LITTLE GIRLS as a horror cliche - please, please, end this already!

Cafe Society
1

I feel ill. Literally. Why? I downloaded the BioShock demo. I began playing it. For those of you who don’t know, I have some issues with depression and anxiety, and while they’re not as bad now as they were a few months ago, I still need something to relax me, something that I can get absorbed in that will relieve my anxiety. Those two things are computer games and music. Battlefield 2 and Flight Simulator X, believe it or not, was just as helpful in dealing with my depression as the therapy and medication was, I firmly believe. They provided an outlet of relief. I’ve been playing a lot of those though, so I decided I should try to get into some new computer games.

First, the Crysis demo. Lame. Stupid futuristic suits. Stupid cliched characters - obnoxious black guy, macho Hispanic guy, straight-edged, in-control, Dennis Haysbert-of-24-ripoff black authority figure character. And stuff getting frozen in boring, blue-gray ice. Lame, lame.

Next: the BioShock demo. At first: wow! Stunning graphics, smooth as silk FPS even on my dated AGP card. Very interesting atmosphere, compelling plot, etc. I thought, I’m going to Best Buy tomorrow and by God I am buying this game.

Until I saw her.

HER. That dreaded cliche that I hate oh so much, that just gets my blood a-boiling. Oh yes, you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the doe-eyed, evil little girl in the context of a horror medium. It’s been done to death on so many levels - the Ring, Grudge, Dark Water, etc…all those lame (IMO) Japanese style movies that are en-vogue now. SAW was a good, gory, all-American response to that torrent of crap, with an evil intimidating killer and not a little girl with big dark eyes and blood on her hands in sight. But the sequels sucked, and Hostel sucked, and all these other “gorenography” movies coming out that are trying to recapture the glory days of slasher flicks are just falling right on their asses. So it looks like the EVIL LITTLE GIRL may have won out after all.

But for God’s sake - I don’t want to see this in my computer games! First there was F.E.A.R. which had great combat and great gore, but they had to throw in that damn annoying little girl. And then - BioShock. I loved it, up until the moment when I encountered a little girl looking down at my presumed-dead body and saying, “oh look, Mr. Bubbles (her heavily-armored guardian) - an angel! Or, he’ll be an angel soon!” Ugh. UGGHHHH! SO hackneyed. SO cliched. SO unoriginal.

So the BioSchlock company, whatever it is, just lost a potential customer because they just had to go and include that annoying, stupid little girl.

I don’t know if anyone here on this board has ever clicked on my website, but I do have one: Argent Towers. And on it, you’ll find an essay that I wrote - “Little girls are NOT scary” - which fleshes this concept out in greater detail.

With me? Against me? I want to hear your opinions on this.

2

Have you seen the movie THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST?

This is relevant, believe me.

3

I don’t think the Little Sisters are supposed to be scary so much as sad. Deciding whether you want to harvest ADAM from them or not is supposed to be a big moral deal - not going to be such a big deal if you’re comparing them to those J-horror monsters.

4

I was going to make an argument in favor of F.E.A.R.
but, I suppose I’m merely out of touch with the horror genre.
At least FEAR was damn scary at points, usually more involving Paxton than the girl, but still, was damn scary at times.

5

i’m not far into it yet, but so far Bioshock feels like System Shock. sort of depressing. once, i found myself huddled in the dark, finger on the mouse trigger, listening to a splicer singing Amazing Grace before i killed it. i hope the story is abit brighter than System Shock’s.

yeah the little sisters aren’t supposed to be scary.

♪ If I didn’t care~ ♫

6

:confused:

Do you mean Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ?

I haven’t seen TLTofC in many, many years but I don’t recall a relevant scene.

7

I had to call a hiatus on BioShock 'cause it’s too scary for me. But the little girls aren’t, that’s not what they’re there for.

8

I agree. It seems like they can’t come up with their own original thought so they have to copy someone else’s.
“Know what was really creepy?”
“What?”
“Those twin girls from The Shining.”
“Aw yeah dude, those chicks totally creeped me out.”
“We should have some creepy girl in our game.”
“Excellent idea dude!”

9

Hey they work in The Shining.

Then again, they are there to scare a little boy.

In horror films, little girls are supposed to be chopped up!

10

Another opinion saying the little girls are not supposed to be scary in Bioshock, and I haven’t even played the game. If you play through, they are objects of pity, and you can decide whether to pity them or murder them.

I know I can’t play the game - I’ve seen a bunch of screenshots and even some of the videos, and it would be way too scary for me, but not because of the girls.

11

No, he means TLToC. The last temptation- the revelation of what his life could be like should he just hop down off the cross- was shown to Jesus by Satan in the form of a little (well, young, anyway) girl.

I admit to being very biased on this, as pretty much everyone who knows me and knows the movie has commented that that would be exactly what a female offspring of mine would be like, but I didn’t find her scary so much as… prepossessed (if you’ll excuse the pun).

12

You can totally kill the Little Sisters in Bioshock. There’s more than one, even, so the OP can vent his rage on all the little girls that freak him out. [Though the Bioshock girls aren’t scary at all.]

13

You forgot the scariest part of the Evil Girl: her hair is unkempt!

Unbelievably, they even managed to shoehorn the Evil Girl into the abomination that was The Amityville Horror remake. Granted, the originals weren’t fuckin Shakespeare, but at least they worked within their own mythos, for Christ’s sake.

14

I’ll just echo the above comments that the little girls in Bioshock are not, themselves, meant to be objects of horror. The circumstances surrounding their creation, on the other hand, is pretty fucking horrifying, and more than a little of that rubs off on the girls themselves. Still, as characters, they’re essentially harmless and unable to defend themselves, and the player is required to either save or slaughter as many of them as possible, which makes it difficult to cast them in the role of boogeymen.

15

The little girl imagery is often accompanied by a children’s song or a music box or something that’s supposed to add to the creepy “irony.” Another variation on the cliche is to have the child sing or chant something. They did it in that Dakota Fanning movie with De Niro not too long ago.

16

They should make a movie featuring an evil butterfly.

Because nobody suspects the butterfly! Muahahaha!!!

17

Meh, it’s just one of many common horror tropes. And really, it’s a lot less common (in the US, anyways), then a lot of others.I see zombies in a lot more video games then evil little girls, for example.

18

Sounds like what we really need are evil little zombie girls.

19

Yes, yes siree, that’s a great example. Like “The itsy bitsy spider” in Dark Water.

About the BioShock girls - I’m actually going to expand my definition of the “scary little girl” cliche to include innocent-looking little girls juxtaposed with scary settings, as in The Shining. So even if the “Little Sisters” aren’t themselves scary, they’re still a cliche because they’re a juxtaposition of childish innocence and cuteness with scary, evil environments.

20

“Smash the OP Mr. Bubbles!”