Ripped from the Headlines: 6 Disturbing True Crime Horror Films

When it comes to revisiting the gateway horror media that haunted our youth, we often find ourselves baffled by the silly and often laughable things that used to scare us. However, sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes we look back on a piece of media that we enjoyed as children only to realize that it was much darker than our naïve brains could fully comprehend at the time.

A great example of this is Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, a series of Young Adult novels defined by their generally gothic tone and frequent use of gallows humor. While these books were a tremendous hit among the Scholastic crowd (and often served as a dreary substitute for kids who weren’t into Harry Potter), they also contained numerous gruesome deaths and genuinely disturbing plot points that still distress readers to this day. And with the 2000s seeing a rise in big budget Young Adult adaptations, it’s no surprise that these books were eventually adapted into a divisive feature film back in 2004 – a film that I believe deserves more love from genre enthusiasts.

Originally released in 1999, the first wave of ASOUE books were optioned by Nickelodeon only a few months after they hit store shelves. Producers saw potential in an edgier series that didn’t talk down to its younger readers, and an adaptation was all but confirmed once the first Harry Potter film proved to be a huge success. Excited by the idea of a faithful adaptation, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket’s real-world alter ego) himself wrote the first draft of the proposed movie while also personally insisting on Jim Carrey to be cast as the villainous Count Olaf.

Unfortunately, this initial version of the project would end up being canceled due to budgetary concerns and studio meddling. After a series of false starts, one of which was meant to be directed by Tim Burton, production would pick up again a few years later with Robert Gordon rewriting the script and Brad Silberling taking over to direct after Burton dropped out of the project. Thankfully, despite all the changes, the studio ultimately managed to secure Jim Carrey as the iconic antagonist.

In the finished film, which adapts The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window simultaneously, we follow the ill-fortuned Baudelaire orphans – Klaus (Liam Aiken), Violet (Emily Browning) and Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman) – as they are tossed from one eccentric guardian to the next after a mysterious fire destroys their home. To make matters worse, the siblings are constantly targeted by the scheming actor Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a sleazy criminal who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the orphans’ family fortune.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Released in December of 2004, A Series of Unfortunate Events didn’t exactly set the world on fire. It wasn’t really a box-office bomb, but the movie severely underperformed after a botched marketing campaign failed to attract families during the Holiday Season. And while most reviews at the time were positive, there was a recurring notion that the movie was trying to recreate the dark fairy tale magic of a Tim Burton movie without the idiosyncrasies that made the director’s films so interesting in the first place.

I’ll be the first to admit that Silberling’s adaptation is a deeply flawed and regrettably toned-down retelling of the books (the film was hastily re-edited after test screening audiences deemed it too dark for children), but I still think that there’s still plenty to love about this misunderstood gem – perhaps even more so than its 2017 successor on Netflix.

For starters, while the flick’s gloomy sense of style was accused of borrowing heavily from Tim Burton’s work, this happened to be an intentional choice by Silberling who was aware of the director’s plans for this adaptation. Realizing that Burton’s “suburban gothic” style was a perfect fit for the anachronistic world of ASOUE, Silberling wanted to honor his vision and even insisted on keeping Burton on as a producer/creative consultant once he took over directing duties. Burton may have refused to continue working on the film, but his influence can be felt in its peculiar atmosphere and even Thomas Newman’s excellent Danny-Elfman-inspired soundtrack.

Beyond the gothic aesthetic, I also believe that the film’s script captures the essence of Handler’s writing even though the story had to be dumbed down for a wider audience. I even appreciate how A Bad Beginning was used to bookend the movie in order to make things feel less episodic, and the added moments of tension (such as the scene where the Orphans have to escape from a locked car before it’s destroyed by an oncoming train) feel like natural extensions of the books. My only real grip here is with the way that the movie removes all agency from Violet during the climax.

In the end, it’s really the film’s surprisingly talented ensemble that manages to tie the whole experience together. The Baudelaires are perfectly cast despite some discrepancies from the books, Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep knock it out of the park as Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine (and that’s not even mentioning Jude Law’s brief appearance as Lemony Snicket), but Jim Carrey’s Count Olaf is the real reason to see this picture. This version of Olaf may not be quite as menacing as his literary counterpart, but I actually find him more believable than Neil Patrick Harris’ take on the character in the Netflix series.

As if that wasn’t enough, the movie also benefits from a series of bit parts performed by memorable character actors like Jennifer Coolidge, Luis Guzman and even the always-lovable Catherine O’Hara!

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Daniel Handler has repeatedly claimed that the ASOUE books were actually based on an idea he had for a satirical gothic novel aimed towards adults. This initial version of the story may have been heavily revised, but bits and pieces of its edgier material managed to survive in the ensuing Young Adult franchise. Naturally, this also extends to the film adaptation despite its limitations.

The series as a whole has a grisly fascination with grief and death, but the film enhances these themes with its gloomy atmosphere and abundant use of subliminal imagery implying that the Baudelaires are constantly being watched by forces beyond their control. That’s not even mentioning the man-eating leeches (with designs directly lifted from the book’s eerie illustrations) and freaky giant reptiles that populate this deadly fable, with these darker elements making me wish that we could one day see the more adult version of the film that supposedly offended test audiences.

Olaf himself can also be a legitimately frightening villain when the story calls for it. Despite Carrey’s over-the-top antics, there’s plenty of bite to this terrifying thespian – especially when he’s hidden from fellow adults and reveals his true colors to the orphans. Not only does this despicable character repeatedly try to murder a group of children with no remorse (while also having no qualms about marrying his underaged ward), but Carrey also claims to have based parts of his villainous performance on Bela Lugosi’s larger-than-life stage presence.

The 2017 Netflix series may technically be a superior adaptation of the books, benefiting from the added runtime and a more faithful script that reaches a definitive conclusion, but it still can’t compete with the impressive filmmaking behind Silberling’s version of the story. This may not be the adaptation that fans deserved, but Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is still worth revisiting over two decades later as blockbuster oddity from a time when horror-adjacent kid’s stories still had a chance of reaching the big screen.

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.

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