10 Best Horror Movie Performances Nobody Talks About
7. Deborah Kerr As Miss Giddens - The Innocents
An icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Deborah Kerr turned in her arguably best performance in 1961’s The Innocents. Based on The Turning of the Screw, the film follows a woman who becomes convinced that the children under her care are possessed. Or are they?
The film toys with the viewer, never fully committing to any set truth. In fact, we are watching the events unfold through Kerr’s Miss Giddens, and so we begin to question her own sanity. Countless interpretations of the film have sprung up over the years, but none of them are answered. This is due in part to Kerr’s performance.
Playing Miss Giddens with the same ambiguity at the centre of the entire film, she leaves you guessing every time a ghost is seen. Is she going mad, or are they really there? The nuances within Kerr’s performance do not provide any answers, and in fact raise more questions.
It’s a multi-layered and riveting performance that continues to intrigue to this day, and the simultaneously pitiful and suspicious Miss Giddens is part of the reasoning.