|
|
"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | It doesn't matter how I feel, he's dead anyway. | „ |
| ~ A young Emma dismissing and showing zero remorse for a classmate she murdered. |
Emma Grossman is the villainous main protagonist of the 2018 and 2022 films “The Bad Seed” and “The Bad Seed Returns.”
At first Emma is initially presented as a highly intelligent, mature, and well-spoken young girl. She gets Straight-A’s in school, and her parents and teachers all recognize her as competitive and ambitious to a fault. This pattern comes to a head when strange, “unfortunate coincidences” resulting in deaths begin to circle around Emma’s life, posing as deaths by fire, accidents, murders, and suicides. Not even her own father is safe from the curse, and he ends up being killed as well. Soon enough as Emma grows older, the “unfortunate coincidences” spiral more and more out of control, and the people around her are forced to come to the realization that these strange coincidences, were all committed by her.
She was portrayed by Mckenna Grace, who also played one of the forms of Gabriel in Malignant.
What Makes Her Pure Evil?[]
The Bad Seed[]
- Killed her housekeeper, Ms. Levia after she grabbed her arm too hard. Emma pushed her and she fell down the stairs to her death.
- Wanted to exemplify her schools' values of “faith, honesty, grace and compassion”, and mimicked these acts to protect her interests without any actual conviction.
- After her classmate Milo, wins a medal she desperately wanted, Emma lures him to a cliff and pushes him off without feeling any remorse, killing Milo.
- When her teacher, Mrs. Ellis had begun to harbour suspicions and hires a private investigator to look into Milo’s death, Emma staged an accident where she grabbed a wasp nest out of her backyard, and planted it in Mrs. Ellis’ car, which resulted in her getting into a car accident, killing her.
- She lied to her father multiple times, and deceived him about the true nature of Milo’s death.
- Blackmailed Chloe about her drug addiction, and used it to get Chloe to do favours for her such as getting her ice cream, or cookies.
- Killed Chloe by trapping her in a burning shed.
- Justified her crimes and said that she would “never hurt anybody for no reason” despite that all her reasons are petty, misguided, malevolent, and completely unreasonable motivations.
- Attempted to kill her father by causing a gas explosion while they were at his lake house, and eventually succeeded when she manipulated the caretaker into shooting her father while hidden in the washroom.
- Showed pleasure and delight in manipulating others as at the end of both films, she smiled devilishly, implying her truly malevolent streak.
The Bad Seed Returns[]
- Remorselessly led her infant cousin to the outdoor pool in which he almost fell into and drowned. She showed pleasure as she smiled from her room upstairs.
- When her uncle began to control certain aspects of her life, such as planning to send her to a boarding school, Emma began to subtlety sabotage him by adding large amounts of salt to his food, and even setting a fire in the kitchen.
- When her uncle proved to be too much of a liability to her interests, she slipped the jack when he was working underneath the car and causing him to almost die from blood loss.
- Manipulated a boy from school, Nathan into becoming her boyfriend/date, and clearly saw him as inferior and showed no real emotional ties to him. Even searching up hackneyed remarks on how to show him that she likes him.
- While playing "Never Have I Ever," she insensitively told her "friends" that she killed her mother when she was born.
- While viewing her friend, “Steph” as inferior, it was clear that she had overstepped herself, and is threatened by Steph’s natural charisma and ability in physical activities such as dancing. It came to a point where Emma is willing to murder Steph’s dog so that she won’t show up to practices, and showed clear delight in sabotaging her and attempts to take the position as the dance captain.
- Showed sadistic delight in neglecting her crippled uncle’s needs, and even pretended to have a conversation with someone else over the phone despite that her phone had no battery just to irritate him.
- When an old classmate of Emma’s named Kat, who is intelligent enough to see through Emma’s tricks, and threatened to expose her, Emma without hesitation uses her self-harming behavior against her and threatens to murder her and make it look like a suicide if Kat tried to cross her again, and showed delight in breaking down Kat mentally.
