Enfant Terrible / Live-Action Films

---

• The Bad Seed (1956), which was a theatrical film (in which the Enfant Terrible was named Rhoda) and a TV movie in 1985 (where she was named Rachel). She murders others (including another child), but people don't suspect a cute little girl of doing such things.
• Berkshire County: One of the three intruders is a child who, when he's not sitting in their van eating candy and listening to the police radio, is just as willing to murder as the adults.
• The unstoppable Paperboy from Better Off Dead pursues Lane throughout the movie, demanding the two dollars Lane's family owes him. He also duplicates himself/recruits an army of identical helpers and survives falls that should kill a human.
• Better Watch Out has Luke who tries to seduce his teenage babysitter, stages a home invasion and holds her hostage when she turns him down. He's not even above murdering his own best friend when he tries to free her.
• In Bloody Birthday three children, Debbie, Curtis, and Steven have no consciences and murder anyone either because they feel like it or feel they have wronged them; it was foretold in the movie that anyone born during an eclipse would cause them to behave that way.
• The Brood has a woman who has developed the ability to parthenogenetically give birth to mutant children who represent all her negative emotions, and exact bloody vengeance on anyone who has done her wrong, whether real or imagined.
• The Children semi-combines this with Zombie Apocalypse, as an unknown sickness affecting only children turns them into murderous sociopaths who are very good at faking innocence. Then it turns out teens are affected too; it just takes them longer to turn...
• Several classic horror movies are filled with them, including the Stephen King adaptation Children of the Corn (1984) and its sequels.
• City of God features Lil' Zé, who cemented his position as a monster when he was still only a little kid, and casually walked into a brothel and gleefully killed everyone inside just to satisfy his bloodlust. He didn't get any better with time, and became a Psychopathic Manchild as an adult. The most troubling part is that this was a dramatization and Lil' Zé was a real person.
• The monster in Creepozoids gives birth to a baby with a human face, who subsequently attacks Jake. After an extended struggle, Jake strangles the monster baby with its own umbilical cord.
• Jody Mitchell from Daddy's Girl is a psychopathic little girl who kills anyone who gets in the way of separating her from her beloved father.
• The baby Nicholas in The Devil Within Her is possessed by the spirit of a Depraved Dwarf, and has tremendous strength and murderous intent.
• Dust Devil: One of the Dust Devils is possessing the body of a young child, who seems a little too efficient with his shooting.
• Eastern Condors has a scene set in the Vietcong's internment camp, where a child Vietcong is gleefully playing Russian Roulette with some of the adult soldiers, and doesn't even hesitate pulling the trigger. The same Vietcong child shows up later when the heroes broke out of the camp's prison, and pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit before killing one of the team (who hesitated attacking when seeing the soldier is a child).
• Early on in Freaks (2018), Chloe uses her powers to force a pre-teen neighbor to pretend to be her absent mother, and to hug and kiss her in order to fill the void that she feels due to her mother's absence. Later, she escalates to forcing people to kill themselves and others (albeit as an act of self-defense). It's indicated in news stories during the film that the force of Abnormal children's powers is part of why the government is tracking down and killing Abnormals, showing that apparently the children's powers leveled the entirety of Dallas.
• Full Circle includes Olivia, an adorable little girl who used her psychic influence over other children to make them kill animals ritualistically and watch her murder a young boy.
• In The Good Son, the murderous title character is a Gender Flip of The Bad Seed.
• Gore Orphanage features Nellie who is the reason why children in the orphanage keep dropping dead.
• The Gravedancers: Dennis was preteen Pyromaniac who burned down his father's business, and started the house fire that killed his entire family (and himself). He returns as an Undead Child with pyrokinetic powers to haunt Sid.
• In Halloween (1978), Michael Myers is six-years-old at the time of his first murder. Even more so in the remake, with Deborah finding the notion of Michael killing animals unbelievable. Until he graduates to people.
• The main antagonists of Hellions are a horde of beings that resemble trick-or-treaters and want a pregnant teen's baby.
• At the end of Identity, Timmy York turns out to be the one who committed all of the murders at the motel and kills his mom in her deathbed.
• Claudia from Interview with the Vampire is a little girl who was turned into a vampire by Lestat to give Louis a surrogate child. Upon becoming a vampire, she is a blood-thirsty murderous child who lures people to her by pretending to be lost so she can kill and feed off them.
• It's Alive is about a malevolent baby. Within minutes of its own birth, it kills everyone in the room except mom.
