Spiritual children have a dual nature, on the supernatural side, they are opposed to nature and are the other of the whole human race; and as children, they are opposed to adults, the other of adults, quite a sense that the two worlds cannot communicate.
Under the influence of this dual other, the spirit child is undoubtedly more mysterious, which also opens the imagination of those filmmakers, from the earliest spirit child to the present, their image emerges in an endless stream, which can be described as another eye-catching color in horror movies.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > from reality to science fiction</h1>
There is a special term in English, "Creepy Kids Film", which describes horror movies that use children as a source of fear, and among these special children, the spirit child is undoubtedly the most mysterious.
They are indeed children, and they will not come to a "Tianshan Tongmao" reversal like in [Orphans' Complaint]." But they are also very supernatural, whether they are children of demons, acquired possessions, or genetic genes, they all have the ability to transcend ordinary reality.
Shot in 1956, "Bad Breed" can be said to be the originator of all children's horror films, and since then, all kinds of spooky children have sprung up.
[Bad Species]
In this classical narrative, Mauvin Leroy mixes the soul of film noir. Eight-year-olds have a perverted desire for revenge, intending to kill successful competitors because they lost a competition.
So fierce, but related to genetics, the child's grandmother Bessie Denk was once a notorious serial killer, she was a hand-bladed father at the age of 11, and when she grew up, she killed the side branches of the Denk family one by one to get all the family property.
The mysterious power of generational inheritance makes this child wander between reality and "surreality", as long as he takes another step to step into the abyss of Satan, but unfortunately Leroy is limited to the original writing, but he was quickly boarded by posterity.
If [the bad breed] created a quasi-spirit child image, then [Magic Boy Village] born in 1960 has taken off from the ground plane of reality, but surprisingly, it has not gone to the most well-known mysticism today, but has been linked to early science fiction and played with doomsday prophecy.
[Magic Boy Village]
The children here can be born on their own without conception, and their growth rate is also very urgent, and they mature quickly after taking hormones.
In the early days, they can transmit and share information with their minds, and when they mature, they can manipulate others with their minds. One by one, the villagers died, but the reason was that they were manipulated by these magic children.
But the film never tells why these children were born and why they killed, until the Soviets showed the great weapon of destruction of these mutant villages with atomic bombs, and we know that the first recorded lingchild film truly reflected the panic of the people under the Cold War.
After [The Magic Boy Village] opened up a new world, the 1964 "Cursed Child" was the sequel to turn an English village into six countries, and the magic boy's reference was undoubtedly more obvious.
From the small village of the previous work to the current Six Kingdoms (covering the forces on both sides of the Iron Curtain), the influence of nuclear weapons still makes the residents of the British Isles uneasy, and the child naturally becomes the victim of the first rank, and the image of the spirit child is to warn the world.
Similarly, the Japanese anime [Akira], although it is not scary, but when the picture of flesh and metal entangled in the picture, you will still be conquered by katsuyo Otomo's imagination, which is a more frightening reality than horror movies, a future that breaks through restrictions and has no morality to speak of.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > heading into the abyss</h1>
In the late sixties, because of a [Rosemary's Baby], the image of the spirit child went from heaven to the underground and was gradually controlled by Satan the Devil.
In Roman Polanski's film, the Devil's Infant, although he does not appear much, becomes the most critical character in the whole film, even with a little bit of Cthulhu's inexplicable fear.
The unseen appearance of the Holy Child, although it gives people a reverie, but also hinders the arrival of fear, but the 1972 [Game of Death] is amazing.
In this movie, there are many horror movie standards: twins, murderous children, supernatural games, ghosts, etc., in which ghosts dissolve twins, supernatural games dissolve ghosts, and murderous children dissolve supernatural games at the highest point.
Robert Mulligan's only horror film seems to use a lot of bridges, it is similar to [Island Horror] and seems to inspire [the sixth sense of the spirit], but in fact, it is unique.
The image of the spirit child in this film is extremely ambiguous, and the ending also leaves countless possibilities for children to fall into the real abyss.
The directors of the seventies dragged the children into the abyss step by step, and the [Exorcist] in 1973 used the evil as a hindrance, so that the poor girl was possessed by the devil, cute and hateful juxtaposed, innocence and evil blended, and the power of the explosion was amazing.
