Editorials
‘The Innocents’ and Horror’s History of a Fragile Mind
Henry James is a literary great who’d developed a reputation for penning atmospheric and emotionally gripping ghost stories. Though he’d written many, his most famous by far is his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. James preferred style was unconventional, supernatural hauntings that were extensions of reality. The haunting at Bly Manor was steeped in ambiguity, so much so that it remains wide open for many different interpretations. This is why the novella has been the subject of numerous adaptations over the years. 2020 offers two varying takes alone; The Turning and Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor. So far, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents remains the gold standard of adaptations, though.
Opening on Christmas Eve, as many classic ghost stories do, an unknown narrator listens to a friend read a manuscript from a former governess. He provides introductory details before diving into the reading; a handsome and wealthy bachelor is the guardian of his orphaned niece and nephew but prefers to leave them in the care of a governess so he can continue his bachelor lifestyle away from the country home. When the previous governess dies, he hires an attractive but unqualified woman — the narrative shifts to the new governess’s point of view as she relays her eerie tale.
The governess is immediately smitten by the youngest child, Flora, and bonds with the maid Mrs. Grose. Flora’s brother, Miles, returns home soon after due to school expulsion under mysterious circumstances. It coincides with the governess seeing apparitions of a man and woman, separately, on the grounds of the country estate — the ghosts of the former governess, Miss Jessel, and Quint, a former valet. Frightened by their appearances, the governess surmises the spirits are after the children, who’ve been behaving strangely. Fearing they’re being possessed, she’s determined to save their souls.
There’s nothing straightforward about the narrative. The ending is abrupt and without a concise explanation. James keeps things intentionally vague and enigmatic, and one of the most common reads is that the governess is an unreliable narrator crumbling under the weight of her repressed sexuality. That the ghosts, manifestations of her delicate state of mind, represent unrestrained sexuality. The Innocents makes the subtext of these themes much more explicit.
From the outset, director Jack Clayton (Something Wicked This Way Comes) and writers William Archibald and Truman Capote paint the governess, Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), as fearful and delicate. She’s overwhelmed and worried when her employer, the bachelor uncle, leaves her to her duties with instructions that she has supreme authority; and to never bother him at all. While James’ novella implied a creepy sexual attraction between Miles and Miss Giddens, Clayton makes it more overt. Though filmed with stunning gothic style, and delivering one of horror’s greatest scares via ghostly encounter, it’s clear that we’re meant to question Miss Giddens’ fragile mind. The more the ghosts of Bly Manor’s past appear, the more frenzied she becomes.
The fragile mind is a common motif in horror. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca followed a woman struggling to adjust to life as a newlywed, finding herself haunted by her husband’s previous wife. It was an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name, with a modern update heading to Netflix sometime this year. Just four years after the release of The Innocents, Roman Polanski made his debut with Repulsion, which centers around a woman so repulsed by sexuality that she’s driven to hallucinogenic madness. In between the two was The Haunting, a classic horror film that saw its lead, Nell (Julie Harris), susceptible to the ghosts of Hill House due to her psychological fragility.
Poor Jessica checks out of a mental hospital, only for voices and apparitions to call her sanity into question once more in Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. The Entity, though not subtle in the least, saw a woman being sexually tormented by an unseen demon, causing her soundness of mind to come into question by everyone around her. More recently, a single mother drowning in grief saw her fragile state of mind manifest a physical haunting in the form of The Babadook.
The nature of this type of horror, of haunted heroines with fragile minds, presents a psychological element that sets up a central driving mystery; is it all in the narrator’s mind, or is there a supernatural presence? More importantly, it’s the core foundation to build upon what horror does best, which is to reflect our current societal or personal fears. For James’ novella, it’s been speculated that the themes of repressed sexuality possibly reflected the author’s repressed attraction to men. In The Haunting, Nell was susceptible to Hill House because of her isolation in caring for an oppressive and invalid mother. Something that caused her to suppress her thoughts, dreams, and desires.
Horror’s exploration of the fragile mind, especially in the case of James’ novella, makes for a blank canvas ripe for reinterpretation again and again. We can expect Mike Flanagan to take loose artistic liberties with The Turn of the Screw for Bly Manor, as he did with Shirley Jackson’s source material for The Haunting of Hill House. What’s less clear is how Floria Sigismondi will approach the source material for The Turning. The choice to set the film in the ‘90s is an interesting one. Will this be a straight forward supernatural haunting? Or an unraveling psychosis of Mackenzie Davis’ lead character?
The interesting thing about James’ original story is that it can go anywhere.
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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