The Paradoxes of Children’s Gothic Cinema
Make it stand out
Ever since my dad allowed me to watch Signs at the tender age of eight, I’ve been scared of the dark. Something similar probably happened to most kids, whether it was caused by a particularly eerie shot of an alien, an older brother introducing them to Jeepers Creepers or otherwise. Most kids grew out of their fear, but mine, however, didn’t subside. When friends flocked to a local cinema to see Paranormal Activity, armed with the knowledge that it wouldn't do much more than make them jump, I would stay home. And year after year when Halloween ordained that you had to give yourself a scare, I would turn instead to films like Coraline, Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Films from the paradoxical, almost impossible genre known as the children’s gothic.
We’re all familiar with these films; the genre is an integral part of that Pinterest brand of “fall” that we turn to each year alongside pumpkin spice lattes and abstract Yankee Candle scents. But their absorption by a depthless aesthetic does them a disservice: What does it really mean to create a film that aims to both scare and accommodate its child audience?
Children’s gothic films, like both the gothic literature and campfire stories that preceded them, are more than just entertainment: they’re educational. Sometimes this is a good thing. While classic (adult) horror films like The Exorcist, The Omen and The Children of the Corn show that the genre has a penchant for evil children, children’s gothic films turn the notion on its head. In Coraline, Monster House and Paranorman, it’s not the children that assume the role of the Other, but their parents or local townspeople (or other parents if you're Coraline). Without the adults fulfilling their usual roles, the children are empowered to put things right themselves. And if they ever need any encouragement along the way, you can bet your bottom dollar it comes from another child - or at least a ghostly apparition of one. First lesson taught by these films? Children are heard.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Children’s gothic films aren’t solely dismantling the notion of the evil child, they’re picking apart the idea at the other end of the spectrum: the child as inherently innocent and pure. The eponymous Norman of Paranorman is a horror aficionado who can see and talk to ghosts. Victor of Frankenweenie is the kind of child that digs up his dead dog. But neither Norman or Victor’s strange qualities impede on their triumph later on in the narrative. If anything, it aids it. Norman, for example, manages to stop Aggie - a ghost child hellbent on destroying the fictional town of Blithe Hollow - by relating the whole thing back to his own experiences as an outcast. The second key takeaway of the children’s gothic? Acceptance of a more transgressive child: one that exists in the (apparently uncomfortable) liminal space between innocence and evil.
“Children’s gothic films aren’t solely dismantling the notion of the evil child, they’re picking apart the idea at the other end of the spectrum: the child as inherently innocent and pure.”
But these films’ pedagogical function is a double-edged sword. While on the one hand films of the genre are quietly subversive in what they teach, they often simultaneously do the complete opposite. Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline all conclude with the main character returning to the slog of the dull and drab world which they, at one point, sought to escape. “The message is a paradox in that death is made to seem preferable to life.” Said Debbie Olson in her essay on Corpse Bride. In Monster House the Other is revealed not to be Horace Nebbercracker, the neighbourhood creep, but *checks notes* Nebbercracker’s dead wife who now haunts their house. The lesson to be learnt from that one? While I’m not entirely sure, it’s definitely something misogynistic.
Almost all films of the children’s gothic genre are, to an almost paralysing extent, imbued with the notion of stranger-danger. Whether it's the other mother in Coraline or the many different renditions of Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events, films from the genre find it hard to leave behind the persistent (and damaging) myths around child sex abuse. They choose to stick to the narrative that the biggest danger in a kid’s life is the stranger lurking in the shadows, something which just so happens to make for the perfect gothic monster.
But all of the above doesn’t mean that there isn’t something palpably scary about these films. They are, for instance, an artful exploration of the uncanny, both littered with suggestive imagery - womb-like tunnels in Coraline and vagina dentata in Monster House - and uncanny stylistic choices. There’s the continual use of stop-motion animation, where the jerky and exaggerated movements of the puppets lend themselves to a distinctly creepy feel. Monster House even manages to do the impossible and (inadvertently) become more scary with time: a rewatch reveals that the film’s computer-generated animation style - something that was once state of the art - goes hand in hand with glazed-over eyes and eerily smooth skin that makes even the “good” characters look sinister.
Films of the children’s gothic genre also do the rather tricky work of including adult horror iconography that’s been appropriately subdued for an audience of children. Hotel Transylvania, for instance, opens with a nod to the iconic slinking shadow in Nosferatu: yet in Hotel Transylvania, it’s not a vampire stalking its prey, but a dad innocently playing peek-a-boo. If there’s an adult horror trope that the children’s gothic can’t make age appropriate, they employ depictions of primordial fears that we all possess. Take the last act of A Series of Unfortunate Events: the peril of a hurricane becomes a pertinent way to explore the threat of death.
Most of all - and putting their sometimes strange and almost-problematic subtexts aside - films of the children’s gothic genre are a breath of fresh air: a remedy to the candy-coloured, saccharine worlds usually created for young audiences. Unfortunately, they just don’t make them like they used to. The only film released in recent years that’s been half comparable is 2022's Wendell and Wild. But while Wendell and Wild clearly makes a concerted effort when it comes to inclusivity, it feels decidedly subdued in terms of its gothic credentials: it’s just not that scary. Will children’s gothic films have a full resurgence? Given we’re living through another satanic panic, I’d say the chances are 50/50. On the one hand, they could once again become the perfect vehicle to warn children of a different kind of scary strangers, a la the queer coding of Disney’s villains. On the other, the genre’s dark aesthetics could be seen as opening up a whole other can of (spooky) worms.
Words: Amber Rawlings