Fair-Haired Child

Tara (Lindsay Pulsipher), though a pretty and talented teenage girl, is not liked at her school and has no friends. Upon returning home one day, she is kidnapped and drugged. She awakens and attempts to reach out to her mother through telephone, who appears doozy and seem to be unfazed by her daughter's desperate cries for help even when she finally reveals she has been "fucking kidnapped" whisked off to Vermont, as informed by the friendly nurse Judith Ruric (Lori Petty) who even finishes the street address of the building which appears to be a hospital. After the call disconnects, Tara remains tensed for waking up in Vermont after abduction but the nurse's demeanour suddenly changes after she starts asking personally invasive questions like whether she had been baptized or whether she ever had "sexual intercourse" in her life. Tara reluctantly answers honestly ultimately, thinking it is for medical prerequisites but after getting more anxious and suspicious of even the nurse given she ends up speaking her name even though she never identified herself nor was there any other reasonable way to do so, she starts looking around and finds that the delivery address on a shipping label of a magazine she had holding is actually to fictional "Luketown" in "ME" instead of "Stowe, Vermont" as the nurse claimed. Her bedside manner drastically transforms as she starts speaking menacingly as to how they are in a remote location and there would not be any help for "five miles at least." Tara attempts to escape but the kidnapper (William Samples) and the supposed nurse manage to overpower her in a struggle and together, they their her into the basement with removed stairs, where Tara finds a young boy (Jesse Haddock) hanging from a noose, close to death. She saves him, and the two form a bond. The boy, Johnny, is sweet and kind but cannot talk; he has to communicate by writing in dust. With Johnny's assistance, Tara uncovers cryptic warnings on the walls, such as "Beware the Fair-Haired Child!" The two discover a room with numerous backpacks and a bloody bathtub, showing that they are not the first victims.

Johnny begins to breathe hard as a great gust of wind shakes everything and undergoes a transformation from a normal boy into the hideous demon dubbed the "Fair-Haired Child" (Walter Phelan). Frightened, Tara hides from the creature and when found, struggles greatly to stay out of its grip until it turns back into Johnny, who then reveals his shameful secret upon being confronted: Twelve years ago, Johnny died by drowning on his 15th birthday at a pond located adjacent to their mansion's backyard. Desperate over the loss of their son, Johnny's parents (the kidnappers) made a deal with a demon, and performed a ritual that involves them providing a sacrifice of one virgin teenager (same age group as him at the time of death) per year until the quota of twelve is reached; Tara is the last before Johnny can become human again. However, Johnny has and Tara became romantically entangled platonically to each other and he desperately asks her to forgive him as another gust of wind arrives. She embraces him as the screen cuts to black for sometime, when the vision returns, the "Fair-Haired Child" is seen performing his final kill by mauling Tara, dismembering and disemboweling her as she screams but makes no genuine attempt to resist in what is implied to be a sacrifice on her part for the sake of Johnny. Soon afterward, Johnny's parents descend into the basement to find Tara's corpse covered in an old newspaper, with the words "I forgive you, Johnny," written on it in her blood. The couple then happily performs the final stage of the ritual, transforming him into the beautiful blond boy he was before his death.

Johnny later looks over Tara's drawing, while his parents play instruments. Speaking for the first time, Johnny informs his mother that his talent is bargaining, making it clear that Tara's sacrifice was unlike the death of earlier 11 virgin victims as he has struck a new deal with the demon: Instead of needing twelve kids to perform a resurrection, he managed to narrow it down to two, and they don't have to be virgin teenagers. As Johnny smiles sadistically, Tara appears as a "Fair-Haired Child" herself and feasts on his parents.

The alive-and-well Tara is shown waking up, curiously observing a bandage on her arm, which Johnny informs that he injected her with a medication to make her temporarily forget what had happened and soon afterwards, she would regain her past memory, including "some not pretty things" in reference to her existence in the "Fair-Haired Child" face as part of his larger plan to not let her be just another unfortunate victim for the sake of his resuscitation whom nobody cares about. The two introduce themselves again as he takes her for a stroll in the mansion's backyard towards the pond, and the camera pans to the graves of Johnny's parents in the garden.

• Fair-Haired Child at IMDb
• Review for Fair-Haired Child at Dread Central
• Review for Fair-Haired Child at Slant Magazine