What is that movie you saw at too young an age that still haunts you to this day?

A Serbian Film. Any age is too young

Growing up in the 80s meant that pretty much any kids movie was going to be traumatizing. Gremlins: horrifying. Neverending Story: emotional damage. The Land Before Time: can't think of dinosaurs without tearing up. It's like the whole movie industry was explicitly devoted to fucking us up.

Watership Down

My parents thought it was a nice cartoon about rabbits I guess. Weirdly, My nightmares where mostly about the intro with the special art style, mostly…

We'll it doesn't haunt me but looking back it was RoboCop. That movie is a bit much for a 6 year old to watch.

Akira. My father rented it for my brother and me because "animated movie is for kids". I was 4, and my brother was 3.

Event Horizon.

I know it gets a bad rap, but it is a cult classic in my book. The most perfect symmetry of science fiction and body horror since Alien(s). Add on top of that a fantastic cast, a mildly campy vibe, and it somehow manages to hold up well even today in my opinion. Even though it scared the fuck out of me as a kid, I have a weird nostalgia for it now.

Oh oh oh I know this one!

Glory! The civil war film! There's a scene where a union soldier takes a cannon ball to the head and it explodes in a gory mess. It was during a tour to Gettysburg, and I threw up on the bus after seeing it. Then they brilliantly played the Mel Gibson Patriot movie where a revolutionary also takes a cannon ball to the head, only this time it removes the head in slow motion and more detaches it than blows it to head smoothie

American History X. I wasn't ready for the curb scene.

When I was about 5-6 I had fever and couldn’t sleep. I lived in a apartment complex and my mom had the neighbour from the next apartment over for coffee so I was sitting in the neighbours apartment while they had the doors open into the hall. Well, there I was, sitting alone in the dark, watching some sappy teens have a heart to heart while suddenly the earth opens under one of them and it gets brutally eaten the fuck alive while the other one screams in panic and tries to rescue it. Had some unforgettable nightmares that night.

Fucking Tremors man.

The movie that actually fucked me up for a bit as a kid was some black and white movie about spiders that took over a small town. I don't remember a single thing about the movie, other than crates/the town absolutely covered in webs and people getting wrapped up like bugs.

Stand By Me - The scene with the leaches. As a kid in a small country town with nothing to do on weekends but run around and swim in the local creek, I was so scared to ever do that again.

Both of mine I later learned are comedy/satire:

Starship Troopers and Mars Attacks.

The sheer gore from Starship Troopers made me ill.

The Martian design was freaky and I wasn't a fan of the instant death lasers. It had me thinking aliens could come down one day and we'd have no chance against them.

The ring

it.

I still dislike clowns to this day.

My cousin and I used to spend the night at my grandma's house fairly regularly. Between my grandpa and my two uncles who lived there, the house had its fair share of old blank VHS tapes containing recordings of various horror films among comedy classics like Revenge of the Nerds. As far as horror goes, Return of the Living Dead scared the absolute shit out of us at age 8, as did Tremors and Gargoyles (1972).

And since you're no doubt wondering, I don't remember coming across any porn on those old VHS tapes, but my uncles did keep a few magazines stashed away in their closets that my cousin always knew exactly where to find.

EDIT: God damn, this really opened up a well of (positive) memories over an entire family that has since deceased. Cancer and poor health eventually took every last person in that house. Doesn't help that nearly everyone smoked and drinked to the day they died. They were all such good people, though. Rest in peace.

Bambi (seriously)

The Shining.

I remember asking dad "what's wrong with that man (Jack Nicholson)?" and he told me that he had spiders in his brain. That was also really weird.

the exorcist. At age 8

My Catholic church going up bringing has made possession into a genuine fair even though I'm atheist now.

My friend and I went snooping and found her parents' hard-core sex tape. Should not have watched that at 10 years old.

Got a good quick lesson in anatomy, though.

Killer Clowns from Outer Space. That was one creepy fucking movie.

Saving this whole thread for movie recommendations.

I already mentioned one movie in a reply (Arachnophobia), but another that really sticks out, and which I watched at an even younger age is The NeverEnding Story.

I remember being around 5 or 6 at a friends' house, parents just left all the toddlers in the playroom in front of the movie and had their social gathering, meanwhile I'm terrified and hysterically crying my eyes out (I'm sure at least a couple of the other kids were too, but I can't remember)..
Artax in the swamp destroyed me completely, and the Darkness and the Sphynx statues, and even Morla scared the living shit out of me (yes, they left us there to watch the entire movie).

