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Children are elbowing out space in horror movies like never before

Season two of Stranger Things drops on Netflix this weekend, once again dripping in black goo and nostalgia for 80s pop culture. 

Or is it nostalgia for Stephen King fare, where a creature feature can stumble into a Stand By Me-like coming-of-age tale? Or is it nostalgia for a time where kids bolted out on BMX bikes, no parents tracking them on smartphones or social media to distract them?

After the massive success of It – the second screen adaptation of King’s 1986 book no doubt helped by the first season of Stranger Things – we’re enjoying a moment where the horror novelist is cool again. Look out for J.J. Abrams upcoming Hulu series Castle Rock, yet another entertainment property inspired by the author’s canon.

With King comes a moment in which kids are elbowing out space in the horror genre like never before.

The box office tally for King’s It – raking in over $600 million in North America and internationally – is a sure sign that preadolescent audiences crave movies about things that go bump in the night, alongside teens and adults reliving their good old days. 

Remember what demographic Fear Street and Goosebumps author R.L. Stine (who is speaking at the Art Gallery of Ontario on November 29) tapped into during the 1990s: an age group that has been underserved by horror movies.

“I wasn’t a huge horror movie fan until I did the first season of Stranger Things,” 14-year-old Finn Wolfhard, the young Canadian actor who stars in both Stranger Things and It, told NOW in a recent interview. “Before Stranger Things came out, every single thing featured the kid as the bait and that was kind of it.”

Unlike Wolfhard’s Mike Wheeler on Stranger Things, a leader among dorks who stands up to school bullies and inter-dimensional creatures, most kids in horror movies serve as obstacles the babysitter needs to shove in a protective closet, or as emblems of fear for freaked-out parents – think everything from Village Of The Damned and Rosemary’s Baby to The Babadook.

Early 2000s trends in horror, like found footage (The Blair Witch Project) and torture porn (Saw and Hostel), shoved kids further into the background.

But then came M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, which unlike The Sixth Sense or The Village, was told from the perspective of young children frightened by their maniacal grandparents. That was followed by The Witch, where a young girl in 17th-century New England faces dire consequences brewed by a mysterious force. 

Then came Stranger Things, which not only served as an homage to Stephen King but also to 80s fare like E.T. and The Goonies – a time before studios decided kids could only save the day with magic wands or superpowers rather than slingshots, ingenuity and charisma. 

Stranger Things paved the way not only for It’s phenomenal success, but perhaps also Netflix’s McG-directed The Babysitter, where a child discovers his babysitter is part of a satanic cult. And coming soon is Brian Taylor’s Mom And Dad, a nasty horror comedy about children fending off murderous parents played by Selma Blair and Nicolas Cage. 

THE BABYSITTER

Courtesy of Netflix

A Satanic cult sets out to kill a 12-year-old boy in director McG’s Netflix film The Babysitter.

Tangentially, we’re also seeing more violence toward kids in horror, like in the opening of It, where a child’s arm is chewed off, and in Brian Taylor’s Mom And Dad, where Cage terrorizes a preteen with an electric saw.

With kids taking centre stage, we’re rediscovering what made horror classics (and King adaptations) like Carrie and The Shining so great, allowing the monsters lurking in the shadows to complement the fears and turbulent emotions over broken homes and childhood slipping away.

Stranger Things 2 kicks off in no hurry to get to the ghoulish business of the Upside Down. Instead, the first few episodes heavily invest in the kids’ navigating the emotional consequences from the first season.

“Mike kind of becomes a loner,” says Wolfhard, explaining his character’s lost mojo and longing in the absence of Millie Bobby Brown’s telekinetic lab rat Eleven. Meanwhile, his older sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), guiltily struggles with a community that has seemingly moved on after her best friend Barb’s disappearance. And then there’s Will (Noah Schnapp), the child lost to the Upside Down in season one, returned to everyday life as the odd one out. He’s also having to come to turns with a new man in his household (Sean Astin, romancing Winona Ryder’s Joyce), while being haunted by visions where the Upside Down intrudes on his town.

The thing that made Stranger Things exceed beyond nostalgia porn (or what Forbes calls “nostalgia marketing”) is this genuine investment in childhood emotions. Ditto It, which didn’t add up to much in the Pennywise department but was exceptionally tuned in when it came to Sophia Lillis’s character, Beverly Marsh, and her struggles with domestic abuse and puberty. An exceptional bathroom sequence is a terrific throwback to Carrie’s fight with womanhood, her period and pig’s blood.

Perhaps the reason Stranger Things and It – and Stephen King – are having their moment is because popular entertainment so rarely bothers engaging with the raging hormones and emotional complications haunting young audiences.

Wolfhard agrees, though he also seems undaunted by how hormonal changes will impact his life or career.

“I don’t really notice it,” he says, chalking it up to how busy he keeps with school, film and music projects. Not that kids ever really notice that they’re being affected by puberty. “I have so much great stuff, I can’t be sad about my own body changing.

“It’s not like PUBERTY!” Wolfhard squeals comically, like a child horrified by growing up. “And then I throw a book at someone.”

movies@nowtoronto.com | @JustSayRad

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