- Emma provoked Kat into slapping her and manipulated Nathan and the faculty into siding with her, as well as spread rumors about Kat, and ostracized her from all social circles.
- When Steph won the title of dance team captain, Emma disposed of her medication, and sent her an all-white video, that after a few seconds, it blinked several times, triggering her epilepsy. She then grabs Steph’s phone when everyone is distracted to cover her tracks.
- When Angela had pieced together what she did to Steph, Emma immediately refused to take accountability and made a new lie that she just let her dog go, and refused to admit she hurt Steph.
- Intentionally reminded her uncle about how she crippled him in a sadistic glee.
- When she researched ASPD and the Psychopathy Checklist online, she smirked when she realized that she fit in all the requirements, which showed she knew that she’s evil and takes pride in it.
- Emma slowly began to realize that her deepest secrets are at stake and the truth of her living a lie is about to be revealed. By this point, all 3 people who know about her secrets are making major moves:
- Angela consulted people on Emma’s past, and even drove hours away to her hometown to consult the caretaker of the lake house that shot her brother and Emma’s father, David.
- Kat attempted to expose her, and was an inch away from reporting her to the police.
- Her uncle used his knowledge of her atrocities as a blackmail to coerce her into going to boarding school in a failed attempt to make her leave his family alone.
- Due to this, she begins to concoct a plan which will successfully take out all 3 people who know about her secrets:
- She stole Cora’s phone, (the care-aid who was looking after Robert) and got rid of Aunt Angela's hidden camera to watch over Robert.
- She then got rid of the landline, and lured Kat to her house with the promise of revealing the truth of the crimes she have committed, as well as Nathan to serve as a credible witness once everything is in place.
- She tricked and trapped her Uncle Robert in the bedroom upstairs by using a recording of her infant cousin's voice. He almost broke a bone due to his injuries and he was forced to crawl his way up the stairs in immense pain. When he realized he was tricked, Emma laughed in delight, and said, “I'm sorry about the baby… sorta-“ and walked away, implying that she tricked him into believing that Cade was already dead.
- Upon finally gaining an edge over her rival Kat, she mercilessly taunted, and gloated over her. She called all her previous victims as “troublemakers”, and told Kat to “not mess with psychos.” When Kat attempted to weakly defend herself by pulling out a can of pepper spray, Emma continuously mocked her, and sprayed Kat in the face with it. Kat was unable to do anything as she was nearly paralyzed due to the effects of the drugs.
- When Kat wasn't losing consciousness as fast as Emma hoped, she called Kat “boring”, and told her in a roundabout way about how she’ll continue to manipulate Nathan.
- While she did saved her infant cousin from the fire, and insisted that they not be separated as he’s the only family she had left, it was implied that she was only using him as a shield to deflect any suspicion and to portray herself in a benevolent light, or possibly intended to raise her cousin.
- Emma pretended to cry into Nathan’s lap, and put on theatrics for the authorities once they arrived. It was implied that she not only framed Kat for the murder of her aunt and uncle, but for Steph and her dog as well, as leaving Steph as a loose end would result in her possible capture in the future, should suspicion ever arise again.
- At the end of the movie, she deceived a compassionate social worker into believing her sob story and smiled triumphantly.
Trivia[]
- If there is a recurring theme throughout the films, it's that killing, whilst seemingly final, can make your problems worse if you don't consider the long-term consequences. All of Emma's problems happen due to her using murder as a first solution to anything, to the point where she is repeatedly noted to have numerous atrocities centering around her. This is completely in line with her psychopathic impulsivity, as she is effective with tactics, such as cleverly creating accidents, but bad at strategy, which involves the long-term implications. An example of this is her killing Steph's dog, which, whilst she was able to convincingly lie on-the-spot that she only let it out, let to Angela being suspicious of Emma and investigating.
- It can be theorised that she will be caught in future film(s) owing to people noting the degree of atrocities centering around her, compounded with her impulsivity, such as killing Steph's dog and being caught on camera, and the audio recording on Kat's phone likely being saved to the Cloud.
External Links[]
- Emma Grossman on the Villains Wiki