I still can't bare to watch the swamp scene.

Twister. Living and visiting the Midwest USA surely didn't help. I used to get extremely anxious when it would get even mildly windy and still have a bit of a panic attack when a tornado warning/watch go off.

Event horizon fucked me up for a while

Not the scariest movie but Pitch Black. I was 7 and definitely didn't help my fear of darkness very much. Pretty neat movie as an adult but definitely get flashbacks when I see it. Also the movie Signs. Was scared of it as a kid but as an adult I find that movie absolutely hilarious.

But the worst is not a movie but a video game. I watched my brother play Resident Evil 2 when I was around the same age. I was absolutely terrified of zombies after that. Because of a few specific scenes in the game I refused to have my bed close any windows. Even at friends houses I'd rather sleep on the floor if the couch was too close to a window. That lasted until I was like 13. As an adult I still can't bring myself to play that game. I love Resident Evil and horror games in general, but as soon as I hear the music for the main lobby of the police station in Resident Evil 2 I get so terrified I have to turn the game off. Maybe I'll be able to play the remake...

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. I was looking under my bed for pods for weeks!

Blow Out at about age 8. I was worried for ages that someone would strangle me and mutilate me in a public toilet.

Watership Down was worse though. Why anyone thought that was okay to show to children, I will never know.

Event Horizon. I couldn't sleep for days as an 11 year old! Love it now, but man, way too scary.

Four Rooms. I was 14 but very sheltered and that shit was nuts.

Event horizon, it still terrifies me to this day

Not a movie but when I was 9, my grade 4 teacher decided to put on one of those ghost shows about a haunted Scottish castle and the story went that you could hear the bumping of a murdered body being dragged up the stairs in that castle. I told my dad and he spoke to the teacher and she told the whole class it was my fault we couldn't watch tv shows anymore so I got doubly traumatized. But fuck that, I had to run up the stairs in my house for literal years after that fucking show because I was afraid I would hear the murdered body.

Man I hate that fucking woman.

Not a movie but The X-Files series.
When my little sister and me were at our dads for the week we used to take our covers and pillows and lay down between the TV and the sofa, which our dad slept on. He had the TV on basically 24/7 so we'd watch something together and he'd fall asleep and then me and my sister would move to our beds after a while but often falling asleep ourselves right there on the floor. We had been doing this for years and then they started airing The X-Files late at night on the channel we mostly had on. I almost always fell asleep last, so I ended up being awake for a couple of episodes and they really traumatised me. I remember being the only one awake and being so scared I didn't dare to even move my head or even breathe fully. I did tell my dad about it but he'd always fall asleep pretty early and I'd forget to change the channel.

Years later both my sister and me had gotten too tall to fit laying down between the sofa and the TV so we had stopped that tradition but my dad still always fell asleep with the TV on. They started doing reruns of the series and that damn intro music was so scary for me that I would have a battle with myself of just riding it out or getting up and walking down the dark hallway to change the channel. Both options were bad in their own ways. I still get shivers down my spine from the theme music.

A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was about 8 at a sleepover birthday party. All of us had nightmares after that and he's still my go to boogeyman.

It doesn't haunt me, but Full Metal Jacket. My dad rented it for family movie night when I was 10 or 11, and needless to say my mom is STILL mad at him for watching that with me in the room for the first hour. Worst part is my dad didn't know about it, he only knew R Lee Ermy from a show he did on the history channel called Mail Call that he watched with my sister growing up. So he never expected Ermy to shout that stuff.

Jaws when I was six. Even swimming pools make me uncomfortable.

Interview with the Vampire. I was waaaay too young to be watching that, and the scene where the light comes out and burns that one to a crisp scared the hell out of me. I remember having trouble falling asleep for a couple nights after that.

Signs and twister were pretty terrible for a kid when you grow up surrounded by corn fields.

It doesn't really haunt me, but when I was a kid I was up early in the morning and had nothing to do so I turned the TV on. And a black and white movie was showing. And I knew that those are funny. Like Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. So I laughed my ass off as Miss Marple was horrified watching a woman being choked to death in the next train over.

Anaconda. It's not that it was a particularly impressive movie but for some reason it intensified my ophidiophobia.

