Books Horror Five Horror Stories Featuring Big Families and Big Drama Family dynamics can be messy even without ghosts, curses, and supernatural strife… By Lorna Wallace | Published on September 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Leo Tolstoy starts Anna Karenina (1878) with this iconic line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But even the happiest of families have moments of conflict that are unique to their specific dynamic. Whether a family lives under the same roof or only gathers together for important occasions, such as birthdays and holidays, arguments are bound to occur sometimes. While families are capable of creating drama at the best of times, it’s pretty much guaranteed during stressful times—such as you would find in a horror story. And it’s often the case that each additional person added into the mix creates an exponentially messier dynamic. Here are five stories from both the page and screen that explore the chaos that comes when big families—including a nuclear family with lots of kids, large extended families, and even a found family—find themselves thrown into horror scenarios. The Elementals (1981) by Michael McDowell The Elementals follows the Savages and McCrays—families that are united by marriage—over the course of the summer after the death of matriarch Marian Savage. The two families typically spend the hotter months of the year at Beldame, a small stretch of sand on Alabama’s coast occupied by three Victorian houses. Two of the houses serve as vacation homes for each of the families, while the third has been abandoned for many years and is slowly being consumed by sand. The atmosphere of the story feels oppressive—thanks both to the relentlessly hot summer sun and the simmering secrets that are threatening to come to a boil, in spite of everyone’s best efforts. But teenager India McCray has never been to Beldame before, and she can’t help but be curious—especially about the mysterious third house. While most of the adults do their best to pretend that the decrepit building doesn’t exist, India finds herself drawn to it. Not only does her curiosity dredge up some serious family drama, but she also discovers that the house is haunted by something rather strange and very scary. Good Dogs (2024) by Brian Asman Stories about found families can often be quite feel-good, but Good Dogs goes in almost the opposite direction. Our family is a pack of six unrelated werewolves who have been cast out by their blood relatives and are now living together in San Diego. Main character Delia is the unofficial den mother and she’s fully aware that the vastly different personalities of her pack make things difficult. But those challenges are worth the sense of belonging that comes from being around fellow werewolves. Things get particularly complicated when the pack wake up to a severed leg in their garden after a night of debauchery fueled by the full moon. They decide to flee the city and head to an abandoned town in the middle of the woods. It’s not ideal, but at least they won’t be behind bars or risk endangering anyone else’s life. But once there, they realize that something with far bigger teeth than them might be on the hunt… Good Dogs captures the frustration of dealing with family members with whom you never seem to see eye-to-eye. And yet despite that, it also demonstrates the lengths we are often willing to go to in order to protect those we count as family—even the really annoying ones. The Unseen (2025) by Ania Ahlborn Isla Hansen loves being a mother—she’s got five kids with her husband Luke—but she’s currently struggling with a recent miscarriage. While she’s gardening one day, a strange young boy walks out of the woods and she feels an instant connection to the feral, silent, and presumably traumatized child. There have been a lot of recent reports of missing kids in the area, so she assumes he must be one of them…but when no one claims him, she decides to take him into her own family. The rest of the Hansens are very much not okay with adding a new kid—now named Rowan—into their mix, but Isla doesn’t give them a choice. Not only does Rowan’s very presence creep them all out—and the family’s two dogs especially don’t like him—but pretty soon serious accidents and scary unexplainable events start happening whenever he’s around. A mounting sense of dread creeps its way into the story, with the previously relatively settled family dynamic—well, as settled as any family with five kids can be—becoming increasingly fraught and chaotic as things start going off the rails. Ready or Not (2019) Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, Ready or Not largely takes place on the night that Grace (Samara Weaving) marries into the wealthy Le Domas family. After the vows are exchanged and the photos have been taken, Grace learns that it’s a tradition for the family to play a game on the night that someone new joins their ranks (the Le Domas clan made their fortune with a games company, so this tradition only seems slightly weird at first). The bride is instructed to draw a card at random from a puzzle box and she selects “Hide-and-Seek.” While Grace runs around the mansion trying to find a hiding spot, she’s unaware that her new family members are currently arming themselves and plan to kill her when they find her. What follows is a darkly funny (for the audience, not for Grace) and blood-soaked night. Thankfully for Grace though, all is not well within the Le Domas dynasty and she’s able to take advantage of that internal conflict as she fights for survival. The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) Another rich family with dark secrets are the Ushers from Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher. The miniseries starts at the end, with Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood)—the CEO of a massive pharmaceutical company and the patriarch of the Usher family—being haunted by the deaths of his six children, all of whom died in bizarre ways over the course of just two weeks. Roderick decides to reveal to his long-standing enemy, assistant US Attorney Charles Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly)—who has been trying to convict the Ushers of their crimes for years—the truth behind his success and downfall. With that storyline as the framework, we jump back to two other timelines: Roderick’s rise to power as a young man and the two-week period in which the Ushers start dropping like flies. The Ushers are a very messy bunch and they don’t react well to the dawning realization that they’re being picked off one by one. If you want to see a morally corrupt powerful family unravel at the seams in gory fashion, then you’ll find The Fall of the House of Usher to be a very satisfying watch. This list only gathers together a small selection of horror stories that focus on big families, so if I’ve missed any of your favorites—be they books, movies, or TV shows—please feel free to mention them in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five Horror Stories Featuring Big Families and Big Drama appeared first on Reactor.