Kids Spew the Darnedest Things in New ‘The Darkness’ Trailer

It’s common knowledge that children are concentrated manifestations of evil in human form, and so it was only natural for the horror film genre to embrace them as avatars of terror. Young Damien of The Omen and Carol Anne’s supremely creepy “They’re here...!” in Poltergeist remain the prototypical examples of the child touched by the spirit of an unholy evil, but the trope remains alive and well with new examples coming just about every year. The newest model comes in the form of The Darkness, a film that is unfortunately not about the English glam-rock band behind “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” but does have Kevin Bacon, so you win some you lose some.

Precocious bespectacled Mikey provides some malevolent force with a fair vessel in the newly released trailer for the horror flick. The Taylor family takes a vacation to the Grand Canyon, but they bring back more than cherished memories and sun poisoning; an angry Native American spirit (which is a weak and culturally questionable stock villain we were really supposed to be better than by now, but moving on) intent on first leaving greasy handprints on everything in their otherwise immaculate home, then taking over li’l Mikey’s body and dribbling blood out the boy’s mouth. Bacon and Radha Mitchell portray the parents of the family, and say typical horror-movie things like “You’re scaring him!” and “He’s scaring me.” Will they realize that their child is a demonic incubus from a culturally problematic hell dimension in time to preserve the molding in their living room from his filthy handprints? Take a look at the trailer above to find out.

The Darkness opens in theaters on May 13.