The Innocents

Ghosts in the classroom
This week, I ended up watching an old classic, The Innocents, which is, by far, one of the best horror flicks I have seen in recent months (sorry, TSRoD!). How can it go wrong: it was, after all, based on the popular novel by Henry James? Well, in the wrong hands, anything can happen. Thankfully, the folks behind the flick did the story justice, making it a definite favorite in my top horror list. 

The main plot is a far cry from the in-your-face style of ghostly tales. It starts out with a wealthy man hiring a governess for the kids in his care. The children's parents died a tragic death in one of the British colonies and the guy couldn't be bothered to step up as a parent. So, in comes the governess. She seems pleasant and he's not too fussy about her previous work. Actually, this is the first time she is adopting such a role but he's not worried. Funnily enough, when the new governess, Miss Giddens, learns that the previous nanny had passed away whilst on the job … she was not too disturbed. If she was, she didn't show it. Is it an indication of modern times that, when a single man loses a nanny and then looks for a replacement, the words 'serial killer' pops up into your head?

Once she is hired, she hops off to a far off location, a fancy little mansion where one of the kids, Flora, is located. The other kid, Miles spends his time in boarding school. Let me add that this is one of those times when horror stories set in hard-to-reach locations worked really well. It was quite unnerving watching her take that long trip, for a new job, off to a distant spot. As if that was not bad enough, the director pans out to show the massive surrounds of the mansion, thus pointing out just how isolated that creepy spot is.

Pish-posh, past references are so over-rated!

Well, Miss Giddens settles in nicely. She gets along well with the older housekeeper and Flora is easy enough to handle. Everything goes slightly awry when Miles expelled from boarding school due to extremely bad behavior. How bad can it really be, is how the governess finally assures herself. Well, it can get pretty horrid as she finally discovers. She starts suspecting that the ex-nanny might be lingering around as a ghost. She's not alone in this either: seems like the dead woman's ex-lover, another employee of the house, might be donning the ghostly attire for haunting purposes. And somehow, these two have devious plans for the children …

Firstly, can I just say that the presentation of the whole story was mind-blowing? The director shied away from the rather typical, rattling-chains-and-white-apparitions type of tactics. Everything is subtle, from the way the story unfolds to the viewer to the way the ghosts are revealed. This actually made the movie scarier instead of taking away from its chills-and-thrills factor. I should point out that the freakiest moment in the flick – that's when Miss Giddens turns around in the schoolroom to discover a hunched, weeping woman on the opposite side of the room. You can't see the figure too clearly but that weird sobbing is enough information about her.

Direction aside, the various actors also contributed to making this a great flick. The kids faced a challenging task, portraying psychologically troubled kids and I must say that they certainly rose up to the task. Most importantly, it was Miss Giddens' part (played by Deborah Kerr) that stood out. I need to point something else out before I explain further. This particular story has been the source of much debate: a lot of folks think the house was indeed haunted by ghosts whilst others argue that the governess had psychological problems and thus, imagined the hauntings. I think that the folks behind this flick agreed with the latter theory. For this reason, Miss Giddens always seemed uneasy and just a bit jumpy. Some of her statements, whilst brushed aside as harmless utterances, also had a thinly veiled note anger about them. If nothing else, the way she pulled theories out of the air was enough reason to question her sanity.