10 great dark animated films

In the aftermath of Halloween, horror fans grown tired of slashers and ghost stories can see something truly chilling: high-definition cartoon rabbits.

Restored in 4K for release on Blu-ray and UHD, back in cinemas for the first time in 46 years and upgraded from a U rating to a PG, Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978) certainly contains some unconventionally dark moments for an animated family feature. Warnings from the rabbit god of a coming apocalypse. Bunnies snared until their blood vessels pop. Gaslighting villains. Slashed haunches. A personification of death who calmly whispers “You’ve been feeling tired, haven’t you?”

On the surface, rabbits don’t appear to be an obvious choice when it comes to animal antagonists. A recut trailer for Harvey (1950) imagining Jimmy Stewart’s floppy-eared friend as a malevolent demon somehow still doesn’t seem scary. Killer bunny B-movie Night of the Lepus (1972) is a hilarious misfire, proving that cinema-goers will accept small town USA being menaced by frogs, spiders and even radioactive ants, but not hares filmed from below in slow-motion.

So what gives Watership Down its fearsome reputation and causes it to still spark a furore whenever it’s screened during daytime? Are its visuals any more graphic than other animated films? From Pinocchio (1940) to Rosen’s own “spirit animal” sequel to Watership Down, 1982’s The Plague Dogs, darkness has long been part of the cartoon colour palette. Here are the animated features that should probably come with a stronger warning label than “contains mild peril”.

Director: Lotte Reiniger

Conceived a century ago, Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette adventure is not only the oldest surviving animated feature film but also a critical and technical smash: Reiniger devised the film’s movement method herself using backlit cut-outs pulled by wires. The story – lovestruck underdog embarks on heroic quest in the name of valour – isn’t exactly original (and openly borrows from traditional Arabian Night tales), but Reiniger’s eerie presentation and unreadable, eyeless characters are a long way from the comfort and cosiness of later interpretations, such as Disney’s Aladdin (1992).

After our heroic prince is kidnapped by a flying horse while protecting his sister from an evil sorcerer, he crash-lands in faraway Wak Wak where he must fight off hordes of demons and prepare for a showdown with a pursuing shape-shifter. As bodies are incinerated and hairy, eight-armed ghouls spill from cracks in mountains, Reiniger’s visuals are as eerie as they are influential: the “Three Brothers” sequence from 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is almost certainly a homage.

Director: Karel Zeman

Nicknamed the ‘Czech Méliès‘ for his pioneering use of early special effects, filmmaker Karel Zeman chose an equally turbulent subject for his 1964 feature: the carnage of the Thirty Years’ War. The result is a mix of live action and gruesome animation that would later be acknowledged by Terry Gilliam as an inspiration for his work in both the Monty Python TV series (1969 to 1974) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).

A Jester’s Tale switches mediums at the drop of a hat – sometimes midway through a shot, flipping from doodles to actors duelling in front of an animated backdrop. Despite originating from a communist country, the film’s model castles and Looney Tunes-style decapitation gags won it both best picture and best director awards at the 1964 San Francisco International Film Festival. Its influence on filmmakers as diverse as Jan Švankmajer and Tim Burton can also be traced. The macabre animations of Burton projects The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Corpse Bride (2005) surely wouldn’t have happened without it.

Directors: Serge Danot and Eric Thompson

When cult stop-motion series The Magic Roundabout transitioned to the big screen, things took a turn for the seriously weird – quite a feat given the show was already strange enough thanks to the trippy effect of using footage from the French children’s programme Le Manège enchanté with new and unrelated English dialogue over the top of it.

In this feature-length story things begin as they do on TV, with Dougal the dog waking up to another morning in the Magic Garden. Remembering a voice he heard the previous night coming from the abandoned factory he encounters Buxton, the sky-coloured moggie of the title who’s plotting to take over the whole garden by brainwashing its residents. Seeing Zebedee shorn of his iconic magic moustache is disturbing enough, but the scene where Dougal investigates the shuttered building is so dark and foreboding it could give the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia (1940) a run for its money.

Director: Jimmy T. Murakami

More terrifying than the infamous Protect and Survive animations designed to prepare the UK for nuclear war, Jimmy Murakami’s adaption of the Raymond Briggs storybook shows us the human tragedy that lies at the end of a ballistic missile. Jim (John Mills) and Hilda (Peggy Ashcroft) aren’t worried about the apocalypse: they’re World War II survivors, confident that Britain can take it. Plus, their house is in the rolling Sussex pastures, miles from any potential military target.

When international nuclear conflict erupts, our plucky pensioners survive the blast only to watch the land around them slowly become as lethal as a reactor core. Radioactive fallout is everywhere with lesions beginning to appear on the couples’ skin – something Jim cheerfully puts down to eating too much tinned food. As they fight over their survival potty and slip into delusions, our cuddly protagonists dream of sunnier days in the ’50s and pathetically begin to follow the advice in their government-issue leaflets.

