Best kids' movies to watch on Netflix - from K-Pop Demon Hunters to Wallace & Gromit

With the half-term break on the way, the chances are you might be looking for a new film to keep the kids occupied – or perhaps for something you can watch with them that works for the whole family.

The good news is that Netflix has no shortage of options to choose from, including everything from 2025 mega-hit K-Pop Demon Hunters to virtually the entire library of films from the exceptional Studio Ghibli catalogue.

If you're after some classic blockbusters that are also suitable for younger audiences, the likes of Back to the Future and Jurassic Park should fit the bill – provided your kids can withstand a few frights – while if you're looking to introduce a few more macabre themes, Guillermo del Toro's spellbinding adaptation of Pinocchio is a great place to start.

We've compiled a lit consisting of 20 varied options currently available on the streamer below – scroll down for our picks alongside reviews from the Radio Times archive.

Check out our list of the best family films on Netflix below.

1. K-Pop Demon Hunters

You don't have to know a thing about the South Korean K-pop phenomenon to enjoy this deliriously silly English-language animated musical. It introduces us to delightful three-piece girl band Huntr/x (voiced by Arden Cho, Ji-young Yoo and May Hong). As global superstars, they wow huge crowds on stage – but also secretly fight demons to save the world. Now the baddies have a plan: they've created an equally talented boy band, Saja Boys, to steal Huntr/x's fans.

Led by the evil, yet attractive, Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), Saja Boys aim to gain in popularity until they're ready to unleash their demon armies. This is a dazzling watch, with animation reminiscent of the kinetic, colourful Spider-Verse movies but with a bold Korean twist. The jokes are universal but K-pop fans can also enjoy cheeky nods to real-life bands (Saja Boys's six-pack-flaunting member "Abs" could well be San from Ateez, for example). As for the music: there's a reason lead track Golden hit number one across the world, including in the UK. – Jayne Nelson

2. My Neighbour Totoro - and more Studio Ghibli films

Set in the 1950s, this charming tale draws on the childhood experiences of director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away). Left alone while their father frets over the condition of their mother in a nearby hospital, Satsuki and her younger sister Mei begin exploring their new house in the country and are soon having fantastical adventures with soot balls known as "dustbunnies", a 12-legged cat bus and furry giant Totoro.

Everything sings of the innocence and wonderment of youth and, while some may bemoan the minimalist storyline, the graphics are an utter delight. – David Parkinson

NOTE: We could have populated this list entirely with Studio Ghibli films – there are a huge range of wonderful options from the beloved animation studio currently streaming, with Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service and Howl's Moving Castle among the others which are well worth checking out.

3. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) brings his distinctive style to this wondrous stop-motion adaptation of Carlo Collodi's timeless fable. Ingeniously transposing the story to Benito Mussolini's fascist Italy in the 1930s, the film sees anguished woodcarver Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) crafting the titular puppet (Gregory Mann) following a tragic incident.

Ewan McGregor turns in a delightful performance as the talking cricket who serves as narrator. The animation is stunning, especially in the sequences where the director leans into the source novel's surrealism, while Alexandre Desplat's atmospheric score is spellbinding. Del Toro has spoken at length about Pinocchio's influence on his life and career, and this intricate film is a clear passion project made with love and care. With sensitivity and heart, it explores grief, war, and the question of what it truly means to be human. – Patrick Cremona

4. Back to the Future

This irresistible combination of dazzling special effects and sly comedy propelled Michael J Fox to stardom and Robert Zemeckis to the front rank of Hollywood directors. And time has not robbed it of any of its vitality. Fox plays the young student who travels back in time to the 1950s and acts as matchmaker for his future parents, who are showing no sign of falling in love.

It's beautifully played by the cast (honourable mentions to Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover), and makes the most of an ingenious script from Bob Gale and Zemeckis that finds time to poke fun at 50s icons and lifestyles between the bouts of time-travelling. Zemeckis's direction is equally adroit and he never lets the effects swamp the film. – John Ferguson

5. Mary and the Witch's Flower

A curious girl finds a magic flower and is whisked away to a land of witches in this vivid animated adventure. It's directed by Studio Ghibli alumnus Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Arriety, When Marnie Was There), who takes us on a colourful ride filled with fantastic creatures and dastardly villains, brought to life by an excellent English voice cast including Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent.

