terrors of childhood

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2009)

I happily got to see this not just in 3-D but with Neil Gaiman in attendance, and he talked about how the whole story is basically an edit of the bizarrely appalling stories his five-year-old daughter had told HIM. I hope that settles the question of whether semi-horror material is suitable for children, already. The interesting thing is how the genre is transformed by the demographic - in place of shocks, we get cold creeps oozing out around the edges of extremely terse tonal control. It's so level, so deliberate, that at first it's kind of disorienting, wrong. But that's just another way of situating the horrors in the 'real' life of the heroine - they are a continuity or a mutation, not a break, from her neurotic home life. Neurotic, not evil - another coup; the parents are dimensional and comprehensible even though they are also a serious pain in the ass. Looks great, of course.