Editorials
‘The Haunted’: Revisiting Childhood Terror
When I was nine years old, I saw a movie on television that would have an unpredictably lasting effect on my life. That film was The Haunted – a made for TV movie about a family who suffered the effects of a demonic infestation in their house. I had a friend over and we were eating pizza when we saw a commercial for the movie, which announced that it would be starting in just a few minutes. We decided to ditch our plans of watching TGIF reruns and watch this instead. Our parents were out and we had been left to our own devices, so what better way to spend a Friday night than by watching a movie that most certainly would have been off limits if the parents had known anything about it?
The movie tells the purportedly true story of Jack and Janet Smurl and their family. In the late 1970s, they move into a duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania with Jack, Janet and their children occupying one side, and Jack’s elderly parents occupying the other. They experience a few strange occurrences surrounding the move – tools and other items suddenly going missing, hearing family members call out for one another, only to realize that the person speaking was nowhere nearby. But eventually, that calms down and the family is able to enjoy life in their new home. A few years later, the occurrences start up again, but this time, they are impossible to ignore. Janet hears knocks in the walls and whispering when she is alone in the house, a chandelier falls and almost kills one of the children and both Jack and Janet experience the physical sensation of a presence touching them. When the Catholic Church is no help, they reach out to noted demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Stephen Markle and Diane Baker), who would later be the focal point of James Wan’s The Conjuring series.
This movie scared the living hell out of me. My parents were pretty strict with what I watched, so I hadn’t had a lot of exposure to horror, and this was the most intense thing I had seen to date. There is a particular scene that has stuck in my mind ever since – Janet is alone in the living room and she sees the demon manifest itself as a dark, billowy shadow. It is faceless and formless, but you get the distinct impression that it is watching her. Regarding her. After a few moments, it crosses the room and disappears when it reaches the wall. That scene terrified me. In my young mind, ghosts wore sheets or maybe were transparent versions of the people they had been in life. This was something completely otherworldly. I remember lying awake in the nights following the viewing, staring through my open bedroom door and into the well-lit hallway, where I was certain I would eventually see the shadowy figure appear.
As impactful as this movie was, it wasn’t something that I could easily revisit as I got older. Made for television movies are a corner of horror that is not as readily available as theatrical films, especially when they came from the era before streaming video. I remember scouring our local video store to see if I could find it on VHS, but had no luck. Shudder recently added The Haunted to their always stellar list of offerings, and I immediately took the opportunity to revisit it. I was immediately transported back to my family’s living room, experiencing the first scares of what would become a lifelong love affair with horror cinema and ghost stories.
I am thrilled to report that The Haunted really holds up. Sure, it might not be on same level of intensity as modern horror, but it can still hold its own. Like any good haunting story, pacing is important, and here, director Robert Mandel makes good use of the slow increase in ghostly activity in order to set the stage and hook the audience. It flows smoothly, is carried well by the cast (led by Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn), and has some legitimately creepy elements. The scene that frightened me as a child remains one of the most impactful moments in the film. The effects are simple, but surprisingly effective. Every shadow stands out, every whisper can be heard and the sound design brings some well-timed bass hits that really give the scary moments an unearthly quality. It’s one that I would definitely recommend – particularly if you are a fan of The Conjuring films. It offers another ghost story based on the work of the Warrens, and it is one that has not yet been covered in James Wan’s universe.
In fact, looking back on it, The Haunted had a much bigger impact than just a few sleepless nights. It was the first time of many that my path would intersect with stories of Warrens. Several years later, I was in the library and I saw the book by Robert Curran that this movie had been adapted from. I checked it out and took it home (to this day I still can’t understand why my dad, a staunch Catholic and hater of anything horror-related) let me do that. But I was able to reacquaint myself with the terrors of the Smurl Haunting and the work of Ed and Lorraine. When I was in college, I caught an episode of A Haunting on the Discovery channel that focused on another of the Warren’s cases, known as “A Haunting in Connecticut” (not the 2009 movie, but based on the same story). Years later, James Wan announced that he was developing The Conjuring, a movie that would be based on one of the case files of the Warrens. As we all know, the film was a massive success and went on to spawn sequels, spin-offs and a new universe of horror stories.
I find it fascinating that Ed and Lorraine Warren have been a part of the modern horror scene for so long. Their cases had been a part of the landscape long before Wan developed his film series, and will no doubt continue to be a part of it for years to come. Whether you believe in the history of these events or not, it’s clear that these stories have made an impact. They have inspired a number of filmmakers and storytellers, and their cases have been responsible for keeping countless horror fans terrified and hiding under their covers at night – in 1991 and in 2019.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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