Film

The Secret Garden

Name: The Secret Garden
Genre: Drama, Family, Fantasy
Released: 1993
Cast: Kate Maberly, Heydon Prowse, Andrew Knott, Maggie Smith, Irène Jacob

This lavish 1993 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, made under Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope banner and directed by Agnieszka Holland, plays less like a children's film than a gothic fairy tale — rain-streaked corridors, half-lit nurseries, and one wild, locked garden waiting to be unearthed. It's slow, eerie, and quietly moving. Best for anyone who loved a strange, spooky book as a kid.

TMDb rating

7.4

If you liked this

A Little Princess1995

Same author, same fairy-tale-meets-real-grief engine, and arguably even more gorgeous — Alfonso Cuarón turns a lonely boarding-school story into something luminous and strange, trusting that children can hold sorrow and wonder at once.

But It's set in a school, not a garden, so the specific overgrown-secret-place magic isn't quite here.

Matilda1996

Danny DeVito's adaptation of another beloved children's author gives you the same neglected-child-finds-her-own-power shape, but swaps gothic hush for gleeful, cartoonish revenge — a tonal cousin rather than a twin.

But It's broader and sillier, with none of the Garden's hushed, melancholic atmosphere — a very different comfort.

Anne of Green Gables1985

This Canadian miniseries follows an orphan arriving at a house full of buttoned-up adults who don't know what to do with her, and watching her win them over slowly is one of children's TV's great quiet pleasures.

But It's four-plus hours at a nineteenth-century pace — no gothic mystery, just patient, old-fashioned character work.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

When Marnie Was There2014

A lonely, displaced child, an old house with a buried family history, and a ghostly friendship that heals through uncovering the past — the same emotional machinery, in an entirely different medium and culture.

Studio Ghibli's melancholic, gorgeously animated tale of a friendless girl sent to the seaside who befriends a mysterious girl in an old marsh-side mansion — it has the exact same ache and the exact same secret at its centre.

But It's a Japanese anime with a slow, dreamlike pace and a very different visual language — no English hedgerows here.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe2005

Children evacuated to a big, strange English house discover a hidden door to somewhere else entirely — the same bones of lonely kids and a secret world, dressed up as full-blown fantasy epic.

But It trades intimacy for spectacle; the wardrobe leads to a war, not a walled garden and quiet healing.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe poster

The Railway Children1970

A gentler, sunnier slice of English children's classic cinema — displaced kids adjusting to a new home in the countryside, finding freedom outdoors, with real warmth instead of gothic shadow.

But There's no mystery or ghost-story undertow — if you wanted more of the Garden's eeriness, this is too sunny.

Downton Abbey2010

If it was really the house you fell for — the servants, the corridors, Maggie Smith holding an estate together with one raised eyebrow — this is where that fascination can live for six seasons.

But It's a soapy adult ensemble drama with no children's-eye wonder or magic; the resemblance is architectural, not emotional.

Paddington2014

A displaced outsider is taken into a house that doesn't quite want him yet, and slowly everyone changes — the same warmth and healing-through-belonging, wrapped in a much cheerier coat.

But It's pure comfort with a talking bear; anyone wanting the Garden's melancholy or mystery will find this far too light.

Miss Potter2006no page yet

Renée Zellweger plays Beatrix Potter finding solace and identity in the English countryside and her own imagination — a grown-up echo of a lonely child discovering that nature and story-making can save you.

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The BFG2016no page yet

Spielberg's Roald Dahl adaptation gives you another lonely, observant child slipping past the adult world into something extraordinary, filmed with the same tenderness toward wonder and grief.

But It leans hard into whimsical, motion-capture spectacle, losing the hushed, real-world texture that makes the Garden work.

The Innocents1961

Same atmosphere — English estate, grieving household, two children left largely to themselves, adults hiding something — but pushed fully into ghost-story horror instead of gentle healing.

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Takes the film's central metaphor completely literally — real neglected land, patiently coaxed back to life, filmed with total attention and no manufactured drama.

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But There are no characters, no story, no grief to resolve — it's a meditation for people who want the metaphor without the narrative.