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Smooky

Coraline is an impressive movie.  It is not only a beautiful example of animation, but also a powerful tale that easily hooked into my imagination.  Coraline lives in a house that is attached to another house (like ours), except the other door leads into another world that is similar but not identical to the world Coraline knows. Through the other door, her parents look similar but they have button eyes and there are a host of hall-of-mirror-distortions for her to wrap her head around and ultimately escape.  It seemed initially like a benign enough movie for a then 6 year old.  We watched parts of it here and there, always stopping short of watching the whole thing right to the end.  It was a bit of a novelty in her mind for a long while that she had watched most of a scary movie.

However, one fateful day last summer she watched the whole thing, from start to finish.  It turns out that its persuasive powers are strong and that its images took up residence in her imagination.  Ever since, she can't look at a button without wincing.  Poor old Coraline comes up in conversation on a daily basis three months later.   I feel guilt, of course, for allowing her to watch something that, admittedly, even I find a bit spooky, but nothing could have prepared me for how much it has continued to spook her. It is like that not-quite-right  lingering dream that you are still thinking about at 5 p.m. the next day.  I think it boils down to the fact that it is about a girl, about her age, living in an old house that looks a bit like hers.  After all, having what we know turned upside down can be the scariest thing of all, don't you think?

What movie or story has spooked you or your kids out the most?  Why?
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