• Parodied in Jane Austen's Mafia! with Chucky, a psychotic little boy who is a parody of Chucky from Child's Play; he murders his grandfather with bug spray so that he can steal his wallet and his father can become the new godfather, he is later seen torturing animals and stabbing dolls, and he gets his comeuppance when he receives a package of tiny dinosaurs which eat him alive.
• The title character in Joshua was possibly one of these. But it is also possible that everything that happened was just happenstance and misunderstandings. In the final scene, it is revealed that yes, he had arranged the destruction of his entire family, just so he could go live with his favorite uncle. He is shown to have dissected his hamster and possibly killed the other class pets, as well as demonstrating textbook psychopathic traits, so he definitely qualifies.
• Thelma from Little Sweetheart definitely is this. Absolutely psychotic she will stalk, blackmail and murder to get her way, and she is only nine years old.
• The Loved Ones: Lola's been torturing boys for a long time, judging by her scrapbook.
• M3GAN: The titular robot is designed to look like a young girl and, over the course of the film, becomes a violent killing machine.
• Men in Black lampshades this in a scene involving a shooting gallery filled with aliens. While the other MIB applicants shoot at the aliens (who're actually just working out, sneezing, etc.), Will Smith's character shoots the lone civilian, an "...eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit...".
• The title character in Mikey is one of these as he is a seemingly innocent child who is actually a psychopath who murders his foster families or anyone else who makes him really angry.
• Lock, Shock, and Barrel from The Nightmare Before Christmas look like trick or treating kids, but are among the most malevolent residents of Halloween Town. The only reason they don't kill Santa Claus instead of capturing him as ordered is that they're afraid Jack will punish them for losing parts of him in the process.
• While not cute per se, Winchell in North certainly is terrible, a Smug Snake really. This preteen school newspaper editor encourages the hero's search for new parents and publicizes it. While North's out searching, Winchell spearheads a powerful movement to make all parents subservient to their children. When he realizes that North choosing to return to his real parents would spoil things, he tricks North into thinking they no longer love him — then sends assassins (adults) out to kill him.
• Damien from The Omen. Your chances of being a decent kid aren't exactly great when you're the antichrist...
• The film Orphan stars a serial-killing orphan or so it would first appear. She's later found out to be an escaped 33-year-old Estonian mental patient with a pituitary disorder and a lot of makeup. It's a lot smarter than it sounds on paper.
• The main character of the B-movie The Pit who feeds his tormentors to a bunch of creatures called the To-lo-logs.
• Played for comedy in Problem Child. Junior and later Trixie, his arch-rival and later best friend and stepsister.
• In Relative Fear, the newborn Adam suddenly lashes out and scratches his mother's face for no apparent reason.
• Samara in the remake of The Ring was aged down from 40 or so in Ringu to about 12. Oh, and she can drive you insane or kill you with her mind. Even after death.
• Soccer Dog: the Movie is a pretty typical forgettable '90s kids movie about a dog who plays soccer. That is except for one character, one of the teammates, Sonny, who is evil to the core. He's basically a stereotypical Italian mobster, only nine years old. He poisons his teammates, threatens to kill the main character's dog, and even punches the coach in the balls at the end of the movie. He's totally out of place and doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the film at all, and yet Lloyd from Malcolm in the Middle quoting Robert De Niro movies is probably the only thing anybody remembers from this snoozefest.
• Poked fun at throughout Son of the Mask. Alvey isn't an evil baby, but he just feels that his own father doesn't care about him, so he uses his Reality Warping abilities to attempt to drive him insane.
• 13/13/13 features a few killer children, including one in the opening scene who killed her mother and appeared covered in blood, and Kendra, the protagonist's daughter, who propositions her father's friend, then kills him violently.
• The main character of The Tin Drum is more of a sociopath than a psychopath but he's still terrible nonetheless.
• The protagonists of Tragedy Girls give the phrase "Teens Are Monsters" a new meaning, but it's revealed they were always like this. They committed murder for the first time in grade school.
• 12/12/12 has Sebastian, a murderous demonic newborn.
• The kids from Village of the Damned. A boy hits one of the kids with a basketball sort-of on accident. He later drowns.
• In Who Can Kill a Child?, children on an island of the coast of Spain for no particular reason start murdering all the adults until only they remain and they go off to recruit other children for their killing spree. The only explanation for their psychotic behavior was that one of the initial survivors claimed that a virus that only affected the children may be causing them to act like that. The same holds true for the remake, Come Out and Play.

---