Background
Horror is a genre that seems largely incompatible with children. Many of these films are too graphic and too frightening to show most young children. I myself remember watching my first few scary movies when I was a child, the first of note being The Ring (2002). Though twenty-two-year-old me may no longer be frightened by most of the images in the film, six-year-old me distinctly remembers the nightmares I had in the ensuing weeks, and I can assure my parents do not forget either. Over the next few years, I tended to avoid scary movies as much as I could. By the time I was ten, however, I had developed an early obsession with horror films. Horror soon became my favorite genre, but sadly I couldn’t even get my sister that is two years my elder to watch these films with me. In a sense, it was illogical for me to engage with films that either horribly misrepresented children or made them unquestioning pawns of evil-doing. A child’s place within the postmodern horror genre thus became my question.
Are children just ‘extras’ to these films to ensure their grounding within our own reality? Do they act as reflections of our own societal fears about children? Or do children have more autonomy than we credit them for? While the correct answer probably lies somewhere in between, two distinct horror films with varying levels of child involvement, morality, and agency–Sinister (2012) and It (2017)–reflect society’s beliefs about children’s role within the postmodern horror genre in very different ways. Sara Martin Alegre, a professor of film at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, posits, “writers like King no doubt use the child to portray the faults of the adults, but in the process they offer adult readers disturbing images of victimised and victimising children” (Alegre, 2001). At first glance, this appears to suggest that children in horror films are mere symbols that represent parental failure. While true, this definition seems to lack an encompassing reason that is applicable across all postmodern horror representations of children.
In her article Recreation Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film, author Isabel Pinedo suggests that there are five required characteristics that work in unison to create a postmodern horror film, including, “(1) [a] violent disruption of the everyday world; (2) there is a transgression and violation of boundaries; (3) the validity of rationality is thrown into question; (4) there is no narrative closure; and (5) the film produces a bounded experience of fear” (Pinedo, 1996). As this essay will explain in further detail below, both Sinister and It both seem to comfortably fit within the postmodern horror film. Their existence, however, is complicated by the use of children, with each film possessing a different reason for doing such. As Alegre mentioned previously, children in horror partially exist to represent the shortcomings of parenthood and society. But as these films show, particularly It, children have a greater function beyond existing as a reflection of the fears and anxieties of parents. This mirrors the constant fluctuation and transgression of expectations so central to the postmodern genre.
Sinister
Scott Derrickson’s 2012 film Sinister follows the life of a once successful crime-fiction writer, Ellison, and his family as they move into a new house. Soon after the move, the family begins to uncover a series of murders that are linked to a collection of Super 8 films found in the attic. From the first scene of the movie, it becomes abundantly clear that the film exists within a postmodern context. A form of found footage, this clip of a family being brutally hung exemplifies, as Pinedo requires, a violent disruption of the norm, a violation of boundaries, and a sense of total irrationality. As it follows, these films end up closer to the family than previously envisioned. Ellison, the patriarch, and protagonist of the film, soon discovers that these tapes document a series of unsolved murders. For most, this would be a sign to stay away, but considering Ellison’s writing interests, these tapes become a point of intrigue.
A key feature of these *graphic* homemade tapes (seen above), as well as the movie, is the rampant use, or exploitation, of children. In all of these clips, the audience watches along as a child goes about killing their family in various ways. Highly grotesque and heinous, these clips soon become the focus of the film. Ellison catches onto the trend of these children murdering their family and seeks their origin. To his inner crime-writer, this is a juicy case waiting to be put on shelves. Ellison’s own personal aspirations appear to get in the way of properly serving the wants and needs in his family, which support several of the claims Alegre makes. “Men like King are looking into the darkest aspects of masculinity and considering how the destruction of the current model of failed fatherhood may bring hope for the child and the future,” she writes, which directly parallels Ellison’s own fear of failure in both his career and his fatherhood (Alegre, 2001).
Ellison’s failure to succeed in either facet ends up birthing the climax of the film in which his own daughter, Ashley, follows through with the murder of the entire family. We learn throughout the film that the demon, Bughuul, who is loosely based off the infamous “Boogeyman”, is the agent responsible for making these children commit gruesome murders. This suggests the negative impact that adults can have on highly-influenceable children. The tapes relay that Bughuul habitually preys on said children and succeeds in luring them into murdering their entire family; a twisted sense of ‘success’ that Ellison lacks.
The children of this film do not have much, if any, jurisdiction over their own lives and actions, which reinforces Alegre’s argument that “just as children were infantilised in the past to signify the patriarch’s total control of family life, they are now demonised to express the parents failure to control them” (Alegre, 2001). In this case, Bughuul assumes the role of the ‘patriarch’ that Ashley lacked in Ellison. She is misguided and easily influenced, resulting in her demise. This fear directly follows Alegre’s notion of children’s role in horror films, as Ashley literally becomes the monster that the parents are unable to contain. In this case, Ashley’s murder of her family represents the most severe instance of parental incompetence.
