The Changeling

When The Changeling (dir. Peter Medak) was released in 1980, films of horror and terror were already ramping up towards the current state of affairs where special effects and DGI dominate everything.  In 1977 The Exorcist had set this trend in motion, though its special effects were mainly conventional.  The Changeling is a much lower key affair.  Its ghost rarely appears, at least at first.  Mostly, he makes himself known by various noises, by a bouncing ball, and in a recording made during a séance.  Suspenseful music alerts us to the presence of the supernatural.  In fact, by modern standards, the music may be overplayed in the film. 

George C. Scott plays John Russell, a composer whose wife and daughter have been killed in an accident.  He moves across the country to make a new start and is convinced to rent an “old” and “historical” house.  Both those words should have warned Russell, and the audience, that hauntings are afoot.  Old houses are almost a necessity in films about ghosts (the 1980 film The Shining employs an old hotel).  One wonders exactly why Russell would want to live alone in an old four-story mansion, why he needs so much room, how he can afford the rent. But he does move in, and strange occurrences begin: an unseen finger presses a piano key, loud thumping noises occur every morning at 6, a ball that belonged to Russell’s dead daughter bumps down the stairs.  And then, of course, there is a boarded-up room on the top floor. Russell and his real estate agent, Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) research the past of the house and ghost and the film develops from there.

The Changeling uses the stock conventions of ghost movies deftly if melodramatically.  Your hackles do rise. There are numerous moments of suspense and fright produced by the conventional skills with which the film is made.  But the age of the film shows, a fact I hesitate to state. The portrayal of Claire Norman in particular seems dated.  Perhaps in the tradition of Hitchcock and his haute de couture leading actresses, Van Devere seems fashionably attired in every scene.  She becomes increasingly histrionic as supernatural events mount, almost a basket case at points, though Scott’s John Russell often seems equally affected. This despite the efforts of the film to show Claire as a modern woman with her own job and purpose.

Towards the end, the subtle indirectness that made the first half of the film effective gives way to things running amuck—a mysterious car crash in which a detective dies, doors slamming shut, a wheelchair that chases Norman down the stairs, apoplexy, and a huge fire. 

When I saw the film in 1980, I was already haunted.  My wife was pregnant with our first child.  We were eagerly anticipating his arrival. He appeared in dreams and spoke to me, and I woke believing the dreams had been real.  I associated the film’s ghostly child with my own child, who was still in utero.  A spooky conflation of opposites, I know. My child, my oldest son, is alive now, and 38 years old. My youngest son watched this film with me and had no patience for it.