Canadian Horror Marathon: The Changeling (1980)

Within the genre of horror, there are many, many subgenres.  They range from slasher to ghost stories to haunted houses to body horror.  Within those subgenres there are other, smaller subgenres.  Take haunted houses, for example.  There are two main types of haunted house movies that I’m going to get into further detail about.

Before I get into that, I’m going to quickly discuss the movie that brings this topic up.  The Changeling is from 1980 and stars George C. Scott.  The main character moves into a house and begins noticing strange things.  Doors slam closed.  He gets weird feelings.  A children’s toy mysteriously shows up.  It turns out, the house is haunted.  More stuff happens.  That’s the story of The Changeling, without giving any spoilers away.

The Changeling falls into the first category of haunted house movies.  This category is where, yes, the house is haunted.  Something bad happened in the house (Example: Amityville Horror) or around the house (Example: Poltergeist) to cause some sort of spirit to wreak havoc upon those residing in the house.  The reasoning could range from someone’s violent death to the disruption of a resting place.  The house becomes haunted and a lot of creepy, scary occurrences begin happening.  The people living in the house begin to get frightened to the point of escape or death.

There are different ways to handle a haunted house story.  They tend to vary in how much is shown, regarding the malevolent spirit.  Sometimes you hear footsteps, banging, or slamming doors.  Sometimes you see the spirit coming for the main characters.  Each way to present the material has different pros and cons to it.  If the filmmaker is going for shocking imagery, they are more likely to show the spirit.  If the filmmaker is going for more of a mentally antagonizing style, then they may go with the idea of less is more.  In that way, they won’t show the spirit, but instead will let the imagination make its own imagery.  Like I said, they both have their own benefits, and they help to differentiate movies from one another.

The second of the two main types of haunted house movies is the type where the house isn’t haunted but one of the people is.  This technically isn’t a haunted house movie.  I count it because the majority of the time things happen throughout the house because of this haunting.  The first example that comes to mind right now is Paranormal Activity.  Though not straight haunting, I can still use it to get my point about this type across.  Something is haunting the main character.  By haunting the character, it is slamming doors in the house, moving things, doing stuff to the people in the house...but it’s all centered in the house.  Through the sequels, you discover that it has happened in multiple houses.  The house is an essential part to the haunting, however, which is why I consider this type of haunting to be included in the haunted house subgenre.

I wouldn’t be doing my non-paying, blogging job if I didn’t note that there are mixtures of the two and/or movies that are haunted house movies that don’t fit into either category.  It’s gets difficult to define those sub-subgenres though, which is why I stuck to the big two.  If you can think of other classifications of haunted house movies, feel free to put those classifications in the comments.

Up next in the Canadian Horror Marathon is going to be Cube, a movie I like and have seen many times.  I haven’t seen it in a couple years.  I haven’t seen it since I saw Splice, a movie by the same director, which shouldn’t be comparable in any way.  I mentioned it only based on the director connection.  And that’s all I have to say about that.