The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Children’s Monster Movies are similar to standard Monster Movies but for several key differences. In these, the protagonists are children (usually around or before adolescence). Unlike the regular monster movie, where the monster of the show threatens the social order, the threat here will usually be more intimate – a neighbourhood, at most a town.
Children’s Monster Movies will often subvert familiar tropes such as having the monster be misunderstood and feared by others but befriended by the children and often will involve plots where they are struggling to save the creature.
Others can be light knockabout items involving the Famous Monsters or works featuring cuddly adorable versions of monsters as heroes.
Adapted from a Young Adult series of books, this is a bland and utterly superficial film about a secret society of monster-hunting babysitters
A directorial outing from Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas. This is essentially E.T. but with children befriended a cute baby chupacabra instead of a stranded alien
Film spinoff of a popular children’s animated tv series Doug about a kid and his observations on life. The film’s story has the title character befriending a local lake monster
A completely indescribable film about a young girl who befriends a hitman and asks him to protect her from an imaginary monster. The result falls somewhere between Leon/The Professional and a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film
Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated expansion of his 1982 short film has a winning concept – a parody of the Universal Frankenstein films with a teenage boy resurrecting his dog
Modest Australian-made children’s film that imports Henry Thomas riding on the success of E.T. as a teen inventor finding a lake purported to contain a creature from Aborigine legend
BBC mini-series adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ classic children’s book about a secret underworld of bogeys who love all that is filthy and disgusting and their encounter with a human family
Second tv version of the Raymond Briggs book about a secret society of bogeys who love all that is filthy and disgusting, This cheats when it comes to the bogeys but goes all out on the disgustingness of their lifestyle
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
A very likeable children’s film about a boy befriending the monsters under his bed. Made with a gleefully malicious anarchy and some great creature effects
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
Likeable Canadian-made children’s film where Mark Harmon and kids come to rescue of a lake monster
The story of the relationship between a giant monster and a boy whose mother is dying of cancer, this is perhaps the darkest children’s film ever made. Adapted from an award-winning illustrated book
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
A charming French-made animated film about a genteel singing monster. Nothing profound but this is beautifully animated and sweetly appealing in all the right places
Rather charming effort where the Famous Monsters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Creature – are revived and pitted against a group of kids. The film has a great deal of affection for the originals and the encounters are delightful
This was the fourth animated film from Pixar and is a winning and delightful Maurice Sendakian tale about the monsters in the closet and their friendship with a young girl
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
Cutley appealing DreamWorks animated film that brings together a bunch of oddball creatures clearly intended as an affectionate homage to various 1950s sf films
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
The great and underrated Steven Kostanski makes another of his homages to the 1980s VHS era. This has a winning concept where kids befriend an intergalactic dark lord
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
Earnestly made family film from Walden Media in which a young boy finds an egg that grows into the Loch Ness Monster
Spike Jonze conducts his own unique and individualistic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book about a young boy who sails away to an island of friendly monsters
A horror anthology that ostensibly tells a series of children’s tales but heads for an admirable grotesquerie