Editorials
1989’s ‘Celia’ and the Horrors of Childhood Innocence [Shudder]
The loss of innocence is a recurring motif in horror and cinema at large. A more niche subset of that motif explores the frightening transition from childhood into adulthood through a child’s perspective. Like Pan’s Labyrinth or The Reflecting Skin, these movies feature young protagonists grappling with a grown-up world’s harsh realities through fantasy, leading to disastrous results. The horror seeps in from both sides, squeezing out the innocence in often shocking ways. Celia, now available to stream on Shudder and Tubi, belongs in that same conversation. Its eponymous character dangerously uses dark fantasy and imagination as an emotional shield as she’s forced to grow up in a tumultuous period.
Also known as Celia: Child of Terror, the film opens with Celia (Rebecca Smart) coming to Gran’s small annex next to her family home to wake her. Celia crawls into Gran’s bed and finds her dead, eyes still open. The night after Gran’s funeral, Celia wakes in the middle of the night to an inhuman shrieking and the claw of a creature appearing at her window. She cries for her granny, and mom Pat (Mary-Anne Fahey) comes in to comfort her. When Pat takes Celia into the backyard to reveal the screeching sound came from a possum, the young girl still envisions a monster lurking in the bushes. This brief introduction to Celia clarifies that Gran was her most trusted grown-up and friend and that Celia prefers her imaginative world over the real one, even when confronted with the truth.
Set in 1957, Celia chronicles the young girl’s life in rural Australia as she attends school, forges friendships, and covets a pet rabbit. All of it is framed through a child’s eyes. The context for the world she lives in and how that shapes her comes slowly. As the children play in the background, conversations among adults reveal tensions and fears that kids can’t understand, yet they’re affected by it anyway.
Celia’s peculiar and headstrong personality makes her a bit of an outcast among peers until the arrival of a new family next door. She bonds with the three kids, Meryl (Callie Gray), Karl (Adrian Mitchell), and Steve (Alexander Hutchinson), immediately. None of them understand why the locals seem afraid of parents Alice (Victoria Longley) and Evan Tanner (Martin Sharman), no matter how warm and level-headed they are. It soon becomes clear, though, that the adult Tanners have communist beliefs and hold informal meetings. Celia takes place at the tail end of the second Red Scare, a period marked by its intense and widespread fear that national or foreign communists were infiltrating society. Fear and paranoia naturally lead to tension and hostility.
Writer/Director Ann Turner offers insights and context clues at every step of the way. Outside of the more overt scenes that clue the viewer in on the turmoil surrounding Celia, the filmmaker layers in subtle clues, too. A sweeping look through Gran’s old apartment reveals a book collection of communist material. Since this belonged to the woman who held the most substantial sway over Celia, the implication is clear. No matter how hard Celia’s parents, Pat and Ray (Nicholas Eadie), try to minimize exposure and preserve their daughter’s innocence, the world finds its way in. That includes the background but vital rabbit plague sweeping the country, prompting the government to ban them as pets to preserve the economy. Rabbits, of course, are what Celia loves most.
Like most films of this ilk, Celia slowly builds toward tragedy that creates a point of no return. Celia clings steadfast to her fantasy world of monster Hobyahs, creatures from a children’s book, and imagines Gran still can come out and play. The more life throws complications her way, the more the young girl loses her ability to distinguish fact from fiction. That the child is an assertive one willing to take matters into her own hands, well, she more than earns her “child of terror” moniker.
Turner incorporates historical context in this period tale, offering an added layer of authenticity to the horrific. She approaches her central character with sympathy, too, never rendering Celia as evil but instead lost. The filmmaker toys with horror elements, particularly in the Hobyahs and the psychological; ultimately, however, it’s more of a horror adjacent coming-of-age story. Celia disturbs as much as it breaks your heart, offering another powerful feature to examine how scary childhood innocence can be.
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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