Children are a reliable staple of horror. You don't want to see a child get hurt or killed, fictional or not, and the death of one can become the most stomach-churning part of a movie, but it becomes truly twisted when the child themselves is the one doing the hurting or killing. Some of the best monsters in cinema history are, or take the form of, children, and that can be represented in several ways. The Bad Seed (1956) is the first movie to represent the first cluster of characters: Rhonda is deceptively sweet and stereotypically adorable, but is actually a cold-hearted killer, explained by incredibly outdated psychology. Other characters followed the same trope, such as Henry of The Good Son (1993), while some straddled the line between cute and disturbing like Esther of Orphan (2009), giving a character more of a macabre vibe before you even learn the truth about her. On the other end of this spectrum are children who have completely crossed over, who are no longer, or have never been, entirely human. The Ring's Samara, The Omen's Damien, and Pet Sematary's Gage, all share a common ancestor, the trailblazer of monster children where you can see the foundation being laid for all that came after it.

Village of the Damned (1960) is a classic folk horror based on the John Wyndham story, The Midwich Cuckoos. Starring the great George Sanders and directed by Wolf Rilla, it follows a strange occurrence in a British countryside village, where all the women mysteriously and simultaneously give birth to almost identical children with peculiar abilities, that put Midwich in a terrifying stranglehold. So let's look at the features of these kids, and create a road map of what makes these inhuman tykes so memorable.

The film was followed up by a 1995 American remake starring Christopher Reeve and the late Kirstie Alley. However, this version doesn't hold a candle to the original, both in its production and the impact it had on the genre. The 1995 version failed to impress audiences and critics and was also a box office disappointment. The 1960 Village of the Damned has just hit HBO Max. So, you can relish this game-changing British horror from the comfort of your own bed or couch. And if you're a parent, the film is so haunting and effective, you might be slightly wary of your kiddies, checking to make sure their eyes haven't turned white!

RELATED: The Best Killer Kid Movies, From 'Orphan' to 'The Omen'

The Mysterious Backstory

Four blonde children in 'Village of the Damned'
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

In the question of Nature vs. Nurture, paranormal children usually sit in the former, with the origin of their birth — or rebirth, in the case of the undead — being under peculiar circumstances. Maybe you put your dead toddler in a haunted resting place in an intentional act to bring them back to life, or they were born with strange, supernatural abilities, or they're simply the antichrist. Village of the Damned has the strangest backstory of all, as everyone in Midwich suddenly falls unconscious, and wakes up to find all the women who can get pregnant, are pregnant. Their gestation is unnaturally quick, as is the rate of the children's aging and maturity. They seem to immediately have a strange, otherworldly vibe about them, which makes sense because they are not of this world, but part of a worldwide extraterrestrial invasion.

One could say that immediately establishing that normalcy was never an option, simply by the nature of their birth, is to other the children in a way no human medical condition could. Making them have superhuman powers, or simply making them undead as in the case of The Shining or The Orphanage, makes sure the story doesn't villainize a disabled child for the entirety of the film's runtime, which would set an extremely dangerous precedent. Making the Midwich children part of some grander plan rather than individuals, which is shown by not just they synchronized birth, but also their behavior, establishes that there is nothing there to redeem despite their physical age.

The Iconic Look

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Image via MGM

For those who haven't seen this film, these children may still look familiar to you from parodies on TV shows like The Simpsons. There's a good reason for this: the makings of a great movie monster are in its design, and these kids strike an iconic figure. There's something about the idea of a child you can play around with and corrupt when making a prepubescent monster. You can give them a truly horrifying visage that really throws you off, like wet, black hair masking a decomposing, waterlogged face, or you can make it a transformation from a regular child to a pea-soup vomiting, lacerated possession victim. Alternatively, you can keep the elements that make kids adorable, their stature, their big eyes, and button noses, but alter it just slightly enough to unsettle. Gage is still an adorable toddler, but his face is split from the truck that killed him, he wears an outfit from a painting that scared his mother, and most noticeably he brandishes a knife. They grow up so fast. It gives you a mix of fear, but also hesitance to stop him, his face is still the same as the one his parents kissed at night, and that's the scariest thing of all.

