Satan-baby film

Satan-baby films are films which are premised on late 20th century Christian mythology and eschatology: the idea that evil incarnates in a demonic being, who seeks to bring about the end of the world by fathering a child on a human woman. See also alien impregnation.

They involve numerous gender-specific tropes, many of which are explicitly or implicitly sexist, including:

• womankind bringing about the fall of humanity
• women as a vessel for evil
• women as passive, acted upon
• women's agency as directed through their fertility and reproductiveness, particularly through giving birth to male heirs
• abortion as a "sin" is often an implicit view
• women as deluded by their hormones
• women as pawns who need to be protected, rescued, manipulated, have decisions made for them
• women who can only act through self-sacrifice often in childbirth

Note that some films in the genre occasionally tweak some of these tropes, suggesting or partially instantiating a feminist perspective.

List of works

Films (and occasional other works) in this genre include:

• "Rosemary's Baby" (and the novel by Ira Levin)
• "End of Days"
• "La Setta" (aka "The Sect", "The Devil's Daughter"; a 1991 film directed by Michele Soavi (aka Michael Soavi), and co-written & produced by Dario Argento
• "Terms of Endearment" (X-Files episode with a twist; not Satan, just a random demon)
• Xena arc with Gabrielle as mother: "The Deliverer" (3x04) and "Gabrielle's Hope" (3x05) [not "Satan" per se but a similar sort of bad guy]
• The late fourth-season story arc on Angel
• "Pro-Life" dir. by John Carpenter

see also

Related thematically:

• "The Seventh Sign" (1998 film written by Clifford Green and Ellen Green; directed by Carl Schultz; starring Demi Moore) - Demi Moore is a pregnant woman whose baby may be the first of a slew of unsouled babies heralding the end of the world. wtf?

Child of Satan:

• "The Omen"
• "Point Pleasant" (TV series)

• Fetus Terrible at TVTropes wiki