By their very nature, horror movies are intended to scare their audience. Because of this, they typically feature terrifying and horrific-looking monsters, spirits, or killers that strike fear in anyone who sees them. From Freddy Krueger’s monstrous look to the shark in Jaws‘ chilling appearance, cinema is filled with scary-looking monsters. Even the seemingly harmless or small monsters prove to be deadly and horrific.
However, there are some films that go in a different direction and introduce monsters who are cute and adorable. While these monsters are still just as deadly as their terrifying-looking counterparts, they stand out because of their charming or pleasant appearance.
Krites (Critters)
The Krites are a deadly race of aliens that escape from an asteroid prison and come to earth in the movie Critters. Since their first appearance, there have been 5 Critters movies in total, along with a TV show on Shudder. The Krites are generally mischievous creatures who can roll up into a ball, much like hedgehogs.
Despite their cute appearance, they are shown to be vicious killers who attack and eat humans without hesitation. They may look small, but they tend to hunt in a pack and work together to bring down larger prey.
Brahms (The Boy)
The 2016 horror movie The Boy follows a nanny who is hired to take care of a life-sized doll named Brahms. While she thinks that it will be an easy—albeit unusual—job, strange things start to happen, causing her to question if the doll is alive.
While the first movie’s events are explained away, Brahms: The Boy II retcons this logic and reveals a demonic-looking monster underneath Brahms’ porcelain face. As far as killer dolls go, Brahms is certainly one of the cuter ones.
Willy’s Gang (Willy’s Wonderland)
Willy’s Wonderland is a quirky, low-budget horror movie that centers around a mute janitor, played by Nicholas Cage, who must find a way to survive a night at a rundown Chuck E. Cheese-style children’s restaurant.
Inside the restaurant are animatronic characters who have been possessed by the spirits of murderous cannibals. The janitor must fight the monstrous animatronics one by one and escape. The animatronics each have a fun and unique design that is capable of entertaining children and terrifying audiences once they become possessed.
Sam (Trick R Treat)
The horror anthology movie Trick r Treat has become a cult favorite for horror fans to watch around Halloween time. The movie tells four different Halloween stories, bound together by the appearance of Sam, a burlap sack-wearing character who shows up every time a Halloween tradition is broken.
While Sam looks like an adorable child trick or treating, his burlap sack is removed to reveal that he is actually a terrifying monster with a pumpkin-like head who attacks people and punishes those who he believes deserve it.
Chucky (Child’s Play)
Since debuting in 1988’s Child’s Play, Chucky has become one of the most famous slashers in horror movie history. Chucky is the result of serial killer Charles Lee Ray transferring his soul into a Good Guys doll via a voodoo spell.
Chucky is a scary killer that always has a darkly funny one-liner ready. However, before he suffers any damage, the Good Guys doll is pretty cute and could actually pass for a real children’s toy with his big blue eyes, colorful outfit, and adorable freckles.
Raptors (Jurassic Park)
When the group arrives at the visitor center in Jurassic Park, they abandon the planned tour and witness the hatching of a baby dinosaur, instead. The group fawn over this unbelievable sight, but the entire mood changes when Dr. Alan Grant picks up the adorable little creature and asks what species it is only to be told that it is a velociraptor. Yet, while the baby version is cute, the fully grown raptors terrorize the group, killing multiple people during the course of the movie.
Cujo (Cujo)
Based on a novel by Stephen King, Cujo tells the story of a friendly and lovable St. Bernard named Cujo who gets bit by a rabid bat and contracts a disease that makes him an out-of-control monster.
Cujo viciously kills multiple people and pins a mother and son in a trapped car for most of the film before he is eventually killed. While he becomes a rabid killer, Cujo is shown to be an adorable dog prior to his descent into madness.
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (Ghostbusters)
Perfectly balancing horror and comedy, Ghostbusters follows a team of paranormal investigators as they combat ghosts and spirits in New York. In the film’s climax, the Gatekeeper instructs the Ghostbusters to choose the form that Gozer, the god of destruction, will take.
The Ghostbusters try to keep their minds blank, but Ray accidentally chooses the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as the form, and Gozer appears as a 100-foot tall version of the mascot to destroy the city. Gozer may be an intimidating entity, but his marshmallow form is adorable.
Gingerbread Men (Krampus)
Krampus is a Christmas-themed horror-comedy that shows the titular creature unleashing his various minions on a dysfunctional family in order to punish them for being naughty. While Krampus himself is a grotesque monster, his minions range from creepy to funny and cute.
The most adorable of Krampus’ henchmen are definitely the gingerbread men. They are tiny and cute, with high-pitched voices. They seem harmless at first, but that lulls the family into a false sense of security, and they are nearly able to kill Howard using a nail gun and razor-sharp candy canes.
Mogwai/Gremlins (Gremlins)
1984’s Gremlins is a horror-comedy movie set during Christmas time that follows a young man who receives a mogwai, a mysterious little creature, as a pet. The man names the mogwai Gizmo and is instructed to follow three very important rules when raising the mogwai. When he accidentally breaks the rules, Gizmo spawns more mogwai, and they transform into reptilian monsters called gremlins.
The gremlins themselves are still fairly cute despite being scary, but, in their original mogwai form, they are the cutest little monsters in any horror movie, hands down.