The kids of Village of the Damned have a similarly childlike but unsettling look, first because they all look, act, and move identically as a small clique. The look itself also gives the impression of a child but dips into a very uncanny place, their white hair is all impeccably neat, with those same, ghastly looking bowl cuts and bangs we all endured as children (now that's true horror). They all dress like tiny adults in dark coats and little suits, and last of all is the glowing eyes that precede them doing something terrible. And they are capable of doing terrible things.

The Terrible Powers

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There's a question that floats around from person to person sometimes, about how many pre-schoolers you can take down in a fight. 10? 15? Maybe, if they're not these guys. One of the things that can make a child monster scarier than an adult one is that you should, physically, be able to overpower a child. Of course, you shouldn't want to physically overpower a child, but if one crawled out of your television and is coming right at you, you feel like you could probably end that fight really quick. Your odds change drastically if you're dealing with someone like Brandon of Brightburn (2019) or anyone similar. Because with a mysterious or supernatural backstory will inevitably come incredibly dangerous abilities. The enhanced strength, speed, and ferocity of a zombie, or the mind-bending powers of an alien or ghost. Whatever ilk of monster you're dealing with, no matter how young, you're going to have a much harder time taking them down.

The Midwich children's powers are twofold: First, they're telekinetic and telepathic, able to not only manipulate objects with their minds, but they're also able to read and manipulate the thoughts of others, a simple look is able to total a car. Second, in a town where strange occurrences have fueled chaos and conflict, these children are a hive mind, bonded together and able to perfectly sync up and plan in complete secrecy. Teamwork makes the dream work after all, and even the smallest creature is dangerous when hunting in a pack. Their disposition makes this all the worse, not having any empathy for the humans they are surrounded by, the inferior species who have othered them and planned to take them down, causing casualties with a totally blank, unfazed expression. On the other hand, they are incredibly defensive of their own, with a sensitive trigger finger that will pull with great prejudice at even the smallest provocation. Within a few short years, they take the town of Midwich by storm, with the only option to take them down being nuclear.

Which is exactly what happens.

Yeah, You Can Straight-Up Kill Them

Village of the Damned

The reason why The Bad Seed wasn't chosen for this essay was because of how Rhonda met her end. While an attempt on her life is made, it is an inexplicable act of nature, a lightning strike, that ends up killing her. For good reason, writers can be uncomfortable with the "happy" ending involving the murder of a child, and this is avoided in several ways: The child can be undead, which simply means the protagonist is putting life and death back in order. The child can be rescued, rather than killed, having the evil force driven out of them. Or, like in Brightburn and The Omen, the child can win and get away to cause further destruction. Because after all, who would harm a child?

At the end of Village of the Damned, our protagonist, Professor Zellaby (Sanders), thwarts the children by blowing up a house with all of them, including himself, in it. They didn't even let one get out like in the 1995 remake, they all get completely blown to smithereens. That took me aback when first watching it, despite the efforts the film made to establish their inhumanity. But then I thought about the other films with child killers, and made the realization that backstories, monstrous appearances and powers are scaffolding around the idea that a child actor is going to end up on the floor covered in fake blood, and how the audience needs to think it's okay for that to happen, or the film will collapse.

Maybe that's what makes killer kids, supernatural or not, scary. No one should want to harm a child. It shouldn't be a thought that comes to us innately. We want to protect and help children, so the idea that you, if in this scenario, would have to do the opposite to save the lives of you and others, dips into a really troubling part of your mind. You start to ask yourself if you could do it, if you have the heart to do it, even in a life-or-death scenario. What would it take to do such a horrific act to someone so seemingly vulnerable?

Village of the Damned was one of the first films to truly answer that question, no matter how confronting it is. In this answer are the blueprints to the little monsters that leave a big mark on horror cinema.