The Changeling

Tonight's horror film was Peter Medak's "The Changeling." Wow... why is this film not more widely known? I was blown away watching this. As I'm in the midst of my second Horror Film Binge, I've found that my favorite type of horror is not gore--to me, atmosphere and what you don't see is vastly more horrifying than what you do. With that in mind, maybe that's why I find ghost/haunting movies so fascinating. They deal with something we can't see, something that can control our world and has motivations we can't comprehend. In that sense, The Changeling is a film I really can't find a fault in.

The Changeling follows John Russell (played incredibly by George C. Scott) who loses his wife and daughter in a car crash. He moves to a new home that he finds is embodied by an entity that wants his help and tries to communicate. Medak creates an atmosphere in this premise that gets under your skin, giving you those skin-crawling moments as you must watch knowing something scary is coming. Paired with an incredibly creepy, loud score, The Changeling nails the eerie atmosphere right on the head. While being a typically structured horror film, Medak makes it far from typical in how the story morphs and really catches you by surprise at the close. The tools used to scare, too, in terms of what the entity uses to communicate, are powerful and surprising.

Really, for me this is the perfect ghost, haunted house film. Again, why this isn't up there as one of the greats is mind boggling to me. More than highly recommended.

10/10