Editorials
The 10 Best Clairvoyants in Horror, From ‘Carrie’ to ‘Thelma’!
Parapsychology and clairvoyance, the ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or event through extrasensory perception, makes for a strong companion in horror. Especially when navigating the already confusing waters of puberty or adolescence. Life is hard enough, but the discovery of burgeoning latent powers lends a very complicated, and often horrifying new layer. Horror’s clairvoyants often have their worst fears realized with the discovery of their power, making for some of the most gripping stories. Which is why some of the best horror films to feature clairvoyants and psychics have earned accolades and sometimes even Oscar buzz; from Sissy Spacek’s best actress nomination for Carrie to Norway’s official foreign-language Oscar submission of Thelma, clairvoyants are some of horror’s most interesting, captivating characters. In celebration of Thelma‘s (one of 2017’s best) digital release, here are the 10 best clairvoyants and psychics in horror:
Carrie White – Carrie
Based on Stephen King’s first novel, and the first novel of his to be adapted for the big screen, there’s perhaps no other character that manages to elicit fear and sympathy quite like Carrie White. Played by the great Sissy Spacek, Carrie’s home life is one of oppression and abuse, and her life away from home isn’t much better. Already afraid of her own puberty, of which her mother failed to prepare her for, the realizing her powerful telekinetic abilities only frightens her further. Until her power teaches her to finally stand up for herself. The truly horrific part, though, is that that poor Carrie White’s story might have taken a very different path if she hadn’t been pushed too far.
Gillian Bellaver – The Fury
Brian De Palma followed up Carrie two years later with a sort of companion piece in The Fury. While the entire premise centers on a government agent searching for his son Robin, a powerful psychic that’s been kidnapped and experimented on to be used as a weapon, the one worth noting is young psychic and clairvoyant Gillian (Amy Irving). Robin may be the central plot point, but he remains off screen for most of the film. It’s Gillian that we get to know, and it’s her journey that’s far more interesting. With the ability to harm to people that physically touch or provoke her, finding out that the school she thought was a safe haven was anything but makes for the film’s best moments. Gillian’s character arch, and coping with her growing powers, builds into one powerful final scene.
Danny Torrance – The Shining
Another film based on a well-regarded Stephen King novel, the child at the center of this story must contend with a crazed father as well as a strong ability the “shine,” a name given to clairvoyance by fellow clairvoyant Dick Hallorann. This meant the most terrifying moments in Kubrick’s classic horror film, particularly when it came to room 237. Being able to see the lingering ghosts of the woman who died there is scary enough, but Danny’s ability meant the ghost could physically cause harm to him as well. Throw in torrential blood waves, spooky twins, and one of the worst father’s in horror history, and Danny Torrance understandably needs therapy.
Daryll Revok – Scanners
David Cronenberg’s sci-fi horror features a group of characters with an array of parapsychological powers; from clairvoyance to telekinesis, and everything in between. Nearly all of them on the run from a company that wants to harvest their powers and use them as weapons. It’s Michael Ironside’s Daryll Revok that steals the film, though, giving insight as to what happens when power corrupts. Initially seeming to hunt down any “scanners” that refuse to join him, and company ConSec, becomes something far more sinister, leading up to an epic showdown of combustible, explosive proportions.
Tangina Barrons – Poltergeist
The American dream turned nightmare becomes even more nightmarish for the Freeling family once youngest child Carol Anne gets sucked through a portal in her closet. Even the parapsychologists they enlist to help find her are stumped by the off the charts poltergeist activity. Enter Tangina, played by the charming Zelda Rubinstein. Her short stature and calm demeanor belies her incredible clairvoyant strength. Though it may be a smaller supporting role, Tangina all but steals the show as the one person capable of saving the Freelings.
Johnny Smith – The Dead Zone
If you’ve been paying attention so far, then it shouldn’t be any surprise to find the lead character in a David Cronenberg directed film based on a Stephen King novel. For Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken), his latent clairvoyance is triggered once he wakes up from a coma after a horrific car crash. It’s not enough that he has to cope with the world having moved forward in the 5 years he was asleep, but now he has to contend with visions every time he comes in physical contact with someone. Johnny’s clairvoyance means he can save people from the future he sees, but as with all gifts, it comes with a price.
Tina – Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Tina’s story is often underappreciated, and shares more in common with Carrie White and Thelma than first appears. Her psychokinetic powers came to her as a child, causing her to unwittingly kill her father during a moment of heightened emotions when he drunkenly beat her mother. It’s a complex set up that leads to her unknowingly wake up Jason Voorhees from his watery grave when attempting to make peace with her father and her remorse. In a way, this is two films in one, a teen girl dealing with both her powers and her profound guilt, and Jason Voorhees continuing his teen slaughter. They just happen to meet up for one big showdown at the end.
Elise Rainier – Insidious series
A parapsychologist and powerful clairvoyant when we first meet her in Insidious, Elise Rainier acts like a modern day Tangina in her guidance of the Lambert family in getting their lost son Dalton back from The Further. Played by the always fantastic Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell found a way to bring her back, again and again, despite her character’s conclusion at the end of the first film. Not only the most empathetic and toughest character of all introduced in the series, Elise’s powerful clairvoyance and knowledge of The Further makes for no better audience proxy than her.
Lorraine Warren – The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2
Vera Farmiga’s take as potent clairvoyant Lorraine Warren, the perfect complement to Patrick Wilson’s demonologist Ed Warren, is easily one of the best things about the world James Wan has crafted in his Conjuring universe. Fully in control of her abilities when we meet her, Lorraine is both extremely empathic to other families in peril as she is in love with her own, always putting herself at peril to save the day, and a powerful fighter against the demonic forces in this universe. Vulnerable because of her love for her family, we’re deeply invested in her story. We’re also just as excited to see her take charge and save the day.
Thelma – Thelma
Sharing much in common with Carrie White, Thelma also comes from an oppressive, sheltered upbringing by a religious parent. It makes going out into the world, experiencing college on her own, a core shaking experience that awakens a latent power Thelma didn’t know she had. Though they may share common themes, including the devastation their powers unleash, Thelma and Carrie’s paths diverge in unexpected ways. Joachin Trier’s exquisite supernatural narrative, resting solely on the very capable shoulders of Eili Harboe as Thelma, makes it plain why this was Norway’s Oscar submission. Heartbreaking, mysterious, and often terrifying, Thelma is one of horror’s strongest clairvoyants.
Thelma is now on digital platforms everywhere from The Orchard.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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