47. The Innocents (#60)

Everyone knows what it’s like, sitting down to write your resume, and making sure to figure out the best way to get across how all you want to do is save the children, not destroy them. A perfectly normal thing for a normal person to say, right? Well pack up your things and get ready to hit the English countryside, because you’ve just gotten a job watching The Innocents!

Based on the Henry James story “The Turn of the Screw,” a psychological thriller about a woman who takes a governess job for two orphans in a Victorian home. She begins to see what she believes are ghosts and suspects the children’s bizarre behavior is the result of supernatural powers. A master class in visual design and thematic ambiguity, The Innocents will have you questioning everything you’re seeing, and might even drive you mad.

Join Clay and Amanda as they gnash their teeth at voyeuristic statues (watch out, they’re watching you!), hot cradle-robbing cougar make outs, ghosts(?), questionable guardianship, questionable governorship, questionable nannying, basically questionably handling of children all around by whomever they happen to be in contact with!

The Innocents is truly an excellent haunted house movie and features cinematographer Freddie Francis firing on all cylinders as he creates some truly spooky spaces inside the long, silent halls of Bly Manor. It really is hands-down some of the best photography ever featured in a scary movie. The Innocents is a bit lesser known these days, but it definitely belongs up there in the classic haunted house horror movie hall of fame, right alongside classics like The Haunting, The Changeling, and even The Shining!

So turn off all the lights, spark up the biggest candelabra you can find, wander the halls of your place of employment aimlessly, and lose your mind over some ghostly implications with us…if you DARE!