*Keep up with our 2025 end of the year coverage here*
There’s a longstanding rule in horror movies: don’t put kids and pets in danger. Of all who succumb to the genre’s various chills and thrills, the most vulnerable of us are supposed to be safe. But 2025 saw a record number of films and TV series buck this taboo in extreme and brutal stories that left us shaken to the core. Fortunately, a bright young crop of new performers rose to the occasion, previewing an exciting future for horror to come.
Whether running from zombies and serial killers, battling sinister foster mothers, or matching wits with interdimensional monsters, horror’s newest stars stole the spotlight and proved that the genre kids are still alright.
Christian Convery – The Monkey and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
Horror fans last saw Christian Convery frantically climbing a tree to evade a rampaging beast in the 2023 film Cocaine Bear, but in 2025 we watched the veteran child actor level up with prominent roles in two of the year’s most exciting films. In February, Convery wowed audiences as Hal and Bill, twin brothers tormented by an evil windup toy in Osgood Perkins’ grisly horror comedy The Monkey. Desperate to connect with their long-lost father, the brothers discover that each time they activate the sinister simian, its drumsticks unleash a wave of shocking death.
November would see Convery move to the opposite end of the genre spectrum as a young Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. Years before attempting to reconstruct a man using the assembled flesh of recovered corpses, Victor is a young medical student tormented by an abusive father who may have caused his mother’s death. Del Toro dramatically builds out the hubristic villain’s early years, reminding us that the famously mad scientist was once a frightened child desperate to reverse this devastating loss. Though different in nearly every way, both stories explore the horror of parental death and the long shadow cast by this unique trauma.
Convery more than met the challenge presented by these wildly different roles, cementing his place as a leader in the new generation of horror stars.
Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, and Jonah Wren Phillips – Bring Her Back
One of the year’s most upsetting movies shocked audiences by threatening already vulnerable children with unthinkable harm. Bring Her Back follows a newly orphaned teen named Andy (Billy Barratt) who struggles to protect his visually impaired half-sister Piper (Sora Wong) in the months leading up to his eighteenth birthday, when he’ll be able to serve as her legal guardian. Their foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), dotes on the girl, going out of her way to meet Piper’s special needs. But she clearly wants Andy out of her house, and Oliver, her other foster child, is strangely silent and disturbed.
Danny and Michael Philippou follow their 2022 hit Talk to Me with this similarly brutal story that steadfastly refuses to pull any punches. Barratt leads the young cast as a traumatized teen overwhelmed with adult responsibility, while Wong is equally endearing as a vulnerable child walking into grave danger. But Phillips steals the show as the strangely sinister yet sympathetic Oliver, who engages in jaw-dropping acts of gruesome self-harm. A heartbreaking ending causes us to question our understanding of caregiving through grief and the power adults hold over young lives.
Hassie Harrison – Dangerous Animals
Every decade, director Sean Byrne returns to horror with a gorgeous yet eviscerating film centered around a complex female character. His 2025 entry, Dangerous Animals, is the gut-churning story of a charismatic serial killer who uses nature as a deadly weapon. Shark expert Bruce Tucker (Jai Courtney) offers cage diving excursions in the waters off Australia’s beautiful Gold Coast. But his true passion lies in using the powerful fish to murder unsuspecting tourists, then artfully capturing their moments of death on his vintage camcorder.
Fortunately, his latest target, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), is a strong-willed drifter who will stop at nothing to stay alive. Byrne’s harrowing film sees her not only fight back against this sadistic serial killer, but stare down a massive great white shark and bite off her own thumb to escape captivity. We watch her bravely confront a series of unimaginable scenarios and repeatedly find help just out of reach. The oldest actor on this list, Harrison, embodies the spirit of carefree youth mixed with an unflinching determination to survive.
Alfie Williams – 28 Years Later
When the original 28 Days Later first hit theaters in 2002, the franchise’s newest star wasn’t a glint in his parents’ eye. British newcomer Alfie Williams made an impressive feature film debut in 28 Years Later, the long-awaited third installment of Danny Boyle’s genre-defining zombie series.
