25 Years After Monsters, Inc., These 9 Childhood Movies and Shows Still Scare Us
Our parents called it children's entertainment. Our nightmares had a different opinion. Relive the childhood scares with nine nostalgic movies and shows streaming free on Tubi.
Childhood entertainment had a funny way of sneaking nightmares into the afternoon TV schedule. One minute, you were watching a colorful cartoon with a bowl of cereal. The next, you were staring at a character whose face would make an unwelcome appearance in your dreams for the next three business days. And somehow, the adults kept insisting these were children's shows.
November 2 marks 25 years since Monsters, Inc. introduced audiences to Sulley, Mike Wazowski, and the idea that monsters lurking behind bedroom doors might actually be more afraid of us. Pixar made an entire world out of childhood fears, turning the creatures we imagined hiding in our closets into surprisingly lovable characters. Of course, not every movie or show from our childhood was interested in making its monsters quite so reassuring.
Revisiting those old favorites as adults is a different experience. The creepy character you used to hide from might now make you laugh, while an episode you barely remember can unlock a very specific childhood fear. You also start noticing the wonderfully strange creative choices that went into these stories, including the details that somehow made it past the adults responsible for deciding what counted as children's entertainment.
Tubi's Friendly Monsters collection offers a chance to rediscover the spooky side of childhood entertainment, complete with the strange creatures and wonderfully questionable adventures we grew up watching. These nine movies and shows might have us questioning what counted as age-appropriate entertainment, but at least we can stream them free without asking anyone's permission to stay up past bedtime.
The monsters are back. This time, we're keeping the lights on by choice.
Coraline
Behind one little door lies a suspiciously perfect mother, a world that seems too good to be true, and an offer to replace your eyes with buttons. Childhood really had some interesting ideas about what counted as a family movie.
Moving into the Pink Palace Apartments isn't exactly the adventure Coraline Jones had hoped for. But in Coraline, a mysterious passage leads her into an alternate world where her parents are more attentive, the food is better, and practically everything seems designed to make her happy. The catch? Her Other Mother has some rather permanent plans for keeping Coraline around, and those button eyes are only the beginning of the problem.
Henry Selick's stop-motion fantasy makes even the most beautiful surroundings feel suspicious once the Other World's cheerful appearance starts falling apart. The Other Mother's transformation is the kind of childhood nightmare that doesn't need a jump scare to make an impression, while Coraline's stubborn curiosity gives viewers someone worth cheering for. Our Coraline spotlight explores the wonderfully peculiar world behind this animated favorite.
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Courage the Cowardly Dog
Somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, a pink dog is screaming for his life while an elderly couple continues living in a farmhouse that clearly needs a supernatural inspection. Cartoon Network really expected us to watch this before dinner.
Courage the Cowardly Dog follows a timid dog living with his beloved Muriel and her perpetually grumpy husband Eustace, whose isolated farmhouse attracts an alarming number of supernatural visitors. Aliens, cursed figures, suspicious strangers, and creatures that have absolutely no business approaching someone's front porch turn Courage's ordinary days into increasingly bizarre survival missions. The poor dog spends half his life screaming, and frankly, he's usually justified.
King Ramses and Freaky Fred are practically childhood-horror royalty, with unsettling designs and strange voices that make their appearances difficult to forget. But Courage's determination to protect Muriel gives the madness an unexpectedly sweet center. He might be terrified of everything, yet he still finds a way to confront creatures several times his size. It's exactly the kind of wonderfully bizarre childhood entertainment we revisited in our look at the '90s and 2000s cartoons that raised us, when animation seemed determined to test how much weirdness kids could handle.
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Goosebumps
R.L. Stine really looked at an entire generation of children and decided they needed more reasons to distrust their dolls, cameras, and summer vacations.
Based on the bestselling books, Goosebumps brings a new nightmare to every episode. Ordinary kids encounter everything from cursed Halloween masks to sinister ventriloquist dummies, usually after ignoring a warning that seemed pretty reasonable in hindsight. Unfortunately, the characters rarely recognize the danger until their perfectly normal afternoon has become a supernatural emergency.
Part of the show's appeal is never knowing what kind of nightmare the next episode will deliver. One story might lean into a creepy mystery, while another throws its characters into an increasingly ridiculous supernatural disaster. The wonderfully cheesy effects and dramatic twists might earn a few laughs today, but those cliffhangers still know how to keep viewers watching. R.L. Stine understood that a good childhood scare didn't need to be realistic to stick with you. Sometimes, a sinister puppet and an unforgettable final twist were more than enough.
This title is available on Tubi until further notice.
ParaNorman
Talking to ghosts sounds like a pretty impressive talent until you realize the living are somehow even more difficult to deal with.
Norman Babcock has an unusual gift: he can communicate with the dead. Unfortunately, nobody in his small town seems interested in believing him. In ParaNorman, the misunderstood boy finds himself facing a centuries-old curse that threatens to unleash supernatural chaos, including a group of zombies whose arrival is unlikely to improve the town's opinion of him. Saving everyone might require Norman to embrace the very ability that has made fitting in so difficult.
