Editorials
Is 2019 Becoming the Year of Creepy Kid Horror?
When looking back over major trends in horror throughout the decades, it’s clear that horror, like most things, is cyclical. Usually, it’s the major success of a specific film that paves the way for a wave of similar themed movies hoping to achieve similar success, like Halloween heralding in the golden age of slashers or It kickstarting a new Stephen King renaissance. Sometimes it’s simply a natural manifestation of current social fears, and since those fears are often timeless, we see them resurface again and again. Take a tried and true staple of horror; the creepy kid. There’s something inherently terrifying for a parent in discovering that their offspring might have a sinister psychopath lurking beneath their sweet façade. More so, it’s the corruption of innocence by evil that’s unnerving to watch. As we’re approaching the halfway mark of 2019, it seems as though the creepy kid has emerged as the current dominating trend in horror.
In February, screenwriter Jeff Buhler (The Midnight Meat Train, Pet Sematary) and director Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact, At the Devil’s Door) delivered The Prodigy. Starring It’s Jackson Robert Scott as Miles, The Prodigy centered its creepy kid around the concept of reincarnation. Miles happened to be born at the precise moment serial killer Edward Scarka died during a police raid. Miles soon begins to exhibit signs of intelligence far beyond his years. At first, his mother Sarah (Taylor Schilling) does everything she can to nurture his talents, but eventually realizes something is very, very wrong with Miles. If you’re familiar with creepy kid horror, then all of its familiar tropes and story beats won’t offer much in the way of surprises, save for one intense scene between Miles and Arthur Jacobson (Colm Feore), the reincarnation expert who offers Sarah help with saving Miles.
Orion Pictures’ The Prodigy
The following month brought The Hole in the Ground, an Irish horror film by director/co-writer Lee Cronin in his feature debut. Like The Prodigy, this one heavily revolves around a mother and her strange-behaving son. Only this time, it’s not reincarnation to blame, but the possibility that mom’s son might have been replaced with a changeling. The introduction of Irish folklore and the implications of being swapped for something inhuman makes for some genuinely unsettling moments in this underseen creepy kid horror movie.
While Jordan Peele’s Us, also released in March, isn’t a creepy kid horror movie, it’s worth mentioning because of the Tethered versions of Zora and Jason. The narrative centered around Lupita Nyong’o’s Adelaide and Red in a human against doppelganger fight for dominance, but Red’s children Umbrae and Pluto were scene-stealers in terms of pure dread and terror. The entire cast of Us were brilliant in their dual roles, but for young actors Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex, it’s next level genius. The otherworldly movement and expression of the pyro-obsessed Pluto and cunning Umbrae brought the horror unlike any other Tethered in the movie. Us might not be a creepy kid movie, but the creepy kids in it are extremely effective.
Jordan Peele’s Us, courtesy of Universal Pictures
Keeping the trend moving at a consistent pace, April saw the release of Pet Sematary, a new adaptation of Stephen King’s beloved novel. Its major departures from the source material created a huge divide in viewer reactions, but most can agree that Jeté Laurence’s performance as Ellie Creed elicits chills. Grasping why this new take switched out Gage’s death and resurrection for the older Ellie became a lot clearer during the quieter scenes between undead Ellie and her father Louis (Jason Clarke). Mundane tasks like giving your child a bath or putting them to bed has never been as disturbing as it has here. Like Wright Joseph and Alex in Us, Lawrence deftly balanced the sweeter, innocent Ellie with the inhuman Wendigo using her broken body as a vessel for evil. It’s uncanny.
Next week brings BrightBurn, a creepy kid twist on a familiar Superman origin story. What if the alien child that crash-landed on Earth and was adopted by a good-natured country family didn’t grow up to be a hero, but something far more malevolent and destructive? That’s the question this creepy kid horror story presents. And if the trailer is any indication, BrightBurn might be the most brutal creepy kid horror film yet.
BrightBurn
Annabelle Comes Home might be focused on the eponymous creepy doll and the entities residing in the Warren’s artifact room, but trailers seem to hint at least one of the young girls might find herself possessed- another type of creepy kid. The Turning, a modern adaptation of The Turn of the Screw that stars Finn Wolfhard as creepy kid Miles, was originally set to release in February before getting bumped to a 2020 release. February also marked the announcement for season two of Netflix’s The Haunting series, this one to be named The Haunting of Bly Manor; also based on The Turn of the Screw. It’s expected to arrive in 2020, which means that the creepy kid trend looks to continue into next year. But with just over half a year left of 2019, there’s plenty of room for more creepy kids to pop up and hold us over in the meantime.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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