When it comes to canonical horror films, there are some that carry the reputation of being so scary, it becomes an unnecessary burden on them, resulting in the experience of actually seeing them occasionally feeling like a disappointment. One film that this certainly does not apply to is Jack Clayton’s masterful The Innocents, a film that manages to be so utterly horrifying, yet executed with the most simple elegance, it’s surprising that such a poignant work of unhinged terror could’ve been produced. Clayton is regularly considered one of the greatest filmmakers to never break out in any major way, and considering some of the brilliant work he did throughout his career, it’s difficult to argue with that. The Innocents is one of his absolute masterpieces, and an extraordinary work of fiction that effortlessly adapted The Turn of the Screw, the novel by Henry James, by way of screenwriters William Archibald (who wrote a play based off the novel as well) and Truman Capote, and incited terror into generations of viewers who were held captive by Clayton’s unique and idiosyncratic approach to material that didn’t immediately lend itself to such potent, sophisticated terror. One of the defining works of horror filmmaking of its period, and a film that is still exceptionally haunting all these years later, The Innocents is quite an experience, and even when it tends to peak somewhat early, it still manages to be as profoundly unsettling as any other ghost story, which is quite an achievement considering how unconventional Clayton’s shepherding of some of these familiar but still oddly abstract ideas were throughout the production of this absolutely unrestrained panoply of sights and sounds that leave us so deeply traumatized and utterly exhilarated in equal measure.

What tends to be most often remembered about The Innocents is the performance given by Deborah Kerr, who is simply exquisite as Miss Giddens, the kind-hearted young woman who becomes the governess to two precocious children in the countryside. Kerr was an exceptional actress, albeit one that didn’t receive nearly enough adulation throughout her career. This performance is one of her most loved, purely because it sees the esteemed actress working with an entirely new set of ideas. Horror isn’t always the easiest genre for actors, since there is a need for them not only to carry the film, but also convey the terror. Considering how Kerr not only had to be the lead of the film, but also the audience surrogate that guides us through this terrifying image of the world, there’s no amount of praise that can do justice to her work here. She’s fantastic, and while she may not announce herself in the same way as many others tend to in similar roles, there’s a nuance to her performance, a subdued quality that drives it forward and allows the terror embedded deep within this story to manifest in beautifully poetic ways. It’s a marvellous tour de force of a performance from an actress whose elegance played a pivotal role in elevating the material and making it as steadfast a horror film as it turned out to be. Kerr is wonderfully supplemented by the two newcomers playing the children, Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, both of which manage to strike that perfect balance between adorable innocents and young individuals who harbour a deeply sinister set of qualities. The Innocents is a film really built on the actors, and while they may tend to take a backseat to the more interesting directorial choices made by Clayton, it’s only afterwards that we realize how absolutely essential they were to this storyline, and vital to the success of the film overall.

In getting to the core of what makes The Innocent so terrifying, we can see how (despite the appearance of a traditional gothic horror), there is more to this film than initially meets the eye. Clayton has made a very experimental film that anticipates the wealth of psychological horrors that were to come in the succeeding decades – and his choices made throughout this film set a foundation for many of the most effective works in the genre. This is a film that directly approaches the human condition and deftly plucks the very essence of fear from it, exploiting the smallest details of our existence that frighten us without ever realizing it. It wasn’t until The Innocents that I realized how absolutely terrifying something like a face at a window, or a solitary figure across a river could be – but through his masterful control of detail, and incredible restraint, Clayton manages to bring out the fear in truly unexpected ways. An almost universal truth with any genre is that simplicity is the key to success – and the director implicitly understood this, and throughout the film, manages to invoke a truly unsettling sense of despair through very little. The sight of a figure standing alone in the distance, or a disembodied smile from a mysterious figure, is enough to fuel the most vivid nightmares, and all Clayton needed to do was make sure that the circumstances surrounding such motifs were compelling enough to convince us to their veracity (which is precisely where the incredible performances by Kerr and the two children become vital to the film), and developing the earnestness of a horror film that thrives on its incredible simplicity more than anything else – but this doesn’t mean that The Innocents is prosaic or uninteresting, since this is a very ambitious project, albeit one that knows how to siphon its intentions into an actively disconcerting form.

What is most interesting about a film like The Innocents, and the way Clayton conjures the horror, is how fear isn’t built on what is known – it’s the unknown that terrifies us the most. We never quite know what’s lurking just out of sight, and whether in mere implication – such as an early scene where the protagonist is told that the majority of the rooms in this manor are “locked and empty” – or through directly addressing such issues, the film successfully navigates some truly disconcerting narrative territory that burrows itself into the psyche and presents us with the most horrifying sense of foreboding danger imaginable. The terror in The Innocents doesn’t come from the images we see, but rather the way we interpret them – this is a horror film that extracts the fear from within, which isn’t an easy approach, but one that is executed flawlessly, since the emphasis was kept on the psychological aspects of the story, rather than cheap cinematic trickery that may shock us for a moment, but are entirely forgotten the next. Throughout the film, he does his best to keep the plot as enigmatic as it can be, without becoming too ambigious, instead focusing on the central plot, and allowing everything to flourish from a clear understanding of where this film is going. It’s quite an achievement to be able to execute something like this and keep the audience so engaged, which comes from the fact that Clayton (as well as the two screenwriters, who crafted some memorable dialogue that reveals just enough to give us the bare necessities, without revealing too much) wasn’t in search of something overly complex. Fear is a primordial concept that doesn’t require any overly convoluted narrative, or cinematic trickery that fools us into being scared. Instead, he taps into something far more substantial and interesting, a universally-recognized sensation of dread that transcends many cultural boundaries, and instead is able to resonate with anyone.

The form this film takes may appear like a stuffy period drama that nestles itself within the gothic tradition, but make no mistake – The Innocents is a fresh and invigorating glimpse into the human psyche that is as fascinating as it is outright terrifying. Jack Clayton was an underappreciated master, and this may be his most substantial work – his ability to bring out such raw, visceral fear through the most sophisticated methods is absolutely astonishing, and instantly confirms this film as a masterpiece. It may peak in terror slightly early, which isn’t so much a complaint as it is an observation, since the terror comes prematurely and could’ve benefitted from being built up slightly more – but it still doesn’t distract from that fact that Clayton made something so that manages to be both beautifully poetic and absurdly unhinged, without a single note of inauthenticity to be found anywhere. This is a staggering work of absolute terror, where the human mind intermingles with the supernatural to create a poignant manifesto on the elements of life that scare us the most – we never know whether the spectres that persist throughout the film are real, or just the figments of the imagination of a complex protagonist – but it’s this fascinating approach, where we’re invited to bring our own interpretation, that confirms The Innocents as a major work, and quite simply one of the most incredible, powerfully-effective horror films of the 1960s, and one that undeniably persists to this very day as the epitome of filmmaking that is sophisticated, intelligent and outright terrifying in every conceivable way.