It: 10 more great horror movies with child heroes

Andy Muschietti’s ‘It’ looks set to become the biggest horror movie of the year – and while much of the credit must go to Bill Skarsgård for his sinister portrayal of the evil entity known as Pennywise, we can’t fail to note that the Stephen King adaptation is carried almost entirely by a cast of seven highly talented child actors. No mean feat, considering the film is primarily targeting a mature audience.

The relationship between kids and horror has always been a tricky one, with the age-old cry, “think of the children,” frequently cited in attacks on the genre over the years. However, while many have blasted horror as harmful for the young, many more suggest such material can play a healthy part in a child’s development.

In any case, childhood and its fears frequently play a major role in the genre, and ‘It’ is only the most recent big-screen example of this. Plenty of horror movies have featured children as the protagonists over the years, many of them not necessarily made with child audiences in mind.

And so – overlooking such more family-friendly fare as ‘Hocus Pocus,’ ‘Monster House’ and ‘ParaNorman’ – here are ten more great horror movies featuring school-age heroes, which helped pave the way for ‘It.’

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