This sweet and simple story may lack the emotional heft of classic Japanese anime, but it gets the basics right. And, in Mary, the film also has a different kind of hero, one whose journey is as much about self-acceptance as it is saving the day. – Victoria Luxford

6. IF

Writer/director and actor John Krasinski follows his A Quiet Place films with a gentler, if saggy and derivative take on family trauma in this child-friendly fantasy. Cailey Fleming plays 12-year-old Bea, whose mother has died and whose father (Krasinski) awaits an operation. Living with her grandma (Fiona Shaw) in New York, Bea begins seeing cutesy "IFs" (imaginary friends) and helps neighbour Cal (Ryan Reynolds) find these affable creatures' childhood pals.

Krasinski seems set on making a live-action Pixar equivalent – echoes of Monsters, Inc and more mount up - but the animation studio's precision-honed plotting and comedy elude him as IF meanders through Bea's healing arc. The huge cast of A-listers voicing the CG IFs proves indulgent, diluting the focus further, though Fleming and Reynolds's measured leads provide anchoring charm.

A visit to the IFs' magical world adds flashes of invention, too, before the finale's inevitable tug on the heartstrings. Amid hazily defined homilies about remembering lost loved ones, Krasinski's warm-hearted muddle slips rather too readily from the memory. – Kevin Harley

7. Nimona

This animated adaptation of ND Stevenson's graphic novel fuses medievalism with neon-bright futurism. Ballister Boldheart (voiced by Riz Ahmed) is made a knight, one of many who've vowed to protect his city from an ancient monster beyond its walls. Just moments later, however, he's framed for murder and goes on the run - pursued by fellow knight Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), who's also his boyfriend.

Boldheart's plight attracts the attention of the peculiar Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shapeshifting pink weirdo who enjoys a fight. A tentative bond forms between the rogue knight and the homicidal "monster" in a film that successfully explores the themes of friendship, diversity and acceptance.

Visually, Nimona is stunning, its inventive 2D animation blending with eye-popping 3D design. The action set pieces are thrilling, too, although possibly a little intense for very young audiences. While some of the plot twists are easy to guess, it doesn't spoil what is an otherwise fresh and exhilarating adventure. – Jayne Nelson

8. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

West Wallaby Street's dynamic duo return for their first major adventure since 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death, and find themselves pitted against an old foe. All is well with Wallace's latest invention, a super-efficient automated garden gnome called Norbot, until it comes to the attention of their old nemesis from The Wrong Trousers, the dastardly Feathers McGraw.

Hacking into the cheese-loving pals' computer system from his prison cell in the zoo, McGraw takes control of the bot, mass-replicates it and triggers a crime wave, framing Wallace in the process. Consequently, it's up to Gromit to clear his owner's name and bring the bad guy to book, with the help of a plucky policewoman. Laughs, jeopardy and outrageous physical comedy ensue, with the result significantly better paced than the only previous feature-length instalment in the franchise, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Creator and co-director Nick Park ensures the expected elements are in place: a gag-packed script, magnificent set design and a healthy helping of bonkers gadgetry. Taking over from the late Peter Sallis, Ben Whitehead ticks all the right boxes as the voice of Wallace, ensuring a smooth transition that sustains the fun millions of fans have come to expect. – Terry Staunton

9. Bridge to Terabithia

Two young outsiders find sanctuary in a world of imagination in this charming fantasy. Based on Katherine Paterson's children's novel, it's an emotionally rich testament to the life-changing power of friendship. Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb are wonderful as ten-year-old misfits Jess and Leslie, who are drawn together by their mutual alienation and delightful creativity.

After an awkward introduction, they become inseparable, inventing a magical imaginary kingdom known as Terabithia (a homage to CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia) in their local woods. This attractive realm and its fantastical creatures provide a showcase for a wealth of enjoyable digital effects.

Yet, ironically, it's the duo's mundane daily experiences and the way their secret exploits gradually empower them at school that are the story's greatest strengths. In his debut movie as director, former Rugrats animator Gabor Csupo tackles pre-teen issues with both wit and sensitivity, while the film's unexpectedly tragic turn makes the final segment particularly affecting. – Sloan Freer

10. Chicken Run

This feathered pastiche of such PoW classics as The Great Escape and Stalag 17 is an awesome achievement by those clever film-makers at Aardman Animation. Rocky (voiced by Mel Gibson) is a "lone free-ranger" rooster who promises to help the hens in Mr and Mrs Tweedy's high-security egg farm find a way to freedom.

