The Red Circle

It’s pretty commonplace now to use as much blood, guts, and pain as possible to convey the message of “horror” in a “horror movie.” While there are some notable exceptions to this rule, the use of straight up atmosphere and ambiguity is almost a lost art nowadays. Enter THE INNOCENTS, a classic from 1960 that throws together an unreliable narrator in Deborah Kerr and a genuinely unsettling, gothic mansion that is brought to even higher levels of uneasiness from the use of deep focus black and white photography by Freddie Francis.

Ostensibly following the day-to-day life of a young woman offered to take the charge of two small children of an absentee father – a very, very wealthy man who, from his own lips, simply does not need or have time for his children – in a private mansion staffed by two maids, THE INNOCENTS manages to examine the off-kilter psychology of dealing with children and the devastation of loneliness.

Compounding this films creepiness is the performance of Martin Stephens, a child actor who gives one of the most mature, convincing, and unnerving performances by a minor in history. He made only two more films after THE INNOCENTS and then vanished off the filmic map. It’s a shame. He would be a megastar today. He is able to stand toe to toe with a top-of-her game Deborah Kerr and perform one of the most controversial ending scenes in horror history.

By and large, THE INNOCENTS is a bloodless affair, more content with making you face the monsters within rather than without – if they are even there. But the lack of any true gore and grue doesn’t diminish in any way the ghouls it displays, simmering just below the surface.

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