Esther, Orphan
When the Colemans lose their 9-year-old daughter, they seek to fill the void by adopting another little girl. Esther is the picture of innocence with her big eyes and the red bow in her hair. When things start going wrong around the house and strange events keep on happening, the mother begins to suspect the newcomer. Everything escalates out of control when people start suspecting the mother instead of Esther. We have a feeling parents will shiver when they hear the words 'I have a special surprise for you, Mommy...' after seeing this movie. Meet the 'Regan' of a new generation.

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Carol Anne, Poltergeist
A poltergeist starts wreaking havoc in the Freeling family home. At first it's all fun and games, and the ghost seems to have fun piling chairs into pyramids. But soon, youngest daughter Carol Anne starts communicating with it through a dead channel on the TV. Eventually the poltergeist kidnaps the little girl and takes her into another dimension. Even though Carol Anne herself isn't evil, just hearing her say 'They're heeeeere' makes us want to run away screaming. (Honourable mention for creepiness: Tangina, the woman who comes to 'clean' the house of spirits. Oh, and if you want more creepy, look into Heather O'Rourke, the girl who played Carol Anne, and her premature death.)

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Damien, The Omen
Super-couple Robert and Katherine Thorn have everything, except a child. When Katherine has a stillborn child, a hospital priest suggests they adopt a child whose mother just died during childbirth. Not suspecting anything, the Thorns take little Damien. Over time, they realize that things aren't all as they seem when people start turning up dead - including the priest and a family nanny. It finally dawns on the Thorns that Damien is the embodiment of Satan, and they must kill him.

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Regan, The Exorcist
Hands down one of the most frightening horror movies ever made, The Exorcist focuses on a young girl who is possessed by a demon. Poor Regan (or just her body, we guess) can spin her head 360 degrees, projectile vomit across a room, climb on the ceiling, and spew vitriol at a visiting priest. Not for the faint of heart, this movie broke new ground, especially in terms of making a child the most horrifying, disgusting creature in the history of horror.

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The Grady Girls, The Shining
Everything about this movie is scary, but top prize goes to the Grady Girls ghosts, who freakishly hold hands and roam the halls of the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains. When the Torrance family shows up at the hotel to act as caretakers, madness begins to set in, and their son Danny starts hearing and seeing things around the estate. The Grady Girls appear to Danny in the halls - and not long afterward, torrents of blood fill the hallways. Time to check out.

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Toshio, The Grudge
The freaky kids in J-horror movies are always the jerkiest, palest, and most grotesque of them all. In this 2004 adaption of the original, several American tourists move to Japan and end up disappearing after they move into a specific house. It turns out the house is cursed, and anyone who resides in it ends up dead. Toshio is the ghost of a little boy who died in the house, and he spends the movie making creepy cat noises and haunting Sarah Michelle Gellar.

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Town Children, Village of the Damned
A sleepy American village is visited by an unknown life form which leaves all the women pregnant. The babies all look normal when they're born, but as they age, it doesn't take the parents very long to realize that the kids are not human...or humane. The children possess a psychotic psychic control over other peoples' minds - enough to make the adults kill themselves through whatever means possible. Creepy blond wigs and shiny red eyes are enough to haunt you in your dreams.

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Cult Kids, Children of the Corn
Stephen King certainly knows how to scare us silly, whether it's a clown from the sewers, or in this case, a bunch of religious zealot children who reside in the cornfields. (He also helped write The Shining, above) Led by boy preacher Isaac, the children are brainwashed into murdering every adult in town. An unwitting and unsuspecting couple drives into the town and wonders where everybody is. When they see kids darting in and out of cornfields, they have no idea how small their chances are of getting out of the town alive.

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Kyra Collins, The Sixth Sense
Yes, Haley Joel Osment is just as frightening, but we wanted to do creepy instead of annoying. In this movie, little Kyra takes the - ahem - cake. Osment's character, Cole, can see dead people who don't know they're dead. Kyra is one of them. In the most disgusting moment of the movie, we see her continually vomit under the bed. Kyra continually urges Cole to watch a videotape, which holds clues to explain why she died in the first place. Once Cole plays the tape, he begins to realize that his powers may be of some use. At least poor dead Kyra receives some closure (and hopefully stops puking).

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Rhoda Penmark, The Bad Seed
It almost seems like any child who has pigtails or braids is destined to be evil. Enter Rhoda, who features in this 1956 film as the perfect child - at first. Rhoda's mother Christine is reluctant to heed the warnings of a recurring nightmare in which her perfect little angel is anything but. When one of Rhoda's classmates turns up dead, Christine begins to suspect her daughter. This film was before its time, especially in terms of the cookie-cutter suburban neighbourhood as the birthplace of all evil.

