Coming of Age with Superpowers

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

You KNOW we can't start a fertile February without planting a few bad seeds first. That's right! It's the evil child installment of The Shortening!

Quick Plot: Ida is a moody 9ish-year-old who seems to be eternally sour over her developmentally disabled sister Anna. When their family moves to a high-rise for the summer, Ida quickly befriends local psychopath Ben. 

Sure, Ida got some kicks from sticking glass in Anna's shoes and squishing  innocent worms, but Ben's idea of fun involves cat murder (thankfully, clearly not in any way harming the actual cat actor). The boy must die. 

That's easier said than done once Ben starts to display Carrie-like abilities. Meanwhile, another young neighbor named Aisha is experiencing some kind of psychic connection to Anna, helping the girl speak for the first time in her young life. What in the village of the damned is going on here?

The Innocents doesn't really tell you, and that's okay. Written and directed by Eskil Vogt (half of the team behind Thelma and The Worst Person In the World), this is an unusual film in the best of ways. There's an immediate undercurrent of something very wrong. Young Rakel Lenora Fløttum as Ida initially makes for the perfect bad seed until Ben proves to be far worse. As that unfolds, we get to realize our own mistake in how quickly we judged Ida. 

J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is commonly thought today as a celebration of youth, but what makes it so interesting today is how clear-headed it is at understanding the utter selfishness (and in Barrie's words, "heartlessness") of children. We love to romanticize the beauty of childhood innocence, but it typically takes us a whole lot of years of heartbreak to understand what cruelty is and how dangerous a thing it is to wield. 

The Innocents is fully aware that children's souls are a mess. Sure, a kinder kid like Aisha might already know right from wrong, but someone like Ida, who has clearly grown up resenting that her sister demands more attention from her parents, is still working through morality. It's not until she's fully confronted with what seems like pure evil that she starts to make decisions more in line with the light side.

There are a lot of ways to read The Innocents, and an analysis could go even deeper if you dig into the racial and gendered elements also at play. I'll leave that for another day, but in the meantime, check the film out and come back with your own takes. 

High Points

I'll always champion a strong genre film that makes effective use of daylight, and The Innocents is high on that list. Children are terrifying BECAUSE of how fresh-faced and innocent they look under the sun. Why bother to hide it with unnecessary darkness?

Low Points

I blame myself for having to break The Innocents up into three chunks to watch over the course of two days, so the odd pacing is more on me than Vogt. I was shocked when I realized I had reached the end of the film because, well, it feels a bit like something is missing. But how much of that is Vogt's unusual storytelling and how much is me watching under less than optimal conditions, I leave you to decide

Lessons Learned
We can whine about kids today preferring mobile devices to the outdoors, but tell me you still feel sad about that after watching this movie

When someone is mean, you tell a grownup

There are few ways to die that are sadder than doing so in the middle of boiling frozen hot dogs

The Good Son Watch

Considering how many times I reference this movie, I think it's time to make the callouts an official section. And yes, there are plenty of thrillers starring obscenely blond children that aren't The Good Son, but I can't help but think of it when a key moment of violence involves a highway overpass. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Innocents is yet another recommendation findable on Shudder. I don't know that it will please everyone, but it scratched my evil child itch in a wonderfully unexpected way.

It's Coming, & It's Really Wicked

Jack Clayton's The Innocents might well be one of cinema's most overlooked and outstanding ghost stories put to screen. It's quiet and subtle, but also wonderfully creepy and deceptively disturbing. It would make perfect sense then for Clayton to return to the genre he so excelled in, especially if being paired with novelist Ray Bradbury.

It would make sense, right? Now let's toss in the name "Walt Disney" and see logic ride a train out of town.

Quick Plot: In the scenic Illinois hamlet of Greentown, young Will and Jim are about to settle into a typically quiet October when, as the title hints, something wicked does indeed come.

This particular breed of evil arrives in the form of an unseasonal carnival, run by a steely eyed and magnificently creepy Jonathon Pryce as the not at all ominously named Mr. Dark. At first, the boys and their fellow townspeople are happy to ride a ferris wheel before the nips of November set in, but when a few unhappy locals disappear (and none too coincidentally, the carnival's staff seems to double) Will, Jim, and Will's self-doubting father Charles (played by a supremely wonderful Jason Robards) are forced to confront the unseemly fact that Mr. Dark's circus is not operating on the good side of morality.

