The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Evil Children is a self-explanatory topic. Horror cinema features a good number of these. The first evil child came with The Bad Seed (1956), a defining work featuring an eleven year-old Patty McCormack prepared to kill to get her way. The trope of the psychopathic and murderous child has regularly appeared on screen since.
The Exorcist (1973) gave us a possessed Linda Blair mouthing obscenities and taunting priests as they attempted to exorcise her. The Omen (1976) featured Gregory Peck who comes to the realisation that his son is the Devil’s son.
Elsewhere, Village of the Damned (1960) gave us coldly emotionless children with superior intellect and vast psychic powers as a result of alien impregnation. A less used trope was in Pet Semetary (1989) with the child who is raised from the dead and returns ‘changed’.
As directors, women are underrepresented – in terms of the content listed on this side, for example, probably less than 5% has been made by women. As a believer in equal opportunities for all, one can only cheer on XX where five women have gotten together to make a horror anthology
Fine Spanish-made killer children film inspired by The Birds where children inexplicably turn and kill adults. This has developed a modest cult and works with frequently unsettling effect
This is a modestly effective effort that sits just on the dividing line between interesting and cliched – the undeniably captivating premise involves an Amish-like cult dealing with a series of prophecies about devil children and killings of their number
Belgian Backwoods Brutality effort concerning a boy scout troupe who run afoul of a mysterious feral child and hunter in the woods near their campsite. Defying many of the expectation of the genre, this provides a series of often unearthly images
Almost an arthouse variation of the evil psycho child thriller but one stripped of thriller tropes and told in terms of an alternately striking and hauntingly elliptical tableaux of impressionistic images
A real mindscrew of a film in which Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg are a couple who enter a strangely unreal suburb of identical houses and find they can’t leave. Then things start to get really strange.
Head-scratchingly strange Italian film that seems made as a crosshatch of 1970s Devil Child films and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Makes no sense in terms of story but worth watching for the bizarreness of its imagery
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
Director John Carpenter did amazing things with his remake of The Thing but was not able to replicate such with his remake of Village of the Damned, which misses the taut atmosphere of the 1960 film
Classic adaptation of the John Wyndham novel about the women in a sleepy English village being impregnated and producing emotionless alien children with vast psychic powers. This translates the paranoia of US alien invasion films with considerable effectiveness
Modest and well-made low-budget anthology of Christmas horror tales from three Canadian filmmakers
Roger Corman produced film where Brooke Adams realises that something sinister might be happening with her pregnancy
A BBC adaptation of the classic oft-filmed Henry James ghost story in which we cannot be sure whether the ghosts are real or exist inside the heroine’s imagination. This treats some aspects of the story liberally but gets the essence of the story right
Another version of Henry James’ classic psychological ghost story updated to the 1960s where the subtleties of the original are rendered in terms of crude effects
Sequel to the classic Karen Black-starring horror anthology tv movie with Lysette Anthony starring in a trio of horror tales
Quite decent Blumhouse film in which children suddenly go bad and begin playing malicious, murderous games with adults
French horror film that generates a reasonable level of tension as a couple are attacked in their home by mysterious strangers
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Akiva Goldsman is the single worst screenwriter in Hollywood with a line of genre atrocities to his name. In his second directorial outing, blow me down if Goldsman doesn’t make a halfway decent film, a cryptic film about a young girl facing unseen monsters amid a possible invasion
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
An early mockbuster from The Asylum that came out the same day as The Omen remake, this conducts a blatant copy of The Omen on a low-budget
The original had some undeniably effective jumps but suffered from a lack of explanatory rationale but this makes for a shaky house of cards when the same arbitrary happenings are extended for a sequel
Scott Derrickson film that is badly underwritten in terms of proper explanatory rationale. That said, you cannot deny that Derrickson manages to produce the scary goods on a number of occasions
A horror film that was the biggest box-office hit ever in Indonesia as a family tragedy stirs up hauntings and the occult. A follow-up to an earlier 1970s film that has become a cult hit.
