Abstract:

While ideas about a cataclysmic end to the present age have been a part of Christian imagination since its first-century beginnings, the creation of nuclear weapons in the mid-twentieth century has given humanity the ability to cause world-wide destruction without assistance from its deities. Other godless calamities that could befall Earth’s creatures, ranging from asteroid collisions to alien invasions, have both alarmed and captivated the planet’s human inhabitants. These catastrophic scenarios unfold in or provide the background for an increasing number of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films. Religious and quasi-religious themes still find a place among these movies, some revolving around the penultimate rise of an evil supernatural agent popularly known as the Antichrist. In this paper I will explore a number of films that depict the childhood of this malevolent being, portrayals that may be situated along the trajectory of one particular cinematic image that developed in the decades following the Second World War: the evil child. How this abject figure, transgressing the bounds of “normative” childhood and threatening futurity, has contributed to transformations of apocalyptic thought in post-atomic cinema will be considered in light of the secular critiques of religion that seem present in these films.​