Fairy Tale and Film

Houses of Horror 
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explicit. Mei employs skilled salesmanship in giving her product legiti-
macy, convincing Mrs Li that cannibalism is in keeping with ancient 
Chinese tradition, yet what drives the former TV idol to take such 
drastic measures is a culture that demands perpetual youthfulness and 
desirability for women, forfeiting any other consideration. If Mrs Li 
ultimately becomes a demon herself it is due not simply to Mei’s influ-
ence, but to the world at large. Infanticide has been treated in other 
horrors, yet the film’s total obliteration of family values takes us beyond 
the pale.
For the most part, although horror cinema presents a number of 
dysfunctional families, the family remains intact as an ideal, even 
to the extent that monstrous offspring are often nurtured and pro-
tected. Refuting the idea that we are simply propelled by basic drives, 
horror testifies to the importance of upbringing, with ‘evil’ children 
increasingly presented as not simply demonic, but a reflection of nega-
tive role models. In the ironically titled 
Eden Lake
(James Watkins, 2008) 
the most frightening thing about the feral youths who torment a couple 
in the woods is not only their lack of empathy but the fact that their 
murderous ringleader is ultimately protected by his parents. Children 
may become the terrifying perpetrators of violence, yet simply reflect 
the values of equally loathsome parents, who are evidently without 
any morality or compassion for anyone but their own. The couple who 
stray into ‘their’ territory are viciously hounded by these youths, with 
murderous consequences. Steve (Michael Fassbinder) is stabbed to death 
by the gang, and while his fiancée Jenny (Kelly Reilly) manages to get 
back to what we think is civilisation, we realise that we are not going 
to be given a happy ending. The real house of horror here is the seem-
ingly ordinary terrace that Jenny is helped into by sympathetic seeming 
locals, revealed as the gang leader’s home. Taking the despairing point 
of William Golding’s 
Lord of the Flies
(1954) up a notch, this is a world 
where teenagers have no respect for life, and we realise, as the parents 
close in on Jenny, exactly where they have learnt their behaviour. Like 
equivalent figures in 
Wolf Creek
(Greg Mclean, 2005) and 
The Descent
(Neil Marshall, 2005), Jenny’s courage and resilience come to nought; 
she is last seen screaming as the adults move in, making us reluctant 
witnesses to a crime we can do nothing about. 
F 
(Johannes Roberts, 
2010) is a similarly grim ‘hoodie-horror’ in which teenagers – faceless, 
thanks to the shadows cast by their hooded jackets – rampage around 
their school one night, mutilating and murdering any staff and students 
on site, motivated by getting the F grade signalled in the film’s title, 
yet which also points to a horrendous failing somewhere in society. 

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136 
Fairy Tale and Film
If the Grimms gave us horrible stories like ‘The Children Who Played 
Butcher with One Another’ – in which children imitate what they see, 
not realising the implications of their actions, the fear factor arises in 
these instances because these ‘child’ figures are far from innocent and 
simply don’t care.
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By contrast, 
Battle Royale
(Fukasuku Kinji, 2000) subverts this fear of 
teenagers, placing us on the side of imperilled adolescents due to the 
cruel scenario the adult world has created for them: rounding up young 
offenders on an island where they are given weapons and ordered to 
kill each other off. Such films replicate adolescent fantasies of abandon-
ment and estrangement, exaggerating the enmity of faulty parent 
figures while legitimating the need to wield violence without impu-
nity. The man behind the scheme is shown to be estranged from his 
own daughter, a sadistic patriarch who seeks to eliminate the younger 
generation because he has failed at being a father. While this ambi-
tion may fly in the face of the natural order, such narratives have been 
around for some time. Warner notes that man-eating ogres date back 
to classical mythology, with Kronos eating his own offspring to avoid 
being replaced, contending that ‘monsters, ogres and beasts who kill 
and eat human flesh ... variously represent abominations against soci-
ety, civilisation and family’ (2000: 11). The particular threat posed by 
fathers emerges as a notable theme in post-seventies horror, reflecting 
socio-political critiques formulated in this period. As Mark Jancovich 
affirms, the family ‘remains a precarious institution, and the role of the 
father presents a distinct problem ... the families which are defined as 
a challenge to forms of domination are usually clearly distinguished 
from the patriarchal family’ (1992: 85).