Parental Angst Is Real Star of 'Evil-Kiddie' Movies

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 7, 2009 6:35 PM CDT
Parental Angst Is Real Star of 'Evil-Kiddie' Movies
A creepy girl.   (Shutter Stock)

Murderous children have haunted movies since the 1950s—but why, Jonah Weiner wonders on Slate. “The biggest reason for this is the most obvious,” Weiner notes. “What’s creepier than a 4-foot-tall killer in Spongebob pajamas?” But the personification of evil in a child reveals deeper-seated anxieties. “In evil-kiddie movies, we get wild explorations—sometimes unsettling, sometimes hokey, often both—of what it means to raise a child and build a family.”

The evil kids of film tend to come from prosperous families and be outwardly well-behaved. “But all this good behavior quickly grows unnerving,” Weiner writes, “as we realize there’s a dark void behind it.” The genre is unrelentingly moral in its prescriptions for battling a bad seed. “Time and again in the evil-kiddie canon, it’s driven home that Mom and Dad can survive (if not prevent) their child’s attack only by sticking together.” (More children stories.)

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