Horror Film Countdown Day 19 – Movies Anxious Parents Should Avoid

Welcome to our countdown to the most anxiety-inducing horror films for parents!  Today is day nineteen!

Each day, we are covering the films I both love and hate because they’re awesome and they give me panic attacks now that I’m a mom.

Wednesday.  October 19th.  The day I saw one of the many horror films I swore I wouldn’t watch after having children.  Clearly, there is something wrong with me, or I’m just really obsessed with James Wan right now. (probably both)

Disclaimer: Trigger warnings are a given when you talk about horror, but I’m going to say it anyway.  Many subjects covered by horror films are disturbing to parents in ways we can’t possibly understand and each is unique to the parent and his/her experiences. Tread carefully and know your limits.  If this begins to be too much, there’s no shame in closing the window.  Also, this post contains some spoilers throughout. 

13. The Conjuring 2

Okay, so the truth is I’m a little bit obsessed with James Wan and the Warrens at the moment.  These are excellent horror films with delicious scares, haunting images and detailed, emotionally driven stories. They also happen to mostly surround the lives and safety of children, which makes them relevant to this list, so today we’re talking about the Conjuring 2.

First off; a powerful reminder of who we are dealing with in the first five minutes with a spectacular homage to Amityville Horror.  This reminder of Ed & Lorraine Warren’s work brings a sense of coming home, as we already know this story.  Just as he gave us the first five minutes of Annabelle in The Conjuring, he neatly ties it all in for us right off the bat.

A haunted house, murdered children, a demon lurking in the shadows.  As they reviewed the Amityville tale, I was instantly caught up in the tragedy of the children’s deaths realizing; The ghosts were just trying to warn everyone, not to scare them.  The poor little sweethearts….

In that introduction, they recreated an actual ghost-photo taken in the Amityville house.  Here is the real photo:

Now, go watch the movie to see how beautifully they gave tribute.  It really was excellent…

So, after we already feel our heart-strings tugged on by murdered children trapped in a haunted house, we move on to the actual story of The Conjuring 2; the haunting of the Enfield house in London, England. There, a struggling family begins to experience activity after two of the four children begin to play with a homemade spirit board.

You may have seen this photo floating around the image searches;

This is an actual photo taken by researchers attempting to build a case strong enough for Church support in dealing with the haunting.  Although every witness believed there had been occurrences in the home and multiple people of all walks of life had their own experiences, they could never get verifiable proof.  They were on their own.

Luckily, the church DID send Ed and Lorraine Warren to the house to feel it out, see if anything seemed legit enough to gain the Church’s support.  Ghost activity ensues and the story unfolds.

Through a series of typical, ghost story scares alongside some spectacularly creepy imagery, we get to revisit the Warren home (having been seen already during the first Conjuring, as well as Annabelle) to find the monster can hop the pond to jeopardize the safety of their own child who finds this monster in her hallway, one afternoon:

So, anyway… you’ve got a haunted house creep show, transcontinental demon nun, a terrified family, a demonologist couple who is seeing things in their own home overseas and a community who has all experienced activity but no one can prove it.  When the daughter is caught faking paranormal activity in the home, everyone packs up and leaves for home assuming the family is faking it entirely until Lorraine has a vision and understands what has truly happened; There is a demon who has possessed a spirit and is forcing him to possess the child and haunt the house.  A sort of paranormal turduckin, if you will.

Once they figure out what is going on, the couple races back to the house to save them just in the nick of time.

The demon is destroyed, the children have been saved, the house is clean.  The end.

So, this film is on my list because as a parent, several things about this story just break my heart and make me incredibly anxious.

1. Demons don’t need objects.  They follow you around like puppies just waiting for you to trip and die so they can eat your soul.  They are not bound to a continent, house, relic or even one person.  They prey upon the weak, the young, the old, the saved, the damned, and everyone in between.  If you believe in spirits, how far fetched is it to consider, in all the vastness of the unknown multitudes of space and time there is no such thing as an entity who is capable of the things people say about “spirits who never walked the earth”, (aka; demons)? The theology may not be relevant but that doesn’t mean the beings don’t exist.  Every culture has a version of demons.  Just something to think about.
2. Kids are stupid and I swear, no matter how many times someone says, “DO NOT TOUCH A DAMN SPIRIT BOARD”, someone is eventually, inevitably going to do it.  Because, kids.  Then it’s all “moooom…. Jimmy let out the evil again….” and no one wants to clean up that mess, trust me.
3. Watching these kids being tortured and tormented by an unseen force and then treated like liars just hurt my heart for them.  Would you believe your child if they came to you, afraid of some unseen being?  Or would you discredit them and tell you to stop scaring their sister/brother and go back to bed?  What if…you were wrong?
4. The children in the Amityville house were scary, but mostly sad.  Seeing all four of them in the basement trying to warn Lorraine of the demon behind her and realizing for as scary as they were, they were trying to help… It literally had me in tears.

All in all, this movie made my list because every mother fears a monster she cannot fight to save her babies.  The mother in this film watches helplessly as her children are terrorized in the worst way and all she can do is hold them, cry with them, love them and believe them… but not help.  It’s a brutal feeling and one every mother fears and feels at some point in their parenting careers, demon/monster/ghost, broken leg, disease, learning disorders, physical disabilities… monsters come in all forms and sometimes, all we can do is hold, hug, love, hope for the best and believe, because..

Sometimes it’s important to be the one who believes, even when everyone else won’t.  Do you?