Director: Isao Takahata

Anyone exploring Studio Ghibli’s back-catalogue expecting the light touch of Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), The Cat Returns (2002) or Porco Rosso (1992) be warned: Isao Takahata’s Second World War film hits with brute force, and is as unsparing as the weapons it depicts.

Based on a story by Second World War survivor Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies shows the impact of bombing through the plight of siblings Setsuko and Seita as they scavenge for food in the ruins of Kobe. With their mother dead and their father away heroically defending their country, the children escape the clutches of a cruel aunt and try to live off the land. The imaginary worlds conjured by Seita to shield his little sister from starvation serve as a reminder that he’s still a child himself. Only the non-animated Come and See (1985) can match Grave of the Fireflies’ harrowing depiction of the wartime loss of innocence.

Director: Richard Linklater

The second and most mind-bending of Keanu Reeves’ four acting collaborations with Winona Ryder, this adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novel uses an innovative animation style — interpolated rotoscope — to portray a universe where nothing is as it seems. Director Richard Linklater drops us into the head of undercover cop Arctor (Reeves), whose suburban family home now houses drug-users and dropouts instead of his absent loved ones. The hedonists’ narcotic of choice is Substance D, a pill which causes Freck (Rory Cochrane) to believe he’s being followed by insects and Barris (Robert Downey Jr) to seemingly morph into a giant one.

Identities become even more blurred thanks to “scramble suits”, a future innovation which allows its wearer to visually glitch and avoid identification. Anticipating America’s opioid crisis and reliance on household technology, the film shows the lengths a supplier will go to in order to keep a captive market.

Directors: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi

This Oscar-nominated black-and-white feature shows us how deeply real historical events can impact upon one person. Drawn from co-writer and director Marjane Satrapi’s memories of her adolescence during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the film shows her teenage excitement at the deposition of the Shah, and how quickly it gives way to anxiety as a fundamentalist regime takes charge.

The first Gulf War results in even more social restrictions being imposed, and a tumultuous flit to Europe sees Marjane struggle with her identity as Iranian immigrant. When she decides to return to her homeland she’s almost arrested for wearing makeup; later, the sequence where she strolls through a market while hulking vendors offer Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd and other black market cassettes seems comical. That is until Marjane is cornered by armless female figures who pick apart her street clothes like snakes. Like Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (2008), Persepolis shows us both how much and little things have changed.

Directors: Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol

This French-Belgian ghost story looks at how children navigate the subject of death. Marcus D’Angelo voices a young cancer patient, Leo, whose illness comes with a consolation: he can astral-project his consciousness and float around his native New York. This allows him to become an observer in a bigger story, one where wounded cop Alex (Jared Padalecki) is trying to unmask ‘The Face’, a disfigured cyber-attacker holding the city to ransom.

Kids will enjoy watching comic nut Leo re-enact the heroics of some of his favourite Marvel characters, and try to thwart the shady antagonist with a complexion like stained glass. Parents, meanwhile, will recognise the sprinkling of film noir clichés as Leo tails villains and foils assassination attempts. They may also enjoy hearing Vincent D’Onofrio as The Face, a performance which feels like a dry run for his turn as the tyrannical Kingpin in Daredevil (2015).

Director: Alberto Vázquez

When Spanish comic book artist Alberto Vázquez announces he’s directing another animal animation, nature-lovers should approach with extreme caution. His 2015 post-apocalyptic nightmare Birdboy: The Forgotten Children imagined an orphaned Jack Skellington lookalike being parasitised by a demon crow, and going on the run from religious fundamentalists accompanied by a piglet who’s haunted by a spider.

Seven years later Vázquez gave us Unicorn Wars, which plays like a cross between the Pokemon franchise and Platoon (1986). The setup is simple enough: unicorns are locked in a war of attrition with teddy bears, the latter of whom seek to drink the mythical creatures’ blood. It’s a sight one might have expected from Sean Connery when he dressed as a teddy for The Avengers (1998), but not from a cartoon where the villains are Care Bear cute. Throw in full-frontal teddy nudity and moments of stuffed toy cannibalism and Unicorn Wars neatly fulfils Vázquez’s intent to blend Apocalypse Now (1979) with Bambi (1942) and the Bible.

Director: Sean Charmatz

Proving that you don’t have to look far afield to find hard-hitting animation, this recent DreamWorks effort takes a sideways look at childhood anxieties. Jacob Tremblay voices the eponymous 11-year-old, who diligently logs all his worries in a fear journal, but doesn’t count on the embodiment of his biggest fear – nyctophobia, AKA being alone when the lights are off – manifesting as a gigantic blue-eyed shadow.

‘The Dark’ agrees to take Orion on a tour of his nocturnal universe to assure him that nighttime can be fun too. As with Inside Out (2015) we see human emotions portrayed as characters (Insomnia and Quiet, for example), but their actions here are more slippery — unsurprising given the film is narrated by Werner Herzog. One scene features a foreboding bedroom closet that harbours something far scarier than all the slasher clichés you can think of. Thankfully the film pays off with a positive message: whether the object of your fears is animated, live action or just imaginary, being scared can unlock hidden strengths.