In the horror genre,
anything cute can be scary.
Dolls with knives and serial-
killing souls, grinning clowns
with a taste for tiny arms.
And little children? They’re
the freakiest monsters of all.
Every generation has its
scariest kid. Think of Patty
McCormack, rocking blond
pigtails and a murderous atti-
tude in 1956’sThe Bad Seed.
The ’70s brought Linda Blair’s
head-spinning inThe Exorcist
and Harvey Stephens’ maybe-
Antichrist inThe Omen.
Macaulay Culkin memorably
ended his child-star days
tormenting Elijah Wood in
The Good Son, and the more
recent cult hitOrphan intro-
duced Isabelle Fuhrman as a
poor, parentless girl with an
all-time shocking secret.
Why do cute kids torment
us so? “There’s a thing about
young children in horror
that resonates with an audi-
ence,” actor Bill Mumy says.
Mumy was just 7 when he
played superpowered terror
Anthony Fremont in theThe scariest videogames of
all time.BY AARON MORALESThe Evil Within
201410 ZombiU
201209 Fatal Frame II:
Crimson Butterfly
200308 Alien:
Isolation
201407Children are a blessing.
Unless they’re bad seeds,
a reliable horror staple in
which the most terrible evil
lurks behind the smile of
an innocent-looking cherub.
By Darren Franich
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY...
Patty
McCormack in
The Bad Seed
(1956)INTERACTIVE HORROR