Twin actors in the horror movies the Shining. Photo: Youtube
Kids are so good at playing creepy characters in scary films.
Who can forget Haley Joel Osment confessing that "I see dead people" in the Sixth Sense? He was 10 when he filmed the 1999 horror.
Or the twin girls in The Shining, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel. The actors were 11-years-old during filming. The movie's most chilling scene is when they chant "Come and play with us, Danny, forever, and ever, and ever" in between flashes of their bloodied bodies strewn along a hallway (Danny was another child character in the 1980 film).
But what is it like for child actors to play characters who are murdered or possessed or violently attacked or in some cases, doing the killing themselves? Often, they are creating content so scary that they can't see it and protecting them from that on set can be a juggle for directors and producers. And in some cases, crews haven't protected their kid actors.
In the 2017 film It, the director purposely hid the absolutely terrifying clown Pennywise from the group of kid actors until the cameras were rolling to catch their authentic terror, according to the Wrap.
Linda Blair was 12 when she filmed the 1973 supernatural horror The Exorcist. She convulsed so violently in one scene where her character was demon-possessed that she suffered a lower spinal fracture.
The clown Pennywise in It. Photo: Youtube
Actress Kyle Richards slept with her mum until she was 15 after seeing 1978 Halloween, a film she starred in as a child actor. "I had no idea how scary it was going to be until I saw the actual movie with myself in it," Richards, told Halloween Daily News.
To avoid scaring his child star Danny Lloyd, Stanley Kubrick, the director of The Shining, cut a 10-minute kid-friendly version of the film to show Danny. Kubrick also told Danny that the film was a drama and not a horror, keeping him away from set when the heavier scenes were filmed, according to the Guardian.
In New Zealand, there are strict rules to protect child actors, such as how many hours they can spend working on set each day, according to Denise Roche, the director of Equity New Zealand, a performer's union. However, there are no regulations specific to child actors and creating scary movies, leaving best practices up to directors, crew and the child actor's parent or guardian.
Actor and director Michelle Ang recently directed seven-year-old Isabelle Li in a film that is part of TVNZ's Motherhood anthology. In AMAH - it stands for Artificially Maternal Android Helper - the dynamic between mother, daughter and droid mother spirals downward due to jealousy.
While AMAH is more thriller than gore, there are some chilling scenes involving Isabelle's character when the film's mother goes into "full psycho mode," said Ang.
A scene in AMAH where the mother screams at child actor Isabelle Li. Photo: supplied
Ang is also a mother of a seven-year-old and she let her maternal instincts kick in when it came to shielding Isabelle from some twisted content.
"I think if you're working on a super sci-fi where there's flying cars or whatever, in some ways, it's easier because it's far removed from reality. [In AMAH's world], its near future and the antagonist felt like a human and was played by a human actress.
"The concern for me as a director and also as a mother myself is to ensure that the young actress who was playing the child didn't take on board our fictional world into something that could happen in reality because it was so close to reality."
Ang explained enough of the script to get the best out of Isabelle as an actor but not enough to scare her.
"I don't think they need to know the deepest thematics in the way that perhaps an adult actor might need to understand why we're telling the story."
A major scene in the film involves Isabelle's character in a pool, swimming with clothes on while the mother's character descends into madness. Ang purposely cast Isabella because she was a strong swimmer.
"Of course, we had health and safety and it was in the shallow end but we tried to take as much off of Isabelle's plate so that she could feel she had control in the situation even though there was someone screaming at her."
In the 1980s Kiwi thriller Smash Palace, Greer Robson-Kirk was never told the whole script, which included a rape scene between her character's parents. Robson-Kirk was nine years old at the time she played Georgie, who gets abducted by her estranged father at gunpoint.
"Smash Palace were very careful about not letting me on set. They were going to shoot [the rape scene] in the afternoon and no one would explain what was going on."
Although actor Bruno Lawrence played her character's aggressive father, as soon as the cameras stopped rolling "Bruno was very paternal," said Greer.
"Given it was the early 80s and not the helicopter parenting we have today, I think they did a genuinely great job of protecting me. I was the only child on set in Smash Palace so they were all hyper-aware of me."