Horror Madness: Shaun of the Dead vs. Little Otik

See the introduction and full slate here.

Horror Madness returns as Czech legend Jan Svankmejer’s Little Otik faces off against Edgar Wright’s contemporary classic Shaun of the Dead.

See the introduction and full slate here.

Why do we fear what we fear? It’s not an easy question to answer, but it’s one that all of the entries in this meta-horror or horror comedy sub-genre try to explore. Every horror film, however supernatural, involves exploring real fears: of death, of sex, of crime, of social change. These films, however, explore those fears while also deconstructing why we have them - the sub-textual beneath the textual.

Shaun of the Dead is about zombies; it is a parody of classic zombie films. Little Otik is less obvious as a parody, but it is a darkly comedic version of a fairy tale about a monstrous child. But why are we afraid of zombies? And why are we afraid of monstrous children? There is a shared answer to both, and it connects the two films.

Both of these films, in their ways, contain stories about families. This is obvious in Little Otik, of course, in which a couple’s consuming desire for a child leads them to overlook and enable that child’s violence. Shaun of the Dead, though broader as a comedy, is subtler in its themes, but the idea of family is still central. The main character’s fears for (or of) his loved ones influences everything he does.

Why are zombies frightening? Because they are us: because they are violent, mindless versions of the people we love and want to protect. How can you kill a monster that was once your mother, or your best friend? How can you tell the difference between a monster and a person when they look the same? Horror always comes when we are confronted with the porous, flimsy nature of the boundaries we use to order our lives. We’re afraid of zombies because we’re afraid of intimacy; we’re afraid of the danger of becoming close to people who could hurt us.

Why are monstrous children frightening? This should be clear to anyone who has ever loved or cared for a child. We bring them into the world, ideally at least, in pure hope, knowing that our total responsibility for their well-being will never be enough to make that well-being a sure thing. A loving relationship with a child is the only kind that trends inevitably towards separation and loss; to raise a child to adulthood means only to prepare them, as well as you can, for life without you and your care. We fear for children, but we also fear them; we fear their unknowability which sometimes only increases as they grow in age and complexity. We fear, sometimes most of all, their voracious hunger: for food, sometimes from our own bodies, and for new experiences and knowledge and love. We are told, as parents, to give our children everything but we know that no parent possibly can. We’re afraid of voracious, monstrous children because we’re afraid of all children; we’re afraid of so deeply loving people who must inevitably change irrevocably as they grow.

I watched and enjoyed Shaun of the Dead as a young adult, and found much of myself in its lazy, careless protagonist who rises to bravery when his friends and family are threatened. I returned to Little Otik as a new parent, and found its terror almost intolerably real. Not only the terror of its hungry, odd little baby, made of wood but greedy for flesh. But of its vision of parenthood as an eternal, thankless sacrifice to a being that can never – will never – be grateful. The most humbling and frightening part of parenthood is learning to accept that so much can never be brought back or undone. As my baby grew I found myself wishing that I could redo everything; that somehow he could be a newborn again and I could make better decisions for him, now that I knew what the right ones were. I had to learn, and learn quickly, that my decisions for him were final, and that I owed it to him to trust that I would make the right ones, or else I would turn both our lives rotten with regret. My fear for him, one reflected by this film, was that I had no control over him. I gave him life, and then I had to let him live it.

This was a difficult decision. Both of these films are funny, and clever, and well made. Little Otik is scarier, and realer. For me, Little Otik is the winner.