Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us (ONE OF US... ONE OF US....) by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them! We regular participants don't bite.... HARD....
Continuing the special October Halloween Edition of Thursday Movie Picks, this week's theme is Villainous Children. There are only so many films with actual CHILDREN as the villains, so I stretched a bit for one of them instead of picking two of the really obvious ones. And there was another that I really REALLY wanted to pick, but to do so would completely spoil the end of the movie. So without further ado, here are my eeeeeeevil picks.
Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960) One day, all the inhabitants of the village of Midwich, England, fall into a deep sleep in the middle of the day. Some months after they all wake up, all the women of childbearing age are pregnant, and they give birth rather fast, all to beautiful blond-haired children, who have some strange characteristics. Including being able to control the minds of the adults around them. This is one of the creepiest little films I've ever seen - very much a British B-movie from 1960, but incredibly well-acted and well-shot. There's a reason it's become a classic.
Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) Eli is a sweet little pre-teen just like any other. And she's very sweet to poor little bullied Oskar. But just what is it she and her elderly caretaker do out late in the evenings? The truth is quite chilling, and not just because Alfredson's future classic takes place in a seemingly perpetual winter. This is an absolutely first-rate horror film. So of course Hollywood had to make its own version for people who don't like subtitles. I've heard
Let Me In actually isn't bad, but even if you don't like subtitles, you owe it to yourself to see this one...
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007) ...and this one even more. Laura moves her family into the orphanage where she grew up in order to start a home for handicapped children, like her adopted son Simón. Simón likes their new house, even drawing pictures of his five new (invisible) friends. Typical kid stuff. But then one day during a party for the new residents and their families, Simón disappears after Laura can't come with him RIGHT THEN to see one of his friends - whom she happened to see later anyway. It'd be hard to miss him, wearing a burlap sack mask and doing nasty things. So she does what she has to to find her son.
The Orphanage is a great film, full stop. Scary, deeply felt, perfectly shot and edited, and with a wonderful performance from Belén Rueda as Laura. It's perhaps the saddest horror film ever made, and it also contains the single best jump scare of the past ten years.