Three years later, the [Omen] can be seen as an upgraded version of the Devil's Holy Child, this time the baby has grown up, but the innate Satanic bloodline has never faded.
When he was a child, he knew that he provoked women to fight for himself, that his adoptive mother's love for him was close to magic, and that the nanny was "martyred" for him.
In the end, the protagonist played by Gregory Pike dies, but the child is once again adopted by the President of the United States.
The triumph of evil over justice is a fateful outcome that is even more frightening that he is about to bring a deeper catastrophe to the United States.
In every field, the United States in 1976 was the beach after the storm, and through this spiritual child, we seem to be able to speculate on the sense of nothingness of the future of the people at that time.
David Cronenberg's [Spirit Baby] (1979) is more nihilistic, and although visually these little children appear as physical beings and actually kill people, Konenberg is less boring.
Psychoanalytic experts pointed out that these children are mutated from the "tumors" of adults' minds, and the trauma is consolidated into a complex, and finally these "resentments" are formed.
There is no doubt that the children in [the spirit baby] are more illusory, and seeing them is like seeing our own, and the "other" that exists in my heart is more terrifying than the previous fear of ghosts and gods and others.
With the steps accumulated earlier, lingtong was full of more vitality in the eighties.
[Ghost Driving] wandered in the warm family drama and the fear of being possessed, and made three films in succession, and the evil atmosphere of this film even affected the actors outside the play, which became a major strange case in film history.
And [The Shining] is undoubtedly a special column, although the protagonist's son is supernatural, but because the white adult male has become the representative of evil, then the spirit child naturally evolves into good.
In [Fierce Fire] and [The Child of the Cornfield], the child once again becomes an uncontrollable force.
The former is like a dry match that will be lit with a little rubbing, and is simply a prequel to [Carrie the Witch]; the latter, although it returns to the old routine of summoning demons, these children kill adults and build their own society (and even have religion), so that the audience sitting in front of the screen can sit still.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > retro and innovative</h1>
In 1960, [Magic Boy Village] opened the sub-genre horror movie of the Spirit Child, and the horror master Carpenter naturally did not forget to touch this glory.
1995's "Cursed Village" is a remake of a 35-year-old classic.
Carpenter adorned his unique atmosphere of suspense with music. Of course, after removing the Cold War context, the culprit of all this can only be pushed to the aliens, and this treatment is not as strong as the shock brought by [Magic Boy Village]."
If most of the previous lingchild movies were about their confrontation with ordinary people, then the "Sixth Sense" from the mysterious master Shyamalan tried to communicate between the two.
The spirit boy in the film is played by the famous long-disabled emperor Osmond, who can see the undead and thus become an alien in the eyes of ordinary people. The spirit children of Shyamalan are not intimidating, and there is even a possibility of normal communication with adults.
When Mike (Bruce Willis) establishes a deep friendship with him little by little, and finally opens the heart of the child in question, the end of the day, sharply changing the topic, it turns out that it is not our world that accepts the child, they can only live on the other side.
After the new millennium, the spirit children are gradually rare, but there is still no shortage of fine products, of which the more creative one is [Silent Hill]. Compared with the previous simple bloody killings, [Silent Hill] can be said to be a "brain-burning" masterpiece.
Although Sharon is a little girl, she has an incredibly complex life, and in layman's terms, she has been wronged in her past life and wants to take revenge in this life.
So, in one character, we see a triple identity: Alyssa, who was burned at the stake 30 years ago, Alyssa, who is evil, who comes from hell, and the other is the protagonist's daughter, the kind Sharon. These three can never be unified, and the final result can only be left behind.
Compared with the spirit children's films of the last century, the horrors of the twenty-first century are mostly unrelated to children, and [Silent Hill] only separates evil spirits from children, and there are not a few films like this, there are also vampire children such as "No One Is Allowed to Enter", in short, it is difficult for supernatural children to get people's hearts.
However, [Death Divination 2: Origin of Evil Spirits] is once again retro, so that the little girl in the film is possessed by evil spirits, which has the style of [exorcist].
And [the daughter of heaven] can be seen as the future spirit child, neither possessed nor a child of the devil, but a new species, which also gives us inspiration: the image of the spirit child can actually be more imaginative. For example, the evil version of Superman [Magic Boy].