My Cultural Diet

My youngest has been wanting to branch out into spooky movies lately, so now seemed like the perfect time to share what is arguably my favorite horror movie, and it’s held that status ever since my film history professor gave me a VHS copy back in the mid ’90s. Put simply, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents — adapted from Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw by William Archibald and Truman Capote — is a gothic horror masterpiece. When a young governess (Deborah Kerr) moves to a remote English manor to care for two children, it seems like a dream assignment. Something sinister, however, lurks beneath the picturesque setting and the children’s beatific faces, though it’s unclear if it’s something truly supernatural or just a figment of the governess’s anxious mind. Everything about The Innocents is near-perfect. The incredible production design, Freddie Francis’s rich black-and-white cinematography, the beautiful Sheffield Park scenery, the haunting music and sound effects, and the performances by Kerr and Martin Stephens — who’s absolutely chilling as the young Miles — all come together for a true horror classic.

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