The nods to classic film moments are funny and plentiful, the largely British voice cast (Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks, Miranda Richardson, Timothy Spall) lends moments of humour and pathos, and the set pieces are exhilarating in their ingenuity and comic élan. – David Parkinson

11. The Mitchells vs the Machines

With its eye-popping animation, gleefully anarchic humour and heartfelt father-daughter narrative, this dazzling comedy is every bit the kind of film you'd expect from the producers of The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Movie-loving teenager Katie (voiced by Broad City's Abbi Jacobson) can't wait to go to university, not least to get away from her overprotective dad (Danny McBride).

A fraught situation is made worse when he packs the whole family into the car to take Katie to college, only for their road trip to be thrown off course by a robot uprising. Can the Mitchells set aside their differences and save the planet?

Though it's stuffed with visual gags and outrageously funny set pieces (many involving pet pug Doug), the film never loses sight of its human characters. They imbue this kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes with real heart, ensuring that while The Mitchells vs the Machines is a nonstop gag-fest, it's also a warm and witty celebration of family. And pugs. – Josh Winning

12. The Sea Beast

Imagine if Moby Dick's Captain Ahab wasn't on a mission of revenge against a white whale. Instead, his life's quest was to kill a gigantic red sea monster that looked like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. That's the premise of this hugely entertaining animated film that follows the crew of a hunting ship, the Inevitable, as they seek out murderous sea beasts to destroy.

Captain Crow (Jared Harris) and Jacob (Karl Urban) have fought hundreds of watery battles with tentacled monsters. However, it isn't until the arrival on board of a child named Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator) that things start to go wrong.

Directed and co-written by Moana's Chris Williams, The Sea Beast has a lot of fun smashing together genres (pirates vs King Kong, anyone?). The film is given extra punch thanks to a witty script, inventive animation and a spirited performance from Hator, who previously played the lead in the West End production of Matilda. – Jayne Nelson

13. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Chiwetel Ejiofor won the best actor Bafta for 12 Years a Slave and has chosen a similarly stirring, against-the-odds true story for his directorial debut. The star has also adapted William Kamkwamba's memoir that's set in a small village in Malawi in 2001 when the 13-year-old William overcame school expulsion and parental mistrust to create a crop-saving wind turbine with the aid of a library book and a bicycle dynamo.

Maxwell Simba (in his debut) carries the focal role of William with conviction and some aplomb, while Ejiofor gives a supporting performance of controlled power as the boy's embattled father, Trywell. The film adopts an episodic narrative structure - using the chapter titles of sowing, growing, harvest, hunger and wind - to illustrate the arduous agrarian existence experienced by Trywell and his fellow villagers. Constantly at the mercy of a climate that can parch or flood the land at any given moment, the farmers are also hamstrung by corrupt government officials (who are not shy at handing out beatings) and rapacious capitalism (tobacco industry-induced deforestation).

It's sensitively directed and Ejiofor strives to keep things real with much of the dialogue in Chichewa. It's no bad thing to have Mike Leigh's regular cameraman Dick Pope (Mr Turner, Peterloo) on board to provide a vivid and visceral authenticity. Meanwhile, Antonio Pinto's subtle score gently underpins a story that avoids lazy lapses into sentimentality. The result is a genuinely life-affirming tale that displays a refreshingly unpatronising view of the challenges facing communities in 21st-century Africa and acts as a ringing endorsement of the importance of education. – Jeremy Aspinall

14. The Greatest Showman

Take everything in this fictionialised biopic of circus inventor PT Barnum with a pinch of salt and you'll love the glitz, glamour and glow of an all-singing, all-dancing musical in the grand old Hollywood tradition. The self-confessed "Prince of Humbug", Barnum (Hugh Jackman) goes from marrying his childhood sweetheart (Michelle Williams) and redundancy to fame and fortune thanks to the popularity of his big top "Freak Show".

Jackman is a superb ringmaster with Zac Efron (as Barnum's showbiz partner) and Rebecca Ferguson (as Jenny Lind, "The Swedish Nightingale") providing top-notch support. La La Land lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's songs provide the melodic counterpoint to some extravagantly staged routines, with Lind's power-ballad showstopper Never Enough among the musical highlights. – Alan Jones

15. The Karate Kid

This heart-warming, junior version of Rocky - both films were directed by John G Avildsen - became a massive worldwide success, spawning a series of sequels plus hit Netflix show Cobra Kai. Ralph Macchio plays the bullied teen who is taught the secrets of karate by wise old Pat Morita and turns the tables on his tormentors.