Produced by Disney Studios and based on a Bradbury novel (which he himself adapted here), Something Wicked This Way comes is one of those 'children's' films of the '80s that is anything but. Though it is primarily seen through the young eyes of Will, this is a dark story, one that walks a slippery tightrope between nostalgia, mortality, and all-out fear. While it wears the scars of studio interference, confused rewrites, and a messy ending, it's also the kind of oddity that I found truly special.

The basis rolls off Bradbury's page as he smoothly translates his language to the screen. The opening narration--an apparent post-process addition--introduces us to a sleepy town and its quirky residents with careful skill. I imagine that the novel went into rich detail about the plainness of a schoolteacher spinster, but the screenwriter in Bradbury is smart enough to know that saying "You would never believe it, but she was once the most beautiful woman in town" is more than sufficient to tell us what we need to know. Though the younger actors aren't necessarily the most skilled at delivering some of the dialogue, for the most part, Bradbury's script has a strong ear that gives good actors an audio feast. When the stage-trained Pryce launches into maniacally evil poetry to seduce his latest victim or the rock solid Robards waxes on about the time he failed his son, Something Wicked This Way Comes hits its true stride. Much like the criminally underrated The Exorcist III, this is a film written by a novelist who understands how his words play on the camera and makes the most out of them.

That is not to say that Something Wicked This Comes isn't something of a mess. Certain scare sequences feel a tad forced in terms of story, even if it does give us the kind of tarantula mob scene fit for nightmares. The ending, whatever it is, doesn't make a lick of sense that I can taste. Robards reads some local mythology about how an evil carnival comes to town in October every couple of decades only to leave with the next big storm, but that still never provides any logical explanation of a) why Greentown b) why now c) what Mr. Dark's endgame is or most importantly, d) what the heck a storm has to do with it. It's clear from some library journals that a storm always marks the carnival's disappearance, but that doesn't make the surprisingly gruesome finale mean anything in terms of stakes, if it was bound to happen anyway. Also of note, and this is a MAJOR SPOILER

Do we ever learn what became of the few unlucky citizens to buy into the devil's promises? I imagined that the Disney portion of this film would show itself in a sugary coda, but instead, we just get a happy father/son moment. No word on the barber-turned-bearded lady, the youthful but blind teacher, the fully limbed former amputee or the greedy cigar shop owner. I wouldn't have a problem knowing that they DIDN'T join in the happy ending, but it's frustrating not to know.

SPOILERS OVER

All this aside, I found Something Wicked This Way Comes exceedingly fun in a youthfully macabre manner. This is a twisted little movie that seems primed to poke its intended young audience right where they're vulnerable, be that the threat of giant spiders or the fear of losing your parents. It doesn't work as seamlessly as it could, but when it does, it does so with committed and cruel energy that makes it hard to look away.

Oh, and in case  you were wondering why this title appears during February's Attack of the Shorties, allow me to demonstrate with Exhibit A, a little person clown parade!

And more notably, Exhibit B, wherein Dark's business associate is transformed (via magical carousel, natch) into a pre-Problem Child problem child, right down to the ginger 'do and bowtie

High Notes
Jason Robards brings such brilliant weight to his character, a 50something year old librarian with heart problems and a constant sense of inadequacy stemming from his age in relation to fatherhood. Charles Holloway is a fascinating and wonderfully written man in the hands of Bradbury, and Robards adds such solid presence and skill that it almost hurts

Similarly, few actors could deliver threats like "we butter our bread with delicious pain" with the same seductive musicality as Jonathon Pryce

Low Notes
The not so grand, yet very confusing finale

Middle Note
James Horner's busy musical score (an apparent post-production change that Clayton was displeased with) is extremely conspicuous and occasionally distracting, but it's also a very clear product of its time (see the similarly toned Lady In White for support). I kind of love its blaring enthusiasm, but I can see how it might break the mood for some viewers

Stray Note
The Ewok Movie 2: Caravan of Courage fan in me finds it near impossible to not write the title of this film as Something Wicket This Way Comes

Lessons Learned
With heart problems, limit nightly activities to one drink and one cigar

Pillows make for surprisingly effective tarantula fighting weapons

Some folks draw lightning to them as a cat sucks in a baby's breath

Lessons Cribbed By An Actor From Another Movie
If Jim Nightshade looked familiar, it may have been because you recognized him from the very different (or maybe not different at all) slasher The Funhouse, where young Shawn Carson played the final girl's younger brother. In that Tobe Hooper film, Carson watches big sis hide out in a dark ride in order to stay inside after closing hours...the very same plan he and Will use to catch some extra glimpses of Dark's Carnival. Looks like someone was taking notes

