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’.
The second film from The Pact director Nicholas McCarthy. What is happening is kept deliberately vague and elliptical – as you are trying to piece everything together, McCarthy manages to pull some incredibly eerie jolts
The original evil child film featuring an unforgettable performance from Patty McCormack (who received an Academy Award nomination along with most of the cast). Dated somewhat today but still holds a real charge
The 1956 The Bad Seed is the original evil child film. All other psycho children films draw themselves from here. This is a remake directed by actor Rob Lowe who also plays the father. McKenna Grace gives a superbly chill performance as the child
Saw series Darren Lynn Bousman downplays sadism in favour of a psychologically ambiguous film about a series of attacks possibly conducted by the Jersey Devil
Perhaps the strangest film on Chuck Norris’s cv – the film where Chuck plays an angel. A work of Christian horror where Chuck’s son Mike plays a decent man trapped in a sinister Western town of devil worshipping children
An extremely good film that starts out seeming like a standard stalked babysitter effort before everything gets turned on its head with most pleasing results
English horror film influenced by both the witch persecution themes of The Witchfinder General and the early 70s witchcraft film. Well made but that doesn’t quite disguise an unstructured screenplay
The evil child film has a long history. This is essentially a slasher movie variation where instead of a hockey-masked killer we have a trio of malevolent children devising a series of entertaining dispatches for grown-ups
Not to be confused with the more profile film of the same name around the same time, this is a standout work about a psychopathic child. A real slow burn film that comes so understated that it can leave you gasping
The rather interesting idea of Superman retold as a horror movie featuring a character that is Superman in all but name who goes over to the dark side instead of becoming a paragon of truth, justice and the American way
One of David Cronenberg’s great early films. Fueled by a messy divorce Cronenberg was going through, it is set around a radical psychological institute that encourages people to manifest their repressed angers through their bodies
Neil Jordan makes a film about an abusive childhood that actually ends up asking us to cheer on the central character’s emergence as a murderer. Maybe the most cheerfully entertaining film ever made about child abuse.
Unjustly slammed psycho-thriller with Renee Zellweger as a social worker dealing with an evil child. Comes with undeniable tensions and a superbly malevolent performance from Jodelle Ferland
From the great era of Canuxploitation, an entertainingly ridiculous film about a possessed child wreaking psychic havoc and an often absurd series of deaths against those who are mean to her
Forgotten effort from the heyday of devil children films (The Exorcist, The Omen et al). This takes place in a backwoods setting and has a director who is determined to pile on atmosphere frequently to the point of overkill
Night of the Living Dead-influenced cheapie about zombified children wearing black nailpolish who blow their parents up with deadly hugs. This has no ambition beyond providing entertainingly preposterous meltdown effects every few minutes
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
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
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is somewhat better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
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 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
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
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
The Stephen King short story only runs to 16 pages and explains little. This is the eleventh filmspinoff 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Another multi-director horror anthology – in this case a quartet of horror stories from Bollywood directors that comes with one standout episode in particular
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
One of the most extraordinary films ever made about psychic powers concerning a group of children who discover remarkable talents move objects but then find one among their number has used the power to kill
The first of Larry Cohen’s sequels to his killer mutant baby film It’s Alive, where he uses the occasion to expand the themes in richer depth
The film about a killer mutant baby that made the name of cult director Larry Cohen and produced several sequels. Cohen infuses it with rich imagery and dark humour
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 in favour of the utterly formulaic
The third of Larry Cohen’s killer mutant baby films, where Cohen’s humour is again present but the film feels like a hodgepodge of leftover ideas
Another variant on the evil child theme that suffers from far too mannered an approach where you keep waiting for it to pull back and sink its teeth into something shocking
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 when upset. The main problem with the film is the lack of coherent explanation for what is happening
Italian directer Mario Bava returns to the Gothic in this atmosphere-laden film about a ghost child
Yorgos Lanthimos specialises in a bizarrely deadpan black humour. This works rather well as he make a horror film in which surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
Solid Spanish variant on the Backwoods Brutality cycle in which a man driving through the countryside is shot at and pursued by mysterious hunters
A low-budget Krampus film crossbred with an evil child film
While the title suggests a series of malicious games, this is an SF film about a group of people who participate in an augmented reality experiment where they are locked in a facility with strangely alien children
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
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
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
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
Quite a perversely charged film about a psychopathic child with voyeuristic tendencies
Strong and at times quite brutal film about a feral cannibal family. The controversial The Woman was a better-known sequel
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
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
Another of the films with sinister-sounding adjectives that sprung up in the wake of Insidious, this is actually a cut price copy of The Omen about a child resurrected from the dead who causes a series of deaths to all around him. Some amusing novelty deaths but nothing special
Another variant on the evil child film featuring a maliciously psychopathic Isabelle Fuhrman
I was fairly ho-hum about the first Orphan but this is a sequel that entirely surprises you
Classic horror film about good and evil twins that creates a good deal of sinister effect and arrives at a much imitated twist
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
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
An excellent film about a psychologist sent in to assess a child who reveals phenomenal intelligence and psychic powers
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
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
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
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
Victor Salva, known for Clownhouse and the Jeepers Creepers films, is one of the genre’s more underrated directors, his films filled with incredibly eerie jumps. Here Rose McGowan finds her life terrorised by a malevolent paperboy possibly of supernatural origin
The eighth of the Ring films. This is a sequel to the earlier Sadako 3D.the worst of the series, and is actually a better film
The thirteenth film in the Ring/Ringu franchise. The question is whether the return of original director Hideo Nakata can revitalise the series
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
French horror film that generates a reasonable level of tension as a couple are attacked in their home by mysterious strangers
Quite decent Blumhouse film in which children suddenly go bad and begin playing malicious, murderous games with adults