Most people don’t think of animated films as the ones that make you shudder. But hear me out: some of the best horror and thrillers are animated because of the medium’s flexibility. Concepts like reality warping can take a lot of artistic liberty in animation. Auteurs really shine by showcasing specific styles, like claymation. To push my animation agenda, I thought I would compile a list of a few of my favorite scary animated films to keep you up at night.
Perfect Blue
Satoshi Kon directed Perfect Blue, which came out in 1997. Despite its release before I was born [Editor’s Note: this just made the rest of us feel like walking piles of dust.], it is incredibly relevant to today’s climate of fandom and female stardom. This film is not only, in my opinion, one of the best psychological thrillers or animated features of all time but also one of the best films of all time.
The film revolves around a former pop star, Mina, who quits her band to pursue acting. Some fans are not happy about this. Suddenly, the people working around her are ending up dead. Kon delves deep into stars, specifically female stars, searching for agency and how, even if you’re a celebrity, people expect to have a certain amount of control over you.
Obsession is a frequent theme in horror and thriller fiction. However, Perfect Blue showcases it in the most contemporary way: fan culture. Kon crafts hallucinatory, nightmarish visuals to critique today’s parasocial relationships and the need to establish boundaries between fans and celebrities.
Kon’s entire filmography is worth checking out, but Perfect Blue is one of his best for sure. It’s available to rent or buy on YouTube.
Coraline
A fan-favorite of kids from the 2000s, 2009’s Coraline is a children’s animation film that still sends a shiver down my spine years later. Henry Selick directed the film and also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.
Coraline is about the 11-year-old title character of the same name, who discovers a secret door that leads to an alternate world where her life is amazing. In order to stay in the other ‘reality’, she has to make a real-world sacrifice.
The scary part about Coraline is that her dream-like fantasy in the “Other World” turns into a very real nightmare. To be honest, I’m still shocked that this film is for kids and rated PG.
I don’t know what other kids’ films explore concrete fears like your parents’ inherent flaws, your own privilege, and how abundance comes with a steep price. Perhaps the scariest thing is that, just like Coraline, we can’t always distinguish between good and bad. It’s a lesson that still rings true as an adult.
Selick’s stop-motion masterpiece is stylistically brilliant in a way only animation can be, bringing exaggerated fairytale illustrations to the motion picture. Coraline is available to stream on Tubi.
The Wolf House
The Wolf House, originally titled in Spanish La Casa Lobo, is a Chilean film by directors Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña. Its animation is really special, using stop-motion, painting, and papier-mâché for this broken child-like look. Its premise is based on a true story about Colonia Dignidad, an isolated colony in Chile established by German immigrants after World War II. The closed-off community grew in infamy as reports of torture and criminal activity reached the outside. This led to authorities and the press labeling it a cult.
María, a girl from Colonia Dignidad, loses three pigs and faces punishment, prompting her to run away to an abandoned house in the forest. The film frames itself as a fairytale-like propaganda film used to indoctrinate people into a cult. The Wolf House is incredibly interesting, incorporating elements of the avant-garde and surrealism throughout the story.
I was the most petrified when I realized I had fallen for the propaganda. In the beginning, I thought the wolf (a stand-in for the cult leader) was evil. Then, as the film progresses, just like María, I began feeling like maybe the wolf was right. It’s really an allegory for how people can take advantage of other’s fears and brainwash them like real cults.
Using people’s fear against them is what horror films do, and society too, through advertisements, social media, the news, etc. It’s really a testament to our own self-agency. I mean, we all have free will….right?
I recommend reading about the history of Colonia Dignidad before watching the film, as understanding the place’s background provides helpful context for the story. The film weaves many nuances from Chilean history into its narrative. Even if the film can be hard to understand, it wholly conveys the scary sentiment.
The Wolf House is available to stream on Fubo and Hoopla.
A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly is an unexpected deep cut from the filmography of the Before Sunrise trilogy and Dazed and Confused, director Richard Linklater. The film is an eerie animation starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder.
The film, released in 2006, uses the technique of Rotoscoping, where animators trace over live-action footage to create lifelike animation. This means the actors in the film visibly appear as their characters, as the footage is an animated version of their performance.
Beyond its unique animation, A Scanner Darkly delivers a riveting thriller as it follows Bob Arctor, an undercover cop in a future where much of America battles addiction to a hallucination-inducing drug. Arctor tries to immerse himself in the drug world to infiltrate the supply chain.
As Arctor gets more involved with the drug known as substance D, no one can differentiate the real from the fake. Everything causes paranoia since everyone in A Scanner Darkly uses scramble suits, hiding their real identity. This is really a demonstration of the more existent fear of not knowing people’s true intentions.
Neither the audience nor Arctor knows who to trust, and even worse, Arctor does the very thing he set out to stop. Arctor lives two different lives that begin to collide with one another, which is an experience relatable to many.
A Scanner Darkly is available to stream for free on YouTube.
There are so many more films I could talk about, from Phil Tippet’s incredibly terrifying and unsettling Mad God to another Satoshi Kon film, Paprika, which is the better Inception (or rather, Inception is the worse Paprika).
Yet, I digress. Animation often gets pushed into a category that limits it to children’s programming. I hope people begin to focus more on animation that uses its form to its full benefit. The benefit of embodying concepts that could never fully be expressed in our real world is too valuable to ignore.