Look! It's...
Royal Dano, playing yet another old hillbilly kook encountering some nefarious electricity at a circus with bad intentions

And hold the phone Foxy: Pam Grier as the silent but bewitching assistant to Mr. Dark

Rent/Bury/Buy
I found Something Wicked This Way Comes to be a wonderfully unusual treat from a bygone era, but I also went into the film knowing nary a detail about it. With that in mind, random sights like Pam Grier in a wedding gown or Royal Dano getting the electric chair were bound to keep me shocked, while the genuinely strong stuff--Robards hefty performance, Pryce's lyrical villain, Bradbury's intricate language--kept me glued to the screen. The film does indeed have a lot of problems in terms of its tone and story, making it even more shameful that the DVD release is so bare bones. This is a film that begs for some behind the camera discussion or deleted scenes. Without those, this is a definite recommend for a rental. It's simply too strange to not see.

Tuppence An Innocent

On the list of dangerous professions to have when starring in a horror movie, I think ‘governess’ must rank fairly high. Add in the dread of children speaking with British accents inside a large and ghost-ridden mansion and you can bet your spoonful of sugar that the overtime pay just isn’t worth it.

Quick Plot: Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, a prim blond with the luck of the easiest job interview since Being John Malcovich. Although she has never actually worked with children, she adores them and instantly lands the position of being governess to the niece and nephew of a wealthy--but not lonely, hm hm hm--bachelor who inherited the rugrats without the slightest desire to even look at them. Miss Giddens immediately packs up her velvet bustles and heads to a secluded country home to meet, teach, and get really freaked out by Flora and Miles.

All seems well and Mary Poppinsonian at first, as Flora (played by a ten year old And Soon the Darkness’ Pamela Franklin) is an absolute dear, while Miles proves to be incredibly charming...perhaps too charming. It isn’t long before Miss Giddens starts to pick up on strange cues between the children, an odd closeness that ends in ominous giggles. Coupled with that, she keeps hearing voices and occasionally catching glimpses of figures no one acknowledges until the housekeeper reveals the fate of the previous governess Miss Jessel and her abusive lover, the family’s valet Quint.

The Innocents is an eerily gothic ghost story that takes its time a la The Haunting. Co-written by Truman Capote (based on a play by William Archibald which was in turn based on The Turning of the Screw by Henry James), the film has long been a favorite of greatest horror films/ghost stories/underrated genre pictures by the likes of such luminaries as Martin Scorsese. You can see why. From the haunting music box theme to shadowy menaces, director Jack Clayton (aided immensely by director of photography Freddie Francis) builds some brilliant suspense with every tool at his disposal. Heck, just hearing the name “Miss Jessel” spoken with an English accent is enough to send a few chills through your spine.

In addition to creepy ghosts with romantic liaisons, The Innocents is rich with something far more unsettling and not innocent: Oedipal leanings. The precocious Miles takes quite a liking to his pretty teacher, leading to an uncomfortable moment that puts Miss Giddens at the wrong end of an inappropriate goodnight kiss. It’s incredibly creepy and though it doesn’t get fully explored, the hints hang in the air with stifling weight.

High Points

Many a filmmaker could take more than a few lessons from the atmosphere of The Innocents, something established incredibly well both indoors and out

Low Points

Though Miss Giddens’ chastity does come across, we never quite get to know this woman outside of her relationship to the children. While that in itself is interesting, it would have helped to know a tad more about our main character’s past, at least to give us a clearer sense of her reliability. Although perhaps that was the point...

Lessons Learned

When you spot a ghostly figure lurking outside, always make a note of his rating because you can guarantee the first question asked to identify the stranger will be “Is he handsome?”

Suggesting a game of hide-and-seek inside a gigantic mansion just before bedtime is probably not the best idea a governess could make

Nothing weird about bringing a dead bird to bed with you. Nothing. At. All.

Pompadours don't look any more normal on gothic children than they do on Korean dictators

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Innocents is a hard film to find, but if it comes your way, it’s certainly worth dimming the lights for a quietly chilled evening. Fans of atmospheric horror should consider it required viewing in the same vein as The Haunting. Of course, it’s a slow trail and one not necessarily rewarded with a colorful Insidious ghost party finale or The Others-like twist, but The Innocents is, plain and simple, a classic in its understated horror straight into its tragic conclusion. Watch it...just not if you have to agree to supervise creepy British kids in order to do so.