When I put on Curse of the Cat People, I expected a silly monster sequel. It isn’t that.

This is horror, but not the conventional kind. No monsters. No gore. No jump scares. What makes it frightening is what’s implied rather than what’s shown. The unease creeps in slowly, through mood and suggestion, until you realize you’re watching a nightmare play out in broad daylight.

The title is pure misdirection. There are no cat people. There isn’t a curse. RKO forced the connection to Cat People because it sold tickets. Same actors, different story.

What we get instead is the story of Amy Reed, a lonely child who slips into her imagination and befriends a ghost—Simone Simon returning as Irena. Whether Irena is real or imagined is never resolved, and that’s the knife edge the whole film balances on.

At first it feels harmless, almost whimsical—Amy chasing butterflies, leaving letters in a hollow tree (a detail lifted from Val Lewton’s own childhood). But then the tone shifts. The whimsy curdles. The fairy tale becomes sinister, and you see this fragile little girl surrounded by adults who don’t understand her, neighbors who resent her, and a ghost who may or may not be protecting her.

The film is filled with oddities. It’s set in Tarrytown, with nods to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Reed family living room is decorated with Goya’s The Red Boy, a painting of a child flanked by cats. Sir Lancelot, a calypso singer, plays the family’s butler. Elizabeth Russell—who hissed her way through a cameo in Cat People—shows up again as a venomous neighbor. None of it feels like standard studio horror.

And then there’s Mrs. Farren: bitter, regal, half-mad, recounting the tale of the Headless Horseman like a curse she can’t stop repeating. She’s terrifying without any makeup or effects.

But the most haunting presence is Ann Carter as Amy. Today, you’d probably recognize traits of autism—her obsessions, her difficulty connecting with other kids. In the 1940s she was simply “odd.” That sense of otherness makes her peril feel even sharper, as though she’s marked out for tragedy.

Visually, the film is stunning. Black-and-white light makes every space shimmer like a dream. Angles and shadows tilt into wooziness. The camera itself becomes part of Amy’s imagination—half fairy tale, half hallucination.

And for all its strangeness, this was Robert Wise’s first directing credit. He was pulled from the editing room to rescue the project. You can already see the control that would define his later films.

Curse of the Cat People is horror, but not the kind RKO advertised. It’s quieter. Stranger. Built on loneliness, childhood fears, and the danger of slipping too far into fantasy. Creepy in 1944. Still creepy now.