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The Terminator
There's nothing scarier than a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger, that is until you meet a naked Arnie who cannot be killed! James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator introduced the world to a robot with a metallic endoskeleton and a very human looking (and Austrian, apparently) exoskeleton. Machines ruling the world in 2029 created The Terminator for the express purpose of travelling back in time to reshape the future. Feeling no pain, no emotion and programmed to kill (specifically the woman who birthed the man who led the resistance against the machines), The Terminator proved to be an almost impossible foe. Perhaps Christian Bale's fiery tongue will prove to be a worthy adversary, only Terminator: Salvation will tell.

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I, Robot
This film takes place in the year 2035 A.D., when robots have become commonplace. Dr. Alfred Lanning is the mastermind behind these creepy-looking machines, which are controlled by the Three Laws of Robotics. Essentially, the Laws state that the robots will never harm a human. When Lanning 'commits suicide', an investigator named Spooner (played by Will Smith) discovers the case is not all that it seems. Predictably, the robots eventually begin to feel emotions and become vindictive, threatening Spooner's life as well as all of humanity.

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2001: A Space Odyssey
Bypassing the monkey men beating the ground with bones and that giant black monolith, Stanley Kubrick's time-hopping opus 2001: A Space Odyssey features astronauts who are heading towards Jupiter on a spaceship known as Discovery. The ship is run by a man-made computer named HAL 9000, which malfunctions and attempts to murder the ship's astronauts to camouflage his mistakes. Fortunately, one of the apathetic astronauts hops to work and outsmarts the machinery.

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Artificial Intelligence: AI
In this disturbing and epic film, Steven Spielberg takes Stanley Kubrick's brainchild and explores the frontiers of genetic engineering. AI examines what it would be like if we could actually create our own children. Sure, they're not real, but they have emotions, crafted memories, and the ability to form relationships. When young robot David (played by Haley Joel Osment) is abandoned by his new family, he must find his way in the underworld, where he discovers many others like him who harbour resentment towards 'real' humans.

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Blade Runner
Only in an alternate reality could Blade Runner be less successful than The Terminator, but so it was in 1982. This sci-fi noir film, adapted from a novel by Philip K. Dick (with the infintely more poetic title 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'), stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a cop in Los Angeles in 2019 who specializes in assassinating rogue replicants. Giving Terminator a run for his money, replicants are human-like androids with short lives and are used for colonization. When a quartet of replicants starts going ape and killing a bunch of humans, Deckard is sent to unplug them, so to speak. It's a piece of cake until Deckard realizes he may have fallen for a replicant (Sean Young) who is unaware of her true nature. To kill or not to kill your true love? That is the question.

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The Stepford Wives
Based on Ira Levin's satirical novel, published in 1972, The Stepford Wives tells the tale of a small suburb where women are beautiful and happy doing everything a 50s housewife would gladly do, but most modern women wouldn't. Obviously, there is something rotten in Connecticut, which a new couple discover when they move into the seemingly perfect enclave. Turns out the village wives have been replaced by robots - apparently the only way to get women in the kitchen in the 1970s.

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Battlestar Galactica
Considered one of the original 'machines turning on their masters' films, BSG focuses on the contentious relationship between humanity and human-made robots called Cylons. On the eve of a peace treaty signing, the Cylons attack the humans, nearly wiping them out. The remaining humans assemble on the ragtag warship Battlestar Galactica to collect their forces and make a plan. They decide to find a new planet to begin their new lives, and kill off the Cylons, who follow in hot pursuit. A disturbing look at artificial intelligence and the potential for total destruction.

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Westworld
Before dinosaurs roamed Costa Rica, Michel Crichton's fantasy world was a lot more grounded. Hollywood's late resident science fiction geek wrote Westworld in 1973, which revolves around a high-tech amusement park known as Delos. This park is peculiar for the fact that androids will supposedly accede to a visitor'a every will (including fantasies involving sex, drugs and death). Unfortunately, the visitors didn't figure on a trigger happy Yul Brenner. The actor plays the Gunslinger, a robot programmed to start duels, who starts to use his gun on the visitors.

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Transformers
Even though humans didn't create the Transformers (made up of friendly Autobots and evil Decepticons), any Earth-bound citizen still fears the brunt of these gigantic monoliths. Human beings aren't the target of the Decepticons, but they're also not any concern, which means they'll get stomped, crushed, or thrown if they're in the way. The Autobots seek to keep the peace with humanity, but it often doesn't turn out that way.

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War of the Worlds
In Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel , a species of mechanical aliens invades Earth (noticing any trend with Spielberg's movies?). They're not robots created by humanity, but they're out to eradicate every last one of us in the name of...well, we're not sure...but in the face of such awesome, insurmountable strength, humans are little more than specks of dust to wipe off the planet. Lesson learned, Spielberg!

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