Directed by Peter Medak
After a tragic event happens, composer John Russell moves to Seattle to try to overcome it and build a new and peaceful life in a lonely big house that has been uninhabited for many years. But, soon after, the obscure history of such an old mansion and his own past begin to haunt him.
El intermediario del diablo, O Intermediário do Diabo, A Troca, The Changeling - Das Grauen, Das Grauen - The Changeling, Sustitución Macabra, Das Grauen, Al final de la escalera, L'Enfant du diable, Az elcserélt gyermek, Changeling, チェンジリング, ההחלפה, Dehşet, Hämnd ur det förflutna, 더 체인질링, Перебежчик, Zemsta po Latach, Απόλυτος Τρόμος, 夺魄冤魂, Det glemte mord, The Changeling - Vaihdokas, Al final de les escales, O Desvendar de um Mistério, 奪魄冤魂, Замена
USA USA Film Festival 
MexicoC 
CanadaR USAR 
Sweden15 
FinlandK-16 
Japan 
Netherlands16 
Norway18 
France12 
AustraliaM 
Brazil 
Spain12 
PortugalM/16 MexicoC 
Greece Netherlands16 Australia Brazil Canada Finland France Greece Japan Mexico Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden USA 
Love to see characters in horror movies going to the library to do research! Microfiche! Old maps!
I always make sure to travel with my trusty two-foot metal seance pole
Exquisite haunted house chiller that never loses its effect with me. Super creepy house, absolutely perfect atmosphere, and great cast led by George C. Scott doing what he does best, which is shouting at everyone.
This is a super slow burn, but if you’re up for it then you will be rewarded with some wonderfully chilling scenes and an intriguing story that holds your interest until the end. One of the top 10 haunted house horror films of all time for sure.
Fun fact: George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere were real life husband and wife!
Little sickly ghost boy said ACAB
Living in a fairly old house for a decent chunk of my life, Haunted house movies were something I grew up loving right into my teen years, then I dunno what happened but I just couldn’t jive with them anymore... until recently, and The Changeling was a well regarded classic that I’ve seen a handful of times, always liked, but never really loved... until now.
I’ve been wanting to revisit this for quite a while, luckily I held out for the Severin Blu-ray because this time around I really got lost in this atmospheric retribution haunt and all of its ambient whispers and large airy corridors. George C. Scott kills it (as always) as John Russell, I felt for him—that opening…
A very gracefully-stylized haunted house movie/conspiratorial unsolved murder procedural crossover with impeccable control over its eerie, lonely, grief-stricken atmosphere. So many fantastic slow zooms/pans/dollys, shadowy corridor compositions, creepy handheld POV tracking shots, and Victorian architecture observed in beautiful and strange wide-angle, low-angle and overhead images. All of this further complimented by the intentionally quiet, windy sound design and spare piano score that has this ghostly twinkling lullaby quality to it emphasizing the feelings of emptiness and loss that overwhelms these characters and the generational history they're investigating. Really spectacular feel-bad revenge climax as well. Completes the George C. Scott trilogy (including Hardcore and The Exorcist III) of religious grandpas from the Midwest or upstate NY going detective mode over a history of violently abusive American behavior.
Yeah yeah ghosts in blankets are cool but have you ever been chased by a cute little haunted wheelchair through the hallways of an old spooky mansion?
Really loved George C. Scott's relationship with the ghost. Zero parts scared and five parts "Jesus, what now?"
A grieving father, an eerily empty mansion, and the vengeful ghost of an unloved child. I love everything about this movie. Dust, cobwebs, the creaking of old wooden floorboards—an atmospheric concoction of sadness, despair, horror, and fury that takes over your body from the inside out. Maybe it’s because I first saw this before “elevated” horror became cliche, but its emotional impact will always be special to me. Even the disc I have smells like autumn (…which low key has me concerned).
What's interesting about haunted house movies is the ability of the protagonist to leave. He's not being chased by Jason, Freddy, or Ghostface. In slasher movies, the victims are in a passive state, they are cannon fodder. They have no real agency, except for the final girl.
In ghost stories, the protagonist volunteers to expose himself to the supernatural world. We don't know the nature of this world: is the ghost benign or malicious? The character puts his life on the line to serve the greater good.
In 'The Changeling', George C. Scott seeks to avenge the death of poor, wheelchair-bound Joseph, who was mercilessly drowned in a bathtub. He couldn't keep his family safe from harm, so his guilt…
George C Scott stars as a guy who moves into a giant spooky mansion after his wife and child die tragically, as one does. A truly effective and spooky ghost movie that captures the idea of the haunted house as a repository for family and childhood trauma and the "ghost" as the memories of a primal violation or act of violence that have no where to go absent any true reckoning. Left unacknowledged or covered up the stain of the act itself seeps into the walls of the place where it happened like the pores of your skin and seeks to replay its trauma over and over again.
In the British ghost story tradition, the ghost is usually an act…
Picked the right week to watch a horror movie that villainizes a short tempered Republican senator that is afraid of the truth.