The thirteenth film in the Ring/Ringu franchise. The question is whether the return of original director Hideo Nakata to the franchise can revitalise the series
This was the eighth of the Ring films. This is made as a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D, the worst of the Japanese series, although is actually a better film
Victor Salva is one of the genre’s more underrated directors and his films are filled with incredibly eerie jumps. Here Rose McGowan finds her life terrorised by a malevolent paperboy possibly of supernatural origin
Not to be confused with Tommy Wiseau’s bad movie classic. This comes from Christian Volckman who made an impressive debut a few years ago with the animated Cyberpunk film Renaissance. Moving to live-action, this creates an air of unspeakable dread as a couple buy a house that has a hidden room that can manifest anything they wish for
Routine variant on the psycho child theme, which heads into rather dubious territory when it leads us to think a series of killings are being conducted by an autistic child
Reasonable budgeted film about a series of Biblical plagues being visited upon a rural Louisiana town. An interesting set up that flounders amid a confused script
In this space of three films, Nicholas McCarthy has risen to the top of this site’s Up and Coming Directors to watch list. On a script level, this is a standard Evil Child film but is made something worth watching by McCarthy’s directorial jumps
An excellent film about a psychologist sent in to assess a child who reveals phenomenal intelligence and psychic powers
Interestingly different film about zombified children set after a time when childbirth has died out. This generates a reasonable level of tension but arrives at a very confusing end
Another horror anthology with each episode from a different directors, united around the wraparound theme of stories being told by patients in a strange psychiatric facility
Classic horror film about good and evil twins that creates a good deal of sinister effect and arrives at a much imitated twist
I was fairly ho-hum about the first Orphan but this is a sequel that entirely surprises you
Another variant on the evil child film featuring a maliciously psychopathic Isabelle Fuhrman
Another of the films with sinister-sounding adjectives that sprung up in the wake of Insidious, this is a cut price copy of The Omen about a child resurrected from the dead who causes a series of deaths
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
This is where all the cliches of Devil Children began. A big hit among the 1970s occult boom, this is essentially Sunday tabloid Christianity – a lurid, doom-filled take on Book of Revelation End Times prophecies that moves with a slick polish and a series of schlocky deaths every few minutes
A strong and at times quite brutal film about a town that is terrorised by attacks from a feral cannibal family. The controversial The Woman was a better-known sequel
Quite a perversely charged film about a psychopathic child with voyeuristic tendencies
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
Routine psycho-thriller with Brian Bonsall as a child who murders his adopted families when they fail to meet his expectation. An amusing idea plays out with comic-bookish set-ups and a cliched plot
The third screen adaptation of John Wyndham’s book, previously filmed as Village of the Damned, this gives the story an update in some interesting ways
The director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil returns with a comedy that spoofs The Omen about an average guy trying to step-parent the Anti-Christ child
While the title suggests a series of malicious games, this is an SF film about participants in an augmented reality experiment who are locked in a facility with strangely alien children
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
Another low-budget Krampus film. However, this is more if an evil vhild film with Krampus as a boogeyman that occasionally pops up to kill people on her behalf
A solid Spanish variant on the Backwoods Brutality cycle in which a man driving through the countryside is shot at and pursued by mysterious hunters with rifles
Yorgos Lanthimos trains his a bizarrely deadpan black humour to make a horror film where surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
Cult Italian directer Mario Bava returns to the Gothic of his highly influential Black Sunday in this atmosphere-laden film about a ghost child haunting a small village
A Devil Child variant with a couple finding that June, the foster child they take on, becomes possessed by an entity and develops incredible psychic powers whenever she is upset
Another variant on the evil child theme, this suffers from far too mannered an approach where you keep waiting for it to pull back and sink its teeth into something shocking
The third of Larry Cohen’s killer mutant baby films that began with the cult It’s Alive. Cohen’s humour is again present but the film feels like a hodgepodge of ideas left over from the other films
Larry Cohen’s 1974 cult classic about a killer mutant baby gets the remake treatment. Even though Cohen co-writes the script here, the remake manages to wring anything interesting out of the original
The film about a killer mutant baby that made the name of director Larry Cohen who developed a cult following. Cohen infuses it with rich imagery and dark sense of humour. Several sequels followed
This was the first of Larry Cohen’s sequels to his killer mutant baby film It’s Alive. Here Cohen uses the occasion to expand the themes in richer depth and makes a work that stands up as well as the original
One of the most extraordinary films ever made about psychic powers concerning a group of children who discover remarkable talents to move objects but then that one among their number has used the power to kill
Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is a classic ghost story that hovers in a state of ambiguity as to whether the ghosts are real or in the heroine’s imagination. Of the multiple film versions, this is the best and most authentic to the story
The third of the Lifetime Channel’s films based on the Gothic incest melodramas of Virginia C. Andrews that began with Flowers in the Attic. The plotting is absurd and the film feels uninhabited by human beings
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
