Fifty More Horror Clichés That Should Be Left to Spoil

#15: The Negative Treatment of Children

  You might remember a few parts ago that I praised the characterization of Ellen Ripley from the Alien movies.  In that part, analyzing the cliché of strong plot armor female characters, I used her as an example of how to avoid the annoying trope. I said that in the three Alien movies I consider to be her full character arc that she developed naturally to her surroundings, using her rough experiences to grow as a person and seriously kick some alien butt. It is through that most of you probably came to the conclusion that I absolutely adore all three Alien movies used in the example. While this is true with the first two films, Alien and Aliens, I do not consider that to fully be the case for the third film, Alien 3, for a very particular reason.

Alien 3, while a great film overall has the awful flaw of carrying an unnecessarily bleak tone. From the start of the movie, it is established that the victory Ellen Ripley gained in the second film, saving the only survivor of the colony Hadley's Hope, the innocent child character Newt, was all for nothing. In the film's opening sequence, it is shown that a rogue Xenomorph invasion on the spaceship carrying the remaining cast members caused a malfunction in the ship's engine. The malfunction caused the spaceship to crash, killing everyone but miraculously Ellen Ripley. This single move in the film's opening killed off Newt's character for nothing but plot connivence so Ripley would feel like she had nothing to lose in the final battle. It turned a well developed child character into nothing but a pawn to the plot, negating any of the development as a character Newt received in the previous film. While the rest of the movie is fine on its own, it left a bad taste in my mouth for what they did for Newt's ruined character arc.

Alien 3 in its opening scenes is another bad example on the treatment child characters in the horror genre receive in the plot. If the child is not possessed or trapped in another realm, they are killed off for mere plot convince so the main character does not have to worry about carrying the extra responsibility of a child on their backs. It is a truly disgusting practice in the horror medium that I cannot fathom the origin of in the least. Sure, some people find certain child characters annoying or accidentally creepy, but that does not mean all of these fictional children deserve the death sentence. In this, like Newt, the child is reduced merely to a token to further along the plot, now carrying an over the top grim tone that was far from needed.

Just because a character is under thirteen years old, the age under which the most developed horror genre characters are typically found, does not mean they do not hold a role in the plot. A child character serves a role to the overall narrative like the rest of the cast. In all of them, there is a strong representation of innocence that the writers creating these stories as well as the audience long desires to go back to. They represent the future, which could easily be shattered if they are killed off by the antagonist. These reasons alone justify the continued existence of horror genre children, who should represent a continued hope in the cast as opposed to easy plot fodder.

Killing a child character off is just going to depress the audience and make the overall narrative seem too overly bleak. In any horror narrative, there should be a strong balance of hope and despair. If one of these elements is overused, say by killing the child character, the tone of the story is forever tainted.

Plus, there is the idea of making these children in the horror genre serve a role as a character important to the narrative. Despite their young age, a child is completely capable of not only defending themselves quite well but usually is at a mature enough age where they could easily understand the severity of the situation. A child in the right circumstances could be the one to outsmart the killer, so long as the conditions they are presented with allow them to interact with the older cast or work as a combined unit.

A great example of children outsmarting the killer in a horror narrative is in the Stephen King novel It. In the novel, the seven children, all a part of The Losers Club, manage to take down the supernatural entity Pennywise through quick thinking and strategic tactics. Despite being so young, they took down a millions of years old evil entity all on their own, without any adult to help them out. In this single feat, all seven children proved that a child character can indeed serve a role in the plot if given the right motivations to do so. Through their success, the ideology of killing of any child character in the horror genre is completely deflated. They can serve a role to the plot just like any other character.

So if you decided to write any type of horror narrative, do not just throw away the child character established in the story as merely plot fodder you can easily kill off. Remember that like any other character, a child can serve a huge role in the plot if developed correctly. Your audience will appreciate the choice of balancing a consistent tone of both hope and despair by doing this.