Pixar’s latest is a sci-fi gem that homages the genre in a surprisingly dark way. Elio directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian even dip into space horror for one of the film’s most memorable scenes. It was so unexpected for a Disney family film and worked so cleverly in the context of the movie, it left me wanting more of this tone in the future of Pixar films.
Early in the film, an Elio clone made by the Comuniverse is sent to Earth so his aunt doesn’t notice the real Elio is gone. The clone pretends to no longer be interested in aliens, knows how to cook, and is a model boy—totally not sus, right? It makes this subplot with Elio’s Aunt Olga more hilarious as she’s catching on and realizing the truth, in a very Invasion of the Body Snatchers way. We at least know Elio is off having space adventures, but she thinks he’s been abducted.
The clone Elio ends up confessing and teaming up with Olga to find her real nephew. But then you’re left wondering how the very lifelike and adorably cute clone’s fate will play out. They’re not going to kill it, right? There’s going to be an ending where there’s two Elios, surely. The clone will probably go live back in space or something to that effect. This is a Pixar movie, after all.
That question gets cleverly answered near the end of the film when the real Elio and his aunt Olga need to infiltrate the base where Glordon is being held. As part of the plan, clone Elio offers to essentially self-destruct as a distraction. And you think it will be cutesy and he’ll just go poof or something. No, no… he starts to shudder and melt into a gelatinous goo, something teased earlier in the film to ease kids into the way it ultimately will play out. And it’s so gross and amusingly unsettling, but also the perfect set up for gateway horror.
When it happens, the clone Elio appears to soldiers in a red cast shadow along the building where Glordon is, while the real Elio sneaks in. Clone Elio calls out to the soldiers for help and they fall for it. Yes, the total “creepy kid standing in the dark move”—an immediate nope. It then does a bone crunching skitter toward the soldier, in an eyebrow-raising moment. The clone falls into the soldier’s arms with its bones melting and its eyes expanding like bubbles. It’s truly Pixar’s most grotesque moment, yet it’s so silly it outweighs the scary with a perfect punch-line to answer that clone Elio went out like a G.
It’s so effective because kids know the clone did it on its own to help, but still captures the Goosebumps era of kid horror that doesn’t hold back. It felt like an homage to John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg sci-fi films as well as a return to letting kids get exposed to horror early.
In the past quarter of a century, bigger family films have held back when it comes to scary moments, so seeing Pixar go there felt like a step in the right direction. Fairytales and folklore for children have historically had scary elements to help them understand the horrors of the world; somewhere along the way, after the heyday of Amblin films, the art form got lost.
Jurassic Park’s raptor kitchen scene is such a core memory for me as my first exposure to scary but exciting elements in movies. Elio‘s horror film moment is nowhere near as frightening as that, but it does offer a delightful taste of what Pixar could do if it went the spooky route for a film. Give us Pixar’s take on dark fairytales, a haunted house film, or even a horror anthology of campfire tales from different Pixar creatives scored by Michael Giacchino, the Oscar-winning composer of Up.
It may take Elio awhile to find its audience, but we’re confident it will. The voices behind Elio really delivered a fantastically fun and freaky first foray into sci-fi for a new generation—the last time Pixar was this terrifying was when we saw Woody’s head spin around while warning Sid that toys see everything.
With clone Elio’s dramatic end, Shi and the rest of the Pixar team hit that style of ’90s-era R.L. Stein camp horror with frightful finesse. It’s a testament to the rest of the film’s many bold and original choices that stand to inspire more future sci-fi fans.
Pixar’s Elio is now in theaters.
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