An Irish film that creates quite a reasonable degree of atmosphere in its story of a mother who believes her son has been replaced by something else
The return of director of Pontypool should be anticipated. But this kills a near-foolproof premise – masked children come after a heroine on Halloween night wanting her unborn baby – with a pink lighting scheme
From the creators of Reno 911, a comedy spoofing possession, exorcism and diabolical pregnancy cliches. This assembles material that feels as though it should have been funnier than it is
Confusingly, despite the title, this is not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale but a cryptic and often baffling South Korean horror film about people trapped by children at a sinister house in the forest
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
A disturbingly effective story of a mother who gives birth to a baby that is not human. An immensely assured directorial debut that eschews cliche horror effect and becomes a chilling study in psychological disintegration
Effective and disturbing work about two boys who begin to think that someone else might have taken their mother’s place after she returns in bandages. The film reaches a particularly chill and nasty climax
A variant on the evil child psycho-thriller, this seems set up specifically to allow Macaulay Culkin, the obnoxious cute kid from Home Alone, to trash his wholesome image
TV mini-series based on the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel that spoofs The Omen and Biblical End Times prophecies. The series is very close to the book as though it didn’t want to edit any precious gag
From the Paz Brothers who previously made Jeruzalem, a new take on the legend of the golem that offers an interpretation of the idea very different to any previous film version
Film about a couple going to an institute where Robert De Niro promises a clone of their dead child. The film goes off the rails in an absurd and blatantly manipulative script that tries to turn this into a ghost story
The zombie film has become a creatively exhausted genre in recent years. This is an effort that completely changes the game with fiercely original effect, anchored by one of the best child performances in some time
Another multi-director horror anthology – in this case a quartet of horror stories from Bollywood directors that comes with one standout episode in particular
Ridiculous sequel to the Marvel Comics adaptation with an indifferently written script assembled from cliches, forgettable action scenes and Nicolas Cage giving one of his silliest performances in ages
A Peter Straub adapted ghost story that sits in an ambiguous state about whether Mia Farrow is seeing her dead daughter or going mad. This comes influenced by Don’t Look Now
One of the more underrated horror anthologies featuring an aging Vincent Price as narrator. All four stories are equally strong and venture into some pleasingly dark and grisly places
In much the same way as they did with Halloween, Blumhouse and director David Gordon Green offer up a sequel to The Exorcist on the original’s fiftieth anniversary. The results are a bizarre scratch of the head
A landmark classic of the horror genre, a film whose take on demonic possession and exorcism laid down a series of tropes that are still present over five decades later. A gruelling and intensive horror story into the bargain
The Ghost Story is a genre has felt overused and its clichés churned to a point of exhaustion. All of that said, this Swedish film delivers the goods and conjures an extremely spooky mood
This has an intriguing set up involving a child with an autoimmune condition that makes him allergic to everyday air and his journey to a sinister medical institute, before a completely WTF twist
Highly effective British variant on the Backwoods Brutality film with an innocent couple being pursued through the woods by a group of murderous children. This gets its teeth into you with gruelling tension and rarely lets up until the end
A Found Footage film that seeks to overhaul the Satanic impregnation film a la Rosemary’s Baby. Both the Found Footage and the Satanic impregnation genres feel well-mined by now and this fails to offer anything new
One of the original evil children films and undeniably effective too with a group of people snowed in at a mountain lodge being hunted by four malevolent children
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
The first of the sequels to The Omen, this follows Damien through his teenage years as he comes into his powers. Mostly though, the film seems to exist to stage more bizarre novelty death scenes
A formulaic evil child psycho-thriller where young Gabrielle Boni kills to protect her perfect adopted family. At least young Boni conjures an effective nastiness on screen
A very funny film about a horde of zombie schoolchildren. Co-written by Saw‘s Leigh Whannell, this has a great deal of fun deflating zombie cliches and is wittily on the ball in its characterisations of the teachers
Irish-British production that depicts the social housing estates of Glasgow as a desolate netherworld inhabited by mutant children. Undeniably effective but the depiction of children of urban ghettos requires you to tune out any liberal instincts
Hilariously bizarre film with people dealing with an entity that is man with a massive mouth that is intent on swallowing an army of identical little girls
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages. This is the eleventh film spinoff to date (which runs at about one film per 1.4 pages of story). Unlike the other sequels, this claims to be an origin story
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
Quite who the audience for these Children of the Corn films is that they keep making more of them is a mystery. This was the fifth of eleven films and at least better than the last two entries
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
The third of the films based on the Stephen King short story, this moves the locale to the city but is otherwise based around a series of completely ridiculous makeup effects every few minutes
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Rather well-made British entry where two families at a Christmas get-together find their respective children have inexplicably turned against them with murderous results. This draws the tensions out to a sustained siege with undeniably effective results