It
Based on the novel by Stephen King by the same name, Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film, It, follows a group of seven young outcasts that band together against an evil force reigning over their small town in Maine. After Bill’s younger brother, Georgie, goes missing (see above), the team of misfits works together to unearth the true nature of Georgie’s disappearance. Soon the children discover the existence of an ancient monster that takes the form of a clown–the infamous Pennywise. The clown itself is one of the most feared images in horror, especially for children. Pennywise, however, has a distinct advantage over the prototypical clown in the sense that he is capable of taking any form he wants. For each child in the movie, he takes on the form of one of their greatest fears. In the case of Stanley, seen here, Pennywise takes the form of an admittedly nightmarish painting. Pennywise’s form changes depending on the child, which invokes a very targeted type of horror for each individual. As the film progresses, each kid must conquer their own greatest fears, whatever it may be, in order to come together to later defeat the evil Pennywise.
Like Bughuul in Sinister, Pennywise embodies the recipe for a postmodern monster: a 1) violent clown that 2) disrupts the normal boundaries of daily life by 3) irrationally tormenting and capturing innocent children by preying on their fears. Pennywise, however, does so in a way that inherently grants the children more agency. He does not seek to possess these children to serve as pawns for his own agenda, like Bughuul. Instead, Pennywise requires the form of each child’s unique phobias to lure them with the hopes of acquiring their souls. It forces the children to make their own decisions that will ultimately decide their fate, as they have the choice to either succumb to their fear or fight it.
In this scene, Henry Bowers, the bully of the film, gives in to the allure of Pennywise and ends up killing his father, who oddly enough is a cop. When contrasted with the scene in which Beverly stands up against her abusive father, it becomes clear that the children and young teens in this film are more than just reflections of the wrongdoings of their parents. Henry’s father simply wants his son to stop being a deviant and bully, but Henry’s warped sense of reality does not allow him to do so. He is manipulated by Pennywise and, in turn, serves his agenda by giving in to his greatest fear (disapproval from his father) and erasing him from existence entirely. One would expect Beverly, who was subject to years of physical and emotional abuse from her father, to lash out in such violent and aggressive ways, but this does not hold true. She made the choice to stand up to her father which directly parallels standing up to Pennywise. The children in this film, as opposed to Sinister, have a choice of who they want to be. She appears to have a more developed sense of morality than both the adults in the film and Henry.
The complexity of Pennywise as a monster directly relates to the complex role the children have in this film. Though Alegre directly references It (the 1986 novel) in her article focused on the works of Stephen King, the film subverts her idea of children in horror more than Sinister, the film that was written by someone other than King. The group of outcast children thus revert the common trope of the helpless child, perhaps highlighting their standing as outcasts. In doing so, these children ‘bridge the gap’ between child and adulting, acting as individuals that, for the most part, have yet to be morally corrupt. They are able to combat Pennywise so effectively because these children exist outside the labels and expectations of their society. The children defeating Pennywise represents a divide between groups of outcasts (children) and Pennywise (pressures and expectations of society).
Analysis
Both Sinister and It comfortably exist within the most recent generation of postmodern horror films, considering both their subject matter and respective releases within the past 10 years. With that being said, these films leave the audience with entirely different senses of morality, representation, and justice. At the end of Sinister, the evil entity Bughuul remains victorious as Ellison unknowingly damns his whole family to death by moving to a new house. His own daughter ends up killing the entire family and serves as a pawn for Bughuul’s agenda. The children in this film are not seen to have any autonomy and act as objects of control for both the demons and the parents. It, on the other hand, exemplifies persistence and success with the children. All seven of the outcasts team up to defeat Pennywise in the end, though it is suggested Pennywise can only be defeated for a period of time and will eventually return for blood in the future. The triumph of the children in this film happened without the aide of parents, and perhaps in spite of them. Their outcast label allows them to act outside the expectations of normal children, which grants them liberty within the film that children are not normally granted.
At the end of both films, however, the fate of the monster remains at large. Bughuul was an obvious victor in Sinister by achieving his purpose once again, suggesting that he is likely to do so again in the future. It, interestingly enough, circumvents the children’s triumph of the monster by alluding to the fact that Pennywise can only be defeated for a period of time. The children then must create an oath, seen below, to ensure their mutual agreement to combat Pennywise when he inevitably returns. As Pinedo requires, both films possess ambiguous endings and a bounded experience of fear, which sets up perfectly for a sequel. (Note: Sinister 2 was released in 2015, while It: Chapter Two is set to release in Fall 2019).
