts to investigate the mysterious case, only to discover that the house is cursed by a vengeful ghost. Now targeted by the demonic spirits, the detective must do anything to protect herself and her family from harm.

After a stint in a psychiatric hospital, a young woman returns to the house where her father killed the entire cast of The Artist during his exorcism.

Arthur and his two children inherit his uncle's estate: a glass house that serves as a prison to twelve ghosts. When the family, accompanied by a nanny and an attorney, enter the house they find themselves trapped inside an evil machine 'designed by the Devil and powered by the dead' to open the Eye of Hell. Aided by a ghost hunter and his rival, a ghost rights activist out to set the ghosts free, the group must do what they can to get out of the house alive.

Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the doll maker's possessed creation—Annabelle.

A teenage girl living with schizophrenia begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.

A troubled teenage girl who’s struggling to cope with the accidental death of her father suspects that the mysterious killer stalking her hometown is not only her neighbour but her mother’s new romantic interest.

A wheelchair-bound young girl returns to her father's estate after ten years, and although she's told he's away, she keeps seeing his dead body on the estate.

Nearly murdered as a child by her mother, a woman (Katrina Law) returns to the house where her mom went mad.

Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.

A young woman quits her teaching job to become a private tutor and governess for two wealthy young kids, but soon starts to suspect there’s more to their house than meets the eye.

Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.

A mother and daughter move to a new town and find themselves living next door to a house where a young girl murdered her parents. When the daughter befriends the surviving son, she learns the story is far from over.

Emma has a strong aversion towards her family’s new house, especially the attic. After moving in, she becomes miserable and reclusive. The rest of her family also seems unhappy and unsettled. The situation escalates one day when Emma is in the attic alone. All of a sudden someone who looks exactly like Emma attacks her viciously.

Publisher Will Atenton quits a lucrative job in New York to relocate his wife, Libby, and their daughters to a quaint town in New England. However, as they settle into their home the Atentons discover that a woman and her children were murdered there, and the surviving husband is the town's prime suspect. With help from a neighbor who was close to the murdered family, Will pieces together a horrifying chain of events.