Crooked buildings, eerie shadows, and exaggerated expressions give Norman's hometown the personality of a Halloween decoration that's developed a mind of its own. As Norman begins uncovering the truth behind the curse, the movie challenges everything the townspeople believe about who deserves to be feared. The zombies might've been enough to scare us as kids, but revisiting ParaNorman reveals a story with plenty of heart beneath all that spooky makeup.
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Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Gathering around a campfire to trade ghost stories sounds like a harmless childhood tradition. Nickelodeon had other plans, and the Midnight Society was more than happy to participate.
Every gathering of the Midnight Society in Are You Afraid of the Dark? begins with a new tale designed to make ordinary places feel considerably less safe. Haunted swimming pools, mysterious carnival attractions, creepy clowns, and supernatural strangers populate stories where curiosity can lead children into situations no responsible adult would approve of. The opening campfire might look inviting, but the stories that follow rarely offer the same hospitality.
The episodic mysteries often rely on atmosphere and anticipation, allowing a strange noise or shadowy figure to do much of the frightening before the threat finally appears. Revisiting the series is like reopening an old collection of ghost stories, except now you can appreciate the creative twists without immediately checking beneath your bed. The Midnight Society may have adjourned, but a few of those nightmares never got the message.
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The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
Death is supposed to be intimidating. Billy and Mandy somehow turned the Grim Reaper into their unwilling best friend, and his professional reputation has never recovered.
Losing a bet to two children is embarrassing enough. Being forced to spend eternity with them is an entirely different punishment. In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Grim becomes the unwilling companion of two kids whose personalities couldn't be more different. Billy approaches nearly everything with spectacularly misplaced enthusiasm, while Mandy's terrifyingly calm personality makes even the ruler of the underworld look nervous. Together, they drag Grim through adventures involving monsters, magical creatures, and enough bizarre situations to make the afterlife seem like a considerably more peaceful workplace.
Cartoon Network clearly wasn't afraid to let its animators get a little carried away with the grotesque character designs. Demons and supernatural villains might have supplied the scares, but Mandy's complete lack of fear often made her the most intimidating person in the room. The series also belongs alongside the animated favorites we celebrated in our guide to Halloween cartoons for the whole family, where childhood scares came with a healthy dose of ridiculous humor.
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The Boxtrolls
Cheesebridge has a monster problem. Or at least that's what the townspeople have been told. Unfortunately, the man spreading those rumors might be more frightening than the creatures themselves.
Beneath the cobblestone streets of Cheesebridge lives a community of unusual creatures known as Boxtrolls, who have raised an orphaned human boy named Eggs as one of their own. In The Boxtrolls, their peaceful underground existence comes under threat from Archibald Snatcher, an ambitious exterminator determined to convince the townspeople that the creatures are dangerous. Eggs must venture aboveground and challenge the stories everyone believes about his adopted family before Snatcher's plans put them all at risk.
LAIKA fills Cheesebridge with crooked buildings, peculiar inventions, and character designs that make the whole town feel like a storybook with a slightly sinister illustrator. However, inside the grotesque comedy is a surprisingly warm adventure about family and belonging. Turns out the creatures everyone fears might be the least threatening residents in town. The humans, meanwhile, have some explaining to do.
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The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
Dreaming about superheroes and magical planets sounds harmless enough. Then Mr. Electric shows up looking like a giant angry plug, and now bedtime feels much less appealing.
Young Max has an imagination big enough to create entire worlds, including the heroic Sharkboy and Lavagirl. But in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, his fantasies become an unexpected adventure when the two heroes bring him to Planet Drool, a dream world threatened by forces determined to turn imagination into a nightmare. Max must navigate strange landscapes, unusual creatures, and enemies who seem to have escaped directly from the most chaotic corner of a child's imagination.
Few childhood movies embraced the wonderfully bizarre possibilities of early-2000s visual effects quite like this one. Taylor Lautner brings Sharkboy an energetic confidence, while Lavagirl's fiery powers make their adventures feel like a superhero comic brought to life. And then there's Mr. Electric, whose exaggerated face and booming personality gave plenty of young viewers a very specific reason to fear household appliances. Looking back, the whole adventure is delightfully ridiculous. Childhood imagination clearly wasn't interested in keeping things subtle.
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The Real Ghostbusters
Who you gonna call? Preferably someone who can explain why a Saturday-morning cartoon occasionally featured ghosts that looked like they belonged in an actual nightmare.
The paranormal professionals return in The Real Ghostbusters, an animated continuation of the beloved movie franchise that sends Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore into a steady stream of supernatural emergencies. Armed with proton packs, questionable workplace safety practices, and plenty of sarcastic remarks, the team faces ghosts, demons, and bizarre entities threatening New York City.
Bright colors and familiar cartoon humor don't stop the Ghostbusters from encountering creatures that could've wandered straight out of a nightmare. The show's sinister spirits and unsettling transformations prove that the team's equipment wasn't always enough to make their enemies look harmless. The familiar banter and inventive ghost-hunting adventures give the series plenty of nostalgic charm though, especially when the team encounters something even Egon has trouble explaining.
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