There’s a common misconception that art directed towards children is automatically less dignified than art aimed at other demographics. And with so many people mistakenly believing that animation is exclusively meant to entertain kids, it makes sense that audiences and critics often dismiss animated films as if it were impossible for them to contain anything of substance. Of course, the simplest stories are often the hardest ones to tell, and having your film be marketed towards kids doesn’t mean that it should feel like it was written by them.
One of my personal favorite examples of an animated movie that delves into much deeper (and darker) subject matter than your average cartoon is Don Bluth’s directorial debut, The Secret of NIMH. A dark fantasy fable about talking mice, this 1982 adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH takes fascinating liberties with the source material in order to tell a story that would only truly be appreciated by adults.
Appropriately enough, the film’s production stemmed from Bluth’s frustrations while working as an animator at Disney, with the director and his team initially wanting to convince the higher-ups at the company to fund an adaptation of what they thought could be their next big hit. Once the pitch was rejected for being too dark, Bluth turned to the recently founded Aurora Pictures, who offered him a miniscule budget and a little over two years to complete the independent project.
During this process, the story would undergo numerous revisions, with Bluth insisting on adding a spiritual element to the tale while keeping most of the sci-fi influences in the background. The filmmakers also simplified the script in order to focus more on Mrs. Brisby (who was renamed due to a conflict with the owners of the Frisbee trademark) and her children instead of the actual rats of NIMH.
In the finished film, we follow the widowed mouse Mrs. Brisby as she attempts to convince a group of super-intelligent rodents to help her move from the cinder block her family calls home before it’s destroyed by a farmer’s plow. Along the way, she meets an assortment of quirky and often creepy characters ranging from an oracle-like owl to the mystical Nicodemus as she learns the titular secret of the rats who were experimented on by the National Institute of Mental Health.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
While Bluth’s debut film didn’t make as much money as its producers had initially hoped (most likely due to a botched marketing campaign and the fact that it opened against Spielberg’s E.T.), critics were actually quite fond of this unusually dark “family picture.” While a handful of reviews claimed that the film was unappealing to children due to some disturbing imagery and a complicated plot, it was generally accepted that this was a special little film even back in 1982.
I mean, the visuals alone were already worth the price of admission, with the filmmakers’ dedication to traditional animation techniques resulting in stunning artwork that hadn’t been seen since the golden age of Disney. Sure, the animators were horribly overworked for long periods of time, but they were also offered a cut of the movie’s profits in a bold move that was unheard of in the ’80s and made this a real passion project for all involved.
This love of the craft also extends to the film’s esoteric screenplay, with Mrs. Brisby’s relatable plight becoming a jumping-off point for a story about the power of a mother’s love and the fascinating middle ground between science and faith. And while many of these elements were already present in O’Brien’s novel, I’d argue that The Secret of NIMH remixes these ideas into something completely new and decidedly more adult.
From Nicodemus’ mystical musings on the nature of courage to the George R.R. Martin levels of political intrigue as the villainous Jenner becomes a murderer in an attempt to usurp leadership from his fellow rats, it’s pretty clear that the film is an entirely different beast that only happens to share the same general setup and characters with its source material.
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
I originally read O’Brien’s book in the third grade as a part of a class project. Being a budding cinephile, I naturally ended up renting the movie adaptation from my local Blockbuster when I was finished reading. Now imagine my surprise when I realized that this simple tale about genetically enhanced rodents had been transformed into a dark fantasy yarn featuring creepy rat wizards and literal back-stabbings in a cruel setting that felt more like Frank Frazetta than Walt Disney.
While it wasn’t exactly the adaptation I was looking for (and may have been responsible for more than a handful of sleepless nights), I’ve since grown to love Don Bluth’s gloomy fable more than the book that inspired it. The grim imagery that was once a source of nightmares has since acquired a morbid beauty, with moments like Mrs. Brisby’s encounter with the Great Owl hitting even harder now that I’m old enough to realize that she’s basically venturing into a serial-killer’s hideout just so that her children may have a chance to survive another year.
Hell, the film even boasts a couple of gruesome death scenes and genuinely intense set-pieces, with Bluth going so far as to animate the local farm’s cat as if it were a demonic entity rather than an average house-pet – and that’s not even mentioning the horrific animal abuse that resulted in the rats becoming super intelligent in the first place.
The Secret of NIMH is by no means a horror film, boasting the same fantastical energy that turned movies like Sleeping Beauty and The Wizard of Oz into timeless classics, but it’s hard to deny the film’s frequent forays into darkness. And while this means that it might scare off some of the more sensitive children out there, I’d argue that this mean streak is precisely what makes it such a memorable experience and one of the best animated films of all time.
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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