Blair witch project. Friend and I were suppose to go watch some other movie but didn't realize we went to watch this one. At the time I lived outside of city and had to walk home some distance through woods without street lights. Boy did shadows move that evening. I totally didn't expect it, even though I find horror movies not as entertaining today, back then that one experience left quite an impression.

Starship troopers. Still have the mental Image of the bug drilling a hole in a dudes head.

Also robo cop. All I can remember is him (only head and torso) being hooked up to cables and medical computers and one of the scientists says "what a weird kind of pain he's having" or something like that

I was not ready to see Mars Attacks. What is worse is knowing it is campy and ridiculous but I still can't make myself watch it again as an adult.

James Bond - The spy who loved me.

The scene I remember is that car diving into the sea and turning into a submarine. And when it came out again, all the people staring with their mouths open. Now all my life I want to have such a car!

:-)

In 5th grade Catholic middle school they show us an anti drug movie hosted by Rosey Grier. There's clips of people going through withdrawal, photos of people who smuggled drugs under incisions in their skin, all kinds of horrible stuff. It was similar to the real life gore movies they used to show during driver's ed classes. They did apologize after realizing they messed up. It's no wonder I didn't try weed until I was 18. I haven't been able to find this on the internet

The Sound of Music.

The Fly

When I was younger, I watched this movie where a terrifying creature, vaguely resembling a human and driven only by thoughts of death, escaped from a parallel dimension to hunt down a girl at her middle school, and there was this Wayland-Yutani type company who tried to cover up the escape by having their security force capture the creature and send it back to its own dimension, but then, the creature took the girl and her mother with it to its hell dimension, with the company security force in pursuit.

And then a bunch of guys who are way too into horses got in a big fight that turned into a dance number, and then creature went to the gynecologist for some reason.

I was brought to tears by the existential dread that still haunts me to this day that I decided to take a break from movies. But whatever that movie was, it should have won an Oscar this year.

The exorcist.

I was probably 8 years old, this thing gave me nightmares for years

Mars Attacks. Hilarious now but it absolutely traumatised me when I was younger.

This is going to be a departure from the rest of this thread.

I saw Emmanuelle when I was 10 or so, and man did that movie change me. Some scenes still pop into my head, clear as when I first saw them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_(1974_film)

The Exorcist

Killer clowns from outer space, that clown thing that comes up from the toilet messed me up.

Terminator 2

Nothing but Trouble

Aliens.

That movie scared the shit out of me. It’s been more than 35 years and I still don’t like that movie.

It's silly, but as a kid I once turned on the TV to Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", and in particular, the scene where an enormous man is fed so much that he explodes. Still haunts me to this day.

Not exactly too young, but I shouldn't have watched Human Centipede

Grave of the Fireflies.

Literally impossible to see that at an age where it won't scar you for life.

Watership Down.

Like, after I saw that movie as a kid, horrible things in other movies didn't really have an impact. Well... That, and I understood movies were all make-belief. I used to love watching making-of features for movies.

that scooby doo movie with zombies, spooky shit

Evil Dead (1 & 2)

Everything claymation reanimated just scarred me lol. Years later in high school I remember watching Sam Raimi's Spiderman with the Doc Oc surgery scene, and that camera work took me right back to being too young for Evil Dead.

Sam Raimi has very distinct style

For some reason, I have always found The Brave Little Toaster deeply unsettling, but I can’t really explain why.

Bonus round suggestion: was there a book you read when you were too young?

Mine was Pillars of the Earth. I was, like… 5? I think?

Fire in the Sky... I am 40 and was maybe 10/11 when I watched it. I now have a legit fear of being abducted by aliens that makes it hard to sleep alone. I can't watch any movie that deals with alien abductions.

Tbh I don't think anyone is old enough to watch Mars Attacks. The visual design is too much. The movie itself isn't that bad, but the fucking martians. Fuck me.

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Why did my parents think it was a good idea to take me to see The Excorcist

The Seventh Sign.

To this day I can’t watch biblical horror in particular without nightmares. I’m not even Christian.

The Fly

I saw Nightmare on Elm Street at age 4... my sister was "babysitting" I had nightmares for years.. still remember them decades later.

Ghost Ship. Every now and then the wire scene and the scene where they eat maggots comes back to me in my thoughts, and i hate it lol.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

I was about 6 when it was running in free TV here, as a major blockbuster and everyone talked about it, so I begged my dad to let me watch it.

Was good fun in the beginning, but when they ripped the slave's heart out, I nearly shat myself.

