The Changeling
Rollback to 1980. There are two things people say that disturb me. The first is that we’re all immune to those old, rickety, slow-paced horror movies. The second is that the Japanese have revolutionized the creepy thriller genre.
I’ll address the second fallacy – the Japanese have never filmed anything original in their lives. Even Godzilla is a trumped up King Kong. Take away those scales and there’s monkey flesh under there.
So we come to The Changeling, George C. Scott hard at work in one of the most effective thrillers ever put to film. This is lock your windows, turn on the lights, and have a stroke when your friend arrives unannounced for beer and popcorn stuff.
We begin with the death of wife and child in a wonderful pre-credit car accident. The Descent borrowed this for their big shocker opener, but they failed to deliver the money shot. We’re given a very modern bang-crash-bloody spike there. In 1980, the far more removed yet uncomfortable death by car is given that classically unflinching treatment. The camera happily records the crushed by car death of wife and daughter while George C. Scott watches helplessly. Bloody spikes make you jump, but this opening sequence makes you shift and cringe in your seat. It’s the sort where you sit there for the next five minutes thinking that maybe it’s time to switch to something more lighthearted.
Scott plays brilliant composer John Russell. Now ruined by the horrific death of his family, he retreats to Colorado and rents a secluded house from the historical society. The big, old mansion might as well have “I’M FUCKING HAUNTED TO THE RAFTERS” spray-painted across the front, but Scott ain’t afraid of no ghost. He teaches at the local college and goes about composing his masterwork while befriending hot tamale Claire Norman. The movie wastes no time in getting to the nut cutting. There’s something afoot in the house and Scott is quietly haunted by an increasingly troublesome ghostly presence. No slouch in the Big Man department, he seeks it out and hammers his way into Ghost Central.
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From there, things heat up. Way back in the day, there was no problem in seeking outside help. Instead of man trapped in house, prisoner of watery screenplay, Scott seeks out Barry Morse at the college’s parapsychology department who gets Scott hooked up with a medium. No screwing around there, either. We get the ghost, and the backstory, thown at us right away in the sort of way that makes you want to stop and check under the bed.
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With proof positive delivered, it’s time for Scott and his hot tamale to solve the mystery. And…away we go. Act two is, well, The Ring. Angry kid trapped in well, thirsty for revenge…
What you get, right away, is what we all learn as we get older: Every horror movie filmed in the last 15 years is a blatant rip-off of what has come before. Changeling has been heavily borrowed from (but is itself, in the final act, a distilled version of The Fall of the House of Ushur) and, still, it’s full of thrills. Not the jump around in your seat and get punched by your easily frightened girlfriend thrills… I’m talking spine-tingling shit. Hair standing up, glance over your shoulder, shiver slightly and think to yourself: I thought I’d seen it all.
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Of course, I was drunk. But, still, there’s a lot to be said when you’re actually scared by a movie. Not the cheap thrills, but actually scared. Changeling is the real stuff – it doesn’t have to try to get you. It flows. It’s the way stories should go… It’s not just a creepfest, either. It’s a wickedly intelligent murder mystery.
The creepy Japanese horror that has invaded our shores and become increasingly bloody and full of the still-not-doing-nude-scenes Sarah Michelle Geller has nothing on what we’ve done in the past. The cover’s old, George C. Scott is a dinosaur, there are no monsters, no blood, no bells and whistles. This is a proper thriller.
Nacho’s gin rating is all four stars. We’ve got child murder, crushed by cars, parapsychologists, drowning, witchy old ladies, corrupt senators, scary voices, angry ghosts, one hell of a viciously haunted wheelchair and a red rubber ball. Sing along.
Oh! And watch out for Baltar from the OG Battlestar Galactica.
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