Suffer the Little Children (Collected Within Nightmares & Dreamscapes)
Dream Director: Mickey Keating (Darling)
“Suffer the Little Children” is a wonderfully succinct story, but one that cuts incredibly deep. The to-the-point narrative is concerned with an elementary school teacher who becomes increasingly convinced that her students are in fact horrible, horrible monsters. This is a beautiful example of King’s ability to take the everyday mundane and transform metaphors into terrifying parallel visions. Our teacher in question becomes so convinced that her students are in fact demons that she goes about killing them all. What makes “Suffer the Little Children” so enticing is that we never get one indication or the other whether our protagonist is actually right in her suspicions, or is just crazy. It’s the sort of story that has plenty of opportunities for juicy breakdowns and charting someone’s slow mental deterioration. Mickey Keating nails this aesthetic in his recent Darling, and honestly, just attach him and Lauren Ashley Carter to this project and I don’t see how it’d fail. It’s such a great mindfuck and thinking of the inevitable aftermath that follows the story is just as engrossing as the story itself.