Probably mall rats just because after seeing Joey Lauren Adams tits I would spend the rest of my life searching for that high.

Edit: more honest honest answer is probably Ernest Scared Stupid. If that movie scared you, you were probably too young.

Not a film, but I read Cormac McCarthys The Road at 25, and it threw me into a deep depression from which I never fully recovered.

Fire In The Sky. I haven’t rewatched it ever since.

Cats.

I was so confused by all the singing cat people.

I saw a bit of Ghoulies by happenstance at a very young age back in the 80s. While it doesn't haunt me, I do remember it making me very irrationally uneasy any time I remembered the incident later. Not even uneasy in the context of the clip, which was the stupid puppet monster popping up out of a toilet lol

Goldeneye - the squeezing scene

Anaconda - regurgitated people

Congo - when they throw his brain

Mercury Rising - "Mother, Simon is home"

Peewee Herman - Large Marge

The truly harrowing experience I had as a kid was the Alien Encounter ride at Disney Orlando. I was 8 and it was a field trip so the peer pressure was high. Nightmares for weeks after that. I still remember it breathing on me in the pitch dark.

The Big Boss, there is a scene where some killed guys are frozen in a ice factory and their bodies cut into smaller pieces. I was watching it through the door which was opened just a little bit instead of sleeping, while my dad and uncle where watching it.

Arachnophobia. That movie is the reason I’m scared of spiders. I loved spiders prior and had a book of spiders that I’d read while pooping (grass spiders are so fckn cool) and would even play with them, but after that movie I couldn’t anymore. I’ve gone back and watched it as an adult and it’s so campy and cheesy. If only I’d watched it when I was older I could have enjoyed it.

I was 11, and the movie was the sixth sense. The girl vomiting scared me, and also when the mom leaves the kitchen and returns a few seconds later and all the cupboard doors and drawers are open…

I was watching this with my family at home and during the movie my older brother used his cell phone to call our home phone which was located on the other side of the house in the kitchen. I hadn’t realized it was him calling the home phone and I jumped at the opportunity to leave the scary move to go answer the phone. All the lights were off as I entered the kitchen. I flipped the lights on and boom… all of the doors and drawers are wide open. My brother lured me into the kitchen with that phone call just to scare me.

It’s not that scary of a movie but to this day I refuse to watch it. Also, I stopped speaking with my brother years ago.

The Omen at seven. I wasn't allowed to watch the "scary parts" so I only heard them. Turns out the audio design was way better than my parents gave them credit for. The sounds of the dog attack, falling shingles, and zombie nanny were burned into my brain for years.

Then I watched the movie properly as an adult and... it kind of sucked. The reality couldn't compare to what my imagination conjured up from the sounds alone.

Jaws. The first one. In a theater. To this day I won’t swim in water where I can’t see the bottom.

The Blair witch project when I was 8. Watched it by myself.

Jaws

I was around 6 or 7 when I saw it on television, before R rating was even a thing and almost 40 years later I am still terrified of sharks.

The Thing. I think I was 6 or so when I saw it. I had nightmares for years.

Apparently my parents were extremely good about not exposing us to stuff too early. Except for blazing saddles. My brother picked up some new vocabulary from that film at the age of 2.

Alien is pretty high up on the list. The chest-buster scene was a bit much for this 8yr old. Next up would be the faces melting scene in Raiders.

Gremlins. Still freaks me out.

The Crying Game.

Independence Day: The dissection scene

They: The whole damned movie

Kentucky fried movie

Alien. Saw it when I was under 10 years old. I wouldn't say it haunts me but close enough.

Ghostbusters 2 - that painting and the pink goo gave me nightmares for weeks.

Brain Damage. I definitely should not have seen that movie at whatever age I was.

Final destination 2. I was of driving age.

Pet Cemetery, kid getting hit by the semi

Sybil

Dominion (2018 film), I was a mear 40 something & way not ready to see that shit!!

Eight Legged Freaks fucked me up with the cat scene at the beginning. I’m a big softie for animals in films.

8mm

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

A guy being shot to the head until it turns into mushy red pulp from 4chan. Might have been the reason for all my psyche problems ngl.

It's never an entire movie, it's a scene here and there.
Like in The Exorcist, when they showed it on network television back in the late-70s it must have been, the CBS Saturday Night Movie or something like that, "viewer discretion is advised".
Anyway... clicking channels, I stumbled upon a moment during the ritual itself, with the girl in silhouette on her knees, arms towards the ceiling, the demon Pazuzu behind her. That screwed up many a night afterwards.