So where exactly do children fit within the postmodern horror genre now? Conflicting roles of children in each film suggest that perhaps children serve a multitude of purposes within a postmodern horror flick. Alegre believes that “the function popular American Gothic fulfills today is that of pointing at the dark areas of contemporary American society, among which the troubled relationship between children and adults stands out” (Alegre, 2001). In both Sinister and It, this struggle between adult and child functions on multiple levels. This explanation of children’s roles in horror that Alegre asserts is undeniably evident in each film. For example, Ellison’s failure both as an author and a parent is projected onto his children in Sinister. After all, he is the one that set the course of events into action by obsessing over the Super 8 films and inadvertently shunned his children by getting so caught up in his own business. Sinister would thus appear to further the ‘genre norm’ assertions made by Alegre, that children in horror represent the anxieties of parenthood.
Contrary to what Alegre argues in her own paper, however, the children of the 2017 rendering of It appear to have a heightened sense of ‘self’ when compared to the children in Sinister, and horror films more broadly. This distinction is crucial to acknowledge the varying purposes that children serve within a postmodern horror film, which Alegre fails to adequately account for. In his piece Staking the Monster, Edward Ingebretsen suggests that “for one thing, the child represents the vulnerability and powerlessness that society presumably exists to connect” (Ingebretsen, 1998). The children in Sinister would appear to fall within this reading, while the children of It would not. Ingebretsen then goes on to say that “throughout subsequent history, the child/monster icon provides a tactical method by which civic emotions contra can be mobilized, focused, and placed in the service of social reformation” (Ingebretsen, 1998). I argue that, in the case of It, children also act as a means to examine the inherent opposition of child and monster, which tend to carry antonymous connotations. Ingebretsen’s claim then suggests that the children in the film posses ‘contra-morals’ to those of the monsters. Rather than just pointing out the failures of parents and society as seen in Sinister, the children in It represent a model of ‘social reformation’, offering a foundation of morals and identities to build upon. As a group, the band of misfits in It represent a hope for a better future in addition to a critique of the past.
At the end of her article Alegre goes onto say, “[each film] present, thus, different aspects of the relationship between children and monstrosity in adult fiction. What emerges from them is a common portrait of childhood as a time of isolation spent facing the horrors created by adults, while fatherhood is portrayed as the task of facing the monsters arising from faulty parenting” (Alegre, 2001). As is true with the postmodern movement in general, the place of children in films should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Children serve a number of purposes that are incapable of being replicated by adult characters. Children are increasingly becoming an autonomous group, which follows the societal trends of equality and proper representation. In any case, the role of the child in postmodern horror would ultimately depend on the context and desired ideologies of the film. The children either exist in contrast to the parents (Sinister), the monster (think of Insidious), or both (It), reflecting the failures of child-raising and modern society, while perhaps offering insight on how to reverse this, as is the case with It. In unison, the ideas of Alegre and Ingebretsen work in unison to form a working, though constantly transforming, basis for the role of children within the postmodern horror genre. As is true with all postmodern fiction, the use of children allows for a distanced look at our own values, hopes, and successes, in addition to our own anxieties and shortcomings.
Conclusion
While our highly vulgar horror films of the 21st Century may never be suitable for general child audiences, children still deserve critical roles and proper representations in the genre. Neither Sinister nor It abandon the norms of the postmodern horror genre, but they do display varying degrees of representation among children within the genre. As it stands, the child’s role within art is on the rise, representing societies movement towards the equal, ethical treatment of all children.
A child’s fit within the postmodern horror genre would thus appear to be non-linear. Children are the most explicit representations of empathy within the media. Their existence in horror films heightens the tension and allows a more overt look at our own anxieties and failures as a society. Children represent the future, which subliminally hints that the future is either doomed or saved. Depending on the writers/directors intended morality and commentary, the role of the child is always in fluctuation within postmodern horror. If only six-year-old me was aware that a demon coming out of the television was a comment on societal shortcomings and parental failure, rather than a targeted warning of my future fate, I might have been able to sleep better at night.
Works Cited
Alegre, Sara Martín. “NIGHTMARES OF CHILDHOOD: THE CHILD AND THE MONSTER IN FOUR NOVELS BY STEPHEN KING.” Atlantis, vol. 23, no. 1, 2001, pp. 105–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41055012.
Ingebretsen, Edward J. “Staking the Monster: A Politics of Remonstrance.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, vol. 8, no. 1, 1998, pp. 91–116. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1123915.
Pinedo, Isabel. “RECREATIONAL TERROR: POSTMODERN ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPORARY HORROR FILM.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 48, no. 1/2, 1996, pp. 17–31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20688091.