MAY ?? - The Changeling

 

            By 1980, horror audiences had had seen splatter-fests, chainsaw-wielding rednecks, rape-revenge flicks, Satanically-possessed adolescents, and the dawn of the slasher. Surely no one could be scared by a cute little haunted house picture. And surely me, all the way in 2020, am above such juvenile frights. Right? Absolutely not; this movie fucking scared me.

            Part of the late-‘70s early-‘80s haunted house boom, The Changeling, like the aesthetically similar Don’t Look Now, opens with tragedy. Composer John Russell loses his wife and daughter in a freak car accident. Overcome with grief, John yeets to Seattle to serve as a guest lecturer at the University of Washington. His friends put him in touch with the local historical society who rent him a ridiculously lavish mansion which has been unoccupied for twelve years. It comes with furniture, a piano, and of course a ghost.

            Kept awake by mysterious sounds and doors that open on their own, John discovers a secret room in the attic complete with wheelchair and music box. Aided by historical society member and potential love interest Claire Norman, John begins to investigate the history of the house. All the staples of the haunted house film are here – the séance, ghostly noises, architectural secrets, and of course a past atrocity that won’t stay dead. But the unnerving sound design and just-right directing remind us why these tropes are such classics. I have seen this kind of stuff dozens of times before and it usually leaves me cold – see my review of Amityville – but here I was genuinely spooked, and I can’t say I didn’t jump at the odd sound or two coming from the corners of my apartment.

            While most haunted house movies locate their ghosts firmly in the past, what happened to the little ghost boy who died in the grand house still has a very real impact on the present day, especially when it comes to politics. As John learns more about the house and its inhabitants, the movie becomes a conspiracy thriller, all while never losing its ghostly charms. It is here that The Changeling really stands out from other ghost stories. In its final act, it becomes a meditation on the complicity of the powerful, who cannot reckon with the crimes that gave them their wealth and power. It offers a surprising (and possibly unintentional) look at the fragility of the privileged.

            Aside from its political turn, The Changeling does not necessarily break new ground in the haunted house genre. But what it does it does so damn well, breathing new life into one of horror’s oldest archetypes. If someone asked me to recommend a definitive ghost story, I’d say The Shining and this. That’s pretty damn high praise.

Vibecheck: Oh, to have a Victorian mansion in the Pacific Northwest alone to myself and my ghost pals.

Scare Factor: The bouncing ball, the secret door, the STAIRS, the wheelchair covered in cobwebs, the music box that matched the music he’s composed hours earlier. Watch this one in the dark and let it fuck with you.

Pairs Well With: At one point, John goes looking for the child-ghost’s body in a well, which is of course reminiscent of Ringu and The Ring (I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie was an influence). The Changeling is, in some ways, what I wanted The Ring to be – the story of a pissed off child-ghost whose death is acknowledged by the movie to be a Bad Thing. Very pro child murder, is The Ring. (Sidenote: few horror facts have blown my mind like realizing that Sadako/Samara is only canonically a child in the American remake. Why??)

But How Gay Is It?: John is no action hero man’s man, thank goodness, but he is very much the suave professorially older man model of het masculinity, and gets a lady kinda love interest to hang out with him while he solves ghost mysteries. They must have been living rough in the ‘70s, because George C. Scott was only 53 when he played this role. He looks about 70.

Girlfriend’s Corner: Holy shit, what a movie! It was, for one thing, terrifying. At one point, I was so scared I started to feel sick, and there wasn’t anything remotely gory on the screen – just a combination of shot framing, sound design, and acting that created one of the most intense feelings of dread I’ve ever had. For another: I’m not used to Seventies ghost-story horror movies being quite that thematically rich, I guess? I know that sounds reductive, but Burnt Offerings and even, like, The Exorcist did nothing for me at a thematic level. The Changeling, though, between its ideas of generational trauma, subtle meditations on the evils of capitalism, and ambivalence about whether grief can ever truly end, was more thematically dense than almost any other horror movie I’ve ever seen. I made a good choice by sitting in on this one!