The loss of innocence is a recurring motif in horror and cinema at large. A more niche subset of that motif explores the frightening transition from childhood into adulthood through a child’s perspective. Like Pan’s Labyrinth or The Reflecting Skin, these movies feature young protagonists grappling with a grown-up world’s harsh realities through fantasy, leading to disastrous results. The horror seeps in from both sides, squeezing out the innocence in often shocking ways. Celia, now available to stream on Shudder and Tubi, belongs in that same conversation. Its eponymous character dangerously uses dark fantasy and imagination as an emotional shield as she’s forced to grow up in a tumultuous period.
Also known as Celia: Child of Terror, the film opens with Celia (Rebecca Smart) coming to Gran’s small annex next to her family home to wake her. Celia crawls into Gran’s bed and finds her dead, eyes still open. The night after Gran’s funeral, Celia wakes in the middle of the night to an inhuman shrieking and the claw of a creature appearing at her window. She cries for her granny, and mom Pat (Mary-Anne Fahey) comes in to comfort her. When Pat takes Celia into the backyard to reveal the screeching sound came from a possum, the young girl still envisions a monster lurking in the bushes. This brief introduction to Celia clarifies that Gran was her most trusted grown-up and friend and that Celia prefers her imaginative world over the real one, even when confronted with the truth.
Set in 1957, Celia chronicles the young girl’s life in rural Australia as she attends school, forges friendships, and covets a pet rabbit. All of it is framed through a child’s eyes. The context for the world she lives in and how that shapes her comes slowly. As the children play in the background, conversations among adults reveal tensions and fears that kids can’t understand, yet they’re affected by it anyway.
Celia’s peculiar and headstrong personality makes her a bit of an outcast among peers until the arrival of a new family next door. She bonds with the three kids, Meryl (Callie Gray), Karl (Adrian Mitchell), and Steve (Alexander Hutchinson), immediately. None of them understand why the locals seem afraid of parents Alice (Victoria Longley) and Evan Tanner (Martin Sharman), no matter how warm and level-headed they are. It soon becomes clear, though, that the adult Tanners have communist beliefs and hold informal meetings. Celia takes place at the tail end of the second Red Scare, a period marked by its intense and widespread fear that national or foreign communists were infiltrating society. Fear and paranoia naturally lead to tension and hostility.
Writer/Director Ann Turner offers insights and context clues at every step of the way. Outside of the more overt scenes that clue the viewer in on the turmoil surrounding Celia, the filmmaker layers in subtle clues, too. A sweeping look through Gran’s old apartment reveals a book collection of communist material. Since this belonged to the woman who held the most substantial sway over Celia, the implication is clear. No matter how hard Celia’s parents, Pat and Ray (Nicholas Eadie), try to minimize exposure and preserve their daughter’s innocence, the world finds its way in. That includes the background but vital rabbit plague sweeping the country, prompting the government to ban them as pets to preserve the economy. Rabbits, of course, are what Celia loves most.
Like most films of this ilk, Celia slowly builds toward tragedy that creates a point of no return. Celia clings steadfast to her fantasy world of monster Hobyahs, creatures from a children’s book, and imagines Gran still can come out and play. The more life throws complications her way, the more the young girl loses her ability to distinguish fact from fiction. That the child is an assertive one willing to take matters into her own hands, well, she more than earns her “child of terror” moniker.
Turner incorporates historical context in this period tale, offering an added layer of authenticity to the horrific. She approaches her central character with sympathy, too, never rendering Celia as evil but instead lost. The filmmaker toys with horror elements, particularly in the Hobyahs and the psychological; ultimately, however, it’s more of a horror adjacent coming-of-age story. Celia disturbs as much as it breaks your heart, offering another powerful feature to examine how scary childhood innocence can be.