Decades after the Rage virus had decimated the British Isles, survivors have been indefinitely quarantined and essentially left to fend for themselves. Spike (Williams) has been raised in a primitive village on Lindisfarne, a coastal island protected from the roaming infected by a landbridge only accessible at low tide. The film begins with a coming-of-age trip beyond the heavily fortified gates as Jaime (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) introduces his son to the ravaged UK. But this deadly expedition opens Spike’s eyes to possibilities his father has long since abandoned. Williams carries this emotional film with startling vulnerability, providing a vessel through which we channel our own rage at the vicious reality we’ve inherited.
The first of a planned trilogy, Boyle and writer Alex Garland leave us on a harrowing note as Spike meets another, more dangerous child of the apocalypse. Nia DaCosta’s upcoming sequel teases a rocky road for the young protagonist tasked with finding himself in a shattered world.
Indy – Good Boy
Arguably, the year’s most surprising performance came from one of the best boys in recent memory. Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, stars in Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, a haunted house story told from the perspective of the family dog.
Recovering from chronic lung disease, Todd, played by Leonberg but voiced by Shane Jensen, has moved to his late grandfather’s abandoned house with only Indy by his side. Determined to protect his human companion, this loveable pet begins to sense that something is not right in the crumbling home. Sinister shadows emerge from the walls, and Todd seems strangely drawn to the basement. Leonberg’s story unfolds in a series of vague yet terrifying interludes viewed exclusively from Indy’s limited perspective. However, this lack of concrete information creates a sense of terrifying helplessness as we watch Indy struggle to communicate the danger he senses.
The astonishingly emotive canine performer manages to pull us into his limited world and an unwavering desire to protect his best friend. Only time will tell if this endearing dog will lead another horror film, but Indy’s surprising star turn will go down in history as one of the genre’s most exciting moments.
Arian S. Cartaya – It: Welcome to Derry
We knew that with Bill Skarsgård onboard, Andy Muschietti’s It: Welcome to Derry would have no problem recreating the terror of Stephen King’s 1986 novel It. But with a story set one generation before his crowd-pleasing 2017 adaptation, would he be able to recapture the magic of the Losers’ Club?
Muschietti’s It succeeds largely thanks to the chemistry of its young cast, who bring some of King’s most popular characters to life. But success can often be a double-edged sword, and the 2017 Losers’ Club left fourteen giant shoes to fill. After a blood-soaked bait and switch in episode 1, It: Welcome to Derry introduces a stellar cast of likeable kids again tasked with battling the shapeshifting monster. Yet amidst this new batch of self-professed “freaks,” one stands out from the crowd.
Arian S. Cartaya won our hearts as Rich, a diminutive charmer willing to sacrifice his life to save his friends. We watch the lovesick tween console and care for his crush in the wake of a grisly eye injury, explain the details of a graveyard ritual, and dazzle an adult crowd with his mad drumming skills. Without spoiling the events of this tear-jerker season, Rich adds emotional depth to a spectacular story willing to kill beloved characters. A shocking reveal in the season finale brings Rich’s story full circle while reframing his place in the long line of Derry’s bravest children.
Nell Fisher and Jake Connelly – Stranger Things
Stranger Things has always been a show about tweens battling larger-than-life monsters. Also referencing the novels of Stephen King, the Netflix juggernaut begins with a group of intrepid kids on bikes squaring off against an otherworldly foe. But nearly ten years after its inaugural season, the original Party is growing up and becoming adult warriors in their own right.
Season 5 sees creators Matt and Ross Duffer inject youth into this sprawling story with a surprising duo of unlikely heroes. We first met the youngest Wheeler sibling as a toddler on her mother’s hip. Now a headstrong tween herself, we watch as Holly (Nell Fisher) is literally pulled into the ongoing battle against Henry/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Along the way, she forms an uneasy alliance with a brutish classman known as Dipshit Derek (Jake Connelly), who transforms into a likable protagonist before our eyes. Fisher and Connelly add life to the long-running series, helming some of the season’s most memorable moments. From making a “your mom” joke in Vecna’s face to traversing a series of traumatic memories, Holly and Derek prove that the kids are still alright in Hawkins, Indiana.
It’s been an admittedly stressful year with a seemingly endless stream of real-life terrors reflected in narrative cinema. What’s more, the famously tumultuous film industry has been mired in lucrative streaming wars and an unprecedented number of studio mergers. Fortunately, horror returns to save the day with a new generation of scream queens and kings offering hope for the future of genre filmmaking.
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