As a young adult, another scene that fucked with my head for many a night was the grainy dream transmission, with the faint audio covered in static noise, from John Carpenter's "Prince Of Darkness".

Now I'm gonna flip the concept on its' head and tell you what film cured my fears of the dark at the time. Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation Of Christ".

Aliens. I was terrified of facehuggers being under my bed for a decade. Not so much anymore.

The Thing messed me up as a 14 year old.

The Gate

When I was a kid, my friend and I went to blockbuster and pulled a copy of Poltergeist from the store shelf. There must be a different movie that is also called Poltergeist, besides the most popular movie with that name. Anyway, we returned to my house, put the VHS in the tape player, and began watching it. Without giving too much away, it had some awkward scene between two of the adult characters in the film. It was so awkward, that my friend actually screamed, “this is not Poltergeist!” She had seen the popular film, before that day, and I had not. To this day. I have still not seen Poltergeist because I have this fear of finding, and playing, that awful movie by mistake.

Brain Dead was plenty disturbing to me when I was a kid. Still one of my favourite movies and now I understand that it's a hilarious comedy, not just a gross out fest although there is plenty of that too lol

Casino.

That scene at the end with the bats... Still haunts me to this day.

Saving Private ryan. I was 11 or 12. The slow knife scene hasn't left my mind till this day.

A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think I was ten? That was not a good night's rest.

Khilona bana khalnayak. Tatya bichchhu. Om bhatt swaha!

The Silver Bullet. That Werewolf scared me soooo much as a kid.

Plague Dogs

...it's a cartoon

Mine would have to be Hollow man (2000) it was on TV at the time and for some reason as a kid watching the shifting both the animal and the human scene where they turn invisible where the skin disappeared then his muscles and veins, was absolutely terrifying, I don't remember well but my parents said I wouldn't let them sleep for weeks.

The Blob (80s version), The Thing, and House. The first two still hold up really well but the third one I rewatched as an adult and it was so stupid I was embarrassed I had been so terrified of it as a little kid.

I was a late teenager when it came out, but I got incredibly horrified once I saw the poster for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. Seriously, who knew turning ponies into humanoids could end up looking so uncanny?

There were a couple for me:

I was young when Alien came out, but my grandfather had it on VHS soon after. Ermagherd. Still one of my favourites films.

Xtro.

But there's one I'll never forget. A woman on a boat, with a metal bucket tied to her belly, with a heat source underneath it, that contained a rat. The rat would do anything to escape the heat... and the film showed the process. I was probably 10 at the time, and it's an image/predicament I'll never forget. No idea what the film was called.

killer klowns from outer space

The first Friday the thirteenth when i was 15 or so. My parents didn't even allow me to watch the news or any movies aside from a few cartoons, so i was shocked.

The Icecream Man. I had never watched a proper horror movie before, I was scared of the icecream van coming around for ages.

I joined my older brother when we was watching the zero boys on VHS.

I would have been around seven at the time and some scenes were a little too much.

Deliverance.

If you love this planet.

A short documentary about nuclear war. Saw it when I was about 12, images that last a life time.

Felidae

Or whatever the animated movie featuring a gory cat detective story was called.

The Screaming Woman when I was 7. About a woman buried alive.

Permanently Deleted

Gigi. I loved back when I was a little girl (“leeetle girrrrl”), but rewatching as an adult I was HORRIFIED.

gremlins and thriller.

Hannah Montana-specifically an Halloween episode referencing murderous puppets

Exactly the same! I saw it when I was 8. Also the original Resident Evil movie.

Return to Oz.

DoooooorrrRRRRRRRRTHHYYYYY GAAAAAALLLEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

This, not too long ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Mommy

Hereditary. I’m old and I still insist I am too young to watch it.

Nothing probably haunts me to this day but there were some horror anthology series that were pretty harsh when I was little. I also vaguely remember a movie about some creepy doll. I don't think it's Child's Play, but just about any creepy doll would do, though.

From dusk till dawn

Edward scissorhands

The Horror Show. That's when I decided it wasn't a good idea to watch unlabled VHS tapes from the basement.

Candyman.

Holy fucking shit, saw it when I was maybe ten years old. I didn’t go into a bathroom for weeks after that, I peed outside against a wall. There was absolutely no way I was going in any room with a mirror.