Macchio rises above the trite script to deliver a sympathetic and believable performance, while Morita is equally good value - and look out, too, for Elisabeth Shue in an early role. This is certainly the best in the film series. – John Ferguson

16. Orion and the Dark

A writer with great form in dissecting adult neuroses, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) turns to childhood anxieties with this endearing if derivative DreamWorks animation. Young Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is scared of everything from "murder clowns" to mosquitoes, but mostly fears the dark. Duly, the benign embodiment of darkness (Paul Walter Hauser) visits, intent on soothing Orion's fears.

A brisk, bright buddy movie follows, as Orion and the Dark join other playfully realised "night entities" - Insomnia, Quiet, Unexplained Noises etc - as they carry out their work. Adapting Emma Yarlett's picture book alongside first-time feature director Sean Charmatz, Kaufman teases dry humour from Orion's hang-ups and the night crew's spiky banter.

Further fresh touches include Werner Herzog's voice cameo, a spry song by The Flaming Lips and a nightmarish cucumber dentist, which help to offset distracting echoes of manifold Pixar films elsewhere. Orion and the Dark may be dramatically lightweight and heavy on homilies, but Kaufman's surreal imagination and empathy for the awkward make for a vivid, winning and wryly relatable charmer. – Kevin Harley

17. Enola Holmes

Sherlock's little sister proves to be no mean sleuth herself in this fun adventure, based on the popular novels by Nancy Springer and starring a headstrong Millie Bobby Brown in the title role. Free-spirited Enola awakes on her 16th birthday to find her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) missing, leaving behind an odd assortment of gifts but no apparent clue as to where she's gone or why.

Against the wishes of her elder brothers (Henry Cavill as the famous detective, Sam Claflin as the stuffy Mycroft), she absconds from her uptight finishing school and sets out to solve the mystery. It's a knockabout yarn that never takes itself too seriously, blessed with a witty script and taut action.

There's so much to enjoy in Brown's captivating central performance, especially her numerous asides to camera that take the viewer along for the ride. The plot may be a little sticky in places, but the occasional hiccups don't hang around, and as the opening salvo in a potential franchise it'll do just nicely. – Terry Staunton

18. Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg soared to new heights with this massively successful adventure that spawned a monster-sized franchise. The world's ultimate theme park, featuring genetically re-created dinosaurs, is about to open and owner Richard Attenborough decides to give a sneak preview to a select few, including scientists Sam Neill and Laura Dern.

However, all is not well in this new Garden of Eden and, in the jungle, the creatures are restless. (When movie scientists tamper with nature, you just know something will go wrong!) T rex and her chums may be the stars of the show, but Spielberg orchestrates the action with such effortless verve that, even today, it's hard not to be transfixed by the thrilling spectacle and the sheer scale of the director's vision. – John Ferguson

19. Corpse Bride

Made around the same time as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this wonderful fantasy appeared in what was a vintage year for fans of the director. This exquisitely crafted example of stop-motion animation puts a hip spin on a Russian folk tale, with shy Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) wandering into the woods to practise his marriage vows and ending up hitched to a corpse (Helena Bonham Carter) – a passionate, blue-hued beauty with a maggot living in her eye.

She whisks him off to a curiously vibrant subterranean land, but this enchanting world and his new bride's increasingly apparent charms are little comfort to Victor when he'd rather be married to his living, breathing fiancée Victoria (Emily Watson) above ground.

There's a strong resemblance here to Burton's previous foray into feature animation, The Nightmare before Christmas, but this time the gothic morbidity is tinged with more sweetness, and the consistently funny and often lyrical script is far better. – Leslie Felperin

20. Little Women

Told with abundant affection, the eighth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel reaches the screen courtesy of Lady Bird's Greta Gerwig. Evoking the ramshackle loveliness of Meet Me in St Louis, it's the story of the March sisters - including Saoirse Ronan's trailblazing tomboy Jo and Florence Pugh's petulant aspiring artist Amy – who are coming of age in 1860s New England.

The giddy promise of girlhood and the triumphs and disappointments that follow are captured in a honey glow, accompanied by a vigorous Alexandre Desplat score that explodes with joy and sorrow. While keeping largely faithful to the text, Gerwig tweaks the structure and draws out the girls' strengths, freshening it up with some fluid camerawork and outbreaks of uninhibited laughter.

Timothée Chalamet does some anguished pouting as love interest Laurie, while Meryl Streep appears as Aunt March and Laura Dern as Marmee - quite the acting ensemble. For a film-maker so in tune with contemporary concerns, it's surprising how emphatically Gerwig embraces the essence of the material; those expecting a radical reinvention may have to settle for being bowled over by charm. – Emma Simmonds

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