Rod Serling’s seminal The Twilight Zone may not be as scary now to audiences as it was during its late ’50s to mid ’60s run, but it’s still often a poignant and impressively creative viewing experience. It’s also like the works of Stephen King in that it’s inspired many filmmakers to create similar projects of their own. But, whereas the works of King are typically directly adapted, an episode of The Twilight Zone just provides the DNA for what is then fleshed out to become something unique and, occasionally, a trendsetter. Well, except for Twilight Zone: The Movie, but the less said there, the better.
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As one could likely guess, the films it inspires are typically of the horror genre. Yet The Twilight Zone‘s influence is so vast, its content so varied and ahead of its time, that it’s even the influence for things like the Hugh Jackman-fronted Real Steel and a scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. But, here, we’re just going to be covering the spooky stuff.
10 Cloverfield Lane – “One More Pallbearer”
Season 3’s “One More Pallbearer” is not one of the series’ most notable and iconic installments, but it’s like the more famous “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” in that it’s a sharp look at how humans behave during tough times. The narrative follows millionaire Pual Radin, who now resides three hundred feet below the surface of the Earth in a bomb shelter. He invites three people to come down there with him. He holds a different grudge with each of them, and via techniques such as sound effects of catastrophe and faux radio transmissions he convinces them that a nuclear apocalypse is imminent. All they need to do is apologize (in reality, he was very much the wrong party in all three situations).
With a few tweaks, Radin is John Goodman’s character in 10 Cloverfield Lane. But where the similarities between the episode and the apex of the Cloverfield franchise really becomes pronounced is in their respective twist endings. Even still, there’s a catch. Once all three “guests” leave, Radin hears the sound of a nuclear bomb exploding and goes back up to the surface where he sees devastation. But it’s just a figment of his imagination. In 10 Cloverfield Lane, however, when Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character finally gets out of the bunker, the apocalypse is as real as can be.
Stream 10 Cloverfield Lane on Prime Video.
Child’s Play – “Living Doll”
The film that gave birth to one of the slasher subgenre’s best villains, Child’s Play is very clearly inspired by The Twilight Zone‘s “Living Doll.” And that obvious nature is not just because some of us had a sixth grade English teacher who introduced us to The Twilight Zone by comparing that particular episode to very carefully selected clips from the first Chucky flick.
“Living Doll” follows Kojak himself, Telly Savalas,c as Erich Streator, the anger-prone stepfather to a little girl named Christie. One day, Christie’s mother, Annabelle, brings home a “Talky Tina” doll which, when wound up, says “My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much.” However, when Erich is alone with the doll, he winds it up to hear things like “I don’t like you.” Erich begins to suspect it’s a ruse put on by his wife and stepdaughter. He continuously tries to get rid of the doll only for it to keep making its way back into his life until, ultimately, that life is cut short. As Annabelle rushes to the side of her husband, who she thought had lost it, she finds out that perhaps his accusations against the doll were in fact based in reality.
Stream Child’s Play on Max.
Final Destination – “Twenty Two”
Final Destination is a franchise loaded with deaths more gruesome than the original The Twilight Zone series could even imagine putting on air, but there’s still something of a throughline. Many of the series’ episodes deal with the concept of fate, but when it comes to “Twenty Two,” the similarities are even more striking.
The episode kicks off with professional dancer Liz Powell having a nightmare that ends in a morgue, specifically in room number 22. She has a consultation with a doctor, who suggests altering a single element of the dream, but even after doing so the dream’s sequence of events occur as they usually do. After being discharged from the hospital she boards a plane but, while awake, the sequence of events in the dream play out, so she runs from the plane (Flight 22) and waits in the terminal. As Flight 22 takes off, something goes wrong and it explodes. She has escaped death. The episode is essentially the opening of the original Final Destination, exploding plane and all.
Stream Final Destination on Max.
The Mist – “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”
The Mist director Frank Darabont has cited a few inspirations for the film outside Stephen King’s source material. One of them was Lord of the Flies, another was Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, and a third was The Twilight Zone A-list episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Like with Lifeboat, this is especially integral when focusing on the paranoia aspect, and how that paranoia can cloud the mind and corrode what was once a decent person.
The Season 1 episode takes place on, naturally, Maple Street, a pretty standard chunk of suburbia where the neighbors get along in spite of the occasional petty squabble. But when strange occurrences start to become more frequent, e.g. small things like flashing streetlights, the neighbors take a newspaper article about an alien invasion seriously. And, before long, they start to wonder if their neighbors are all they appear to be. Tempers flare, aggression becomes the name of the game, and two actual aliens sit on a nearby hilltop, chuckling about how easy it is to get the human race to turn on itself.
Stream The Mist on Prime Video.
A Nightmare on Elm Street – “Perchance to Dream”
The first and still best A Nightmare on Elm Street originated more from a specific, real-life source than an episode of The Twilight Zone, but there’s still a fairly noticeable connection to “Pechance to Dream.” And, considering he was about 20 when The Twilight Zone began airing, there’s absolutely good reason to believe horror auteur and A Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven was a fan. As for the real-life source, Craven was primarily inspired by a group of Hmong refugees who died mysteriously after experiencing particularly strong nightmares.
When it comes to the connection between Freddy Krueger and The Twilight Zone, “Perchance to Dream” follows Edward Hall, who is seeing a psychiatrist to help with his overactive imagination. When he sleeps, he’s led by a little girl through a funhouse and on a rollercoaster, two things that frighten him. Hall believes, given the fact he has a heart condition, that if he’s excited to such an extent in another dream he’ll never wake up. He loses hope with the psychiatrist and goes out to see the doctor’s receptionist looks just like the little girl in his dream. The reality is that this has all been a dream, he immediately fell asleep in the doctor’s office and, mere moments later, died in his sleep after letting out a single scream.
Rent A Nightmare on Elm Street on Amazon Video.
Poltergeist – “Little Girl Lost”
Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist isn’t a surprising addition to this list. After all, producer Steven Spielberg directed one of the segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie; and, as “Little Girl Lost” writer Richard Matheson has pointed out, Poltergeist has quite a few similarities to the excellent episode.
The heartbreaking “Little Girl Lost,” like Poltergeist, follows a girl who disappears from her family home and ends up in another dimension. Her parents frantically attempt to find her, which they do thanks to a portal. Outside the inclusion of ghosts, “Little Girl Lost” is basically a short-form version of Hooper’s film.
Rent Poltergeist on Amazon Video.
Us – “Mirror Image”
Horror auteur Jordan Peele has always worn his love for The Twilight Zone on his sleeve. After all, he himself rebooted the IP back in 2019 and served as its Serling-like host. And if that wasn’t proof enough, Us is pretty much exactly Season 1’s “Mirror Image.” He himself has confirmed the film was inspired by the episode.
“Mirror Image” follows 25-year-old Millicent Barnes, who is waiting in a bus depot and, each time she asks a question of one of the employees, is told that it is not her first time asking said question. She begins to see a doppelgänger, usually harnessing a creepy look on her face and, after fainting from shock, wakes up with what sounds like a preposterous story but is in reality the truth. Her doppelgänger comes from an alternative plane of existence and can only exist if Millicent herself is taken out of the picture. A fellow bus depot patron believes Millicent to be insane and calls the police on her but, shortly after, begins to see a doppelgänger all his own. If that isn’t the DNA for the “Tethered,” what is?
Rent Us on Amazon Video.
