Amy Binns
When parents fear their changeling children The kids in Village of the Damned are not terrifying because they are aliens. They are terrifying because they are truly our children
H
ow can you be sure your child is really your child? Could that innocent-seeming baby be a changeling – a cuckoo in your nest? There is something about the evil elf child, reborn as the alien walking among us, that continues to fascinate and terrify US So much so, the broadcaster Sky has announced it has commissioned a third version of Village of the Damned from David Farr, the writer of The Night Manager. The first, filmed in 1960, is a cult classic of understated British horror. The 1995 version, starring Christopher Reeves, translated the nightmare to small-town America. Both were based on John Wyndham’s book The Midwich Cuckoos, in which a whole village briefly loses consciousness. Nine months later, eerily identical alien babies with telepathic powers are born to the women. They are smarter and grow faster than normal – and are soon threatening not just their “parents”, but all humankind. Originally published in 1957, the story is based on myths of changeling babies swapped by fairies. The
idea of otherworldly disturbing and can be children masquerbrutally punished. ading as human has The “hungries” of resonated down the MR Carey’s ecological centuries, and still zombie tale The Girl speaks to our anxiewith All the Gifts grow, ties today. learn and love stories All stories, howevlike all children, but er far-fetched, speak are dissected without to both our internal anaesthetic. Even the and societal fears. gentle clones of Kazuo That’s why monsters Ishiguro’s Never Let are almost always Me Go, created to save only a step away from humans, are shunned human: zombies, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN: John as monsters until they giants, werewolves. Wyndham’s novel, The Mid- give their lives. Even dragons – mali- wich Cuckoos. More terrifying is cious and vengeful – the changeling, who are more human than animal, such can slip under our radar. The as the dragon in Beowulf, which is changeling myth plays on deep an allegory for miserly greed. fears of the subversion of the adult/ As CS Lewis wrote: “When you child relationship, in which the premeet anything that’s going to be ternaturally intelligent changeling human and isn’t yet, or used to hides behind a cloak of innocence be human once and isn’t now, or while controlling everything. ought to be human and isn’t, you Secured from harm by our lovkeep your eyes on it and feel for ing instincts, the changeling can your hatchet”. even look out from behind the Confronting these monsters almask to mock our assumptions. lows us to confront our own, lesser As the literature academic selves. So the un-child, who goes a Karen Renner wrote in her work step further and simulates the puon evil children in the popular imrity of the innocent, is even more agination: “More disturbing is the
32 ColdType | September 2020 | www.coldtype.net
