When you’re a kid, monsters aren’t just something you entertain as a distant possibility—there are times when you’re, like, 90 percent sure they’re actually there. I can remember several nights lying awake in bed in my childhood home, unable to close my eyes because of my deep conviction that something on the other side of those slatted closet doors had it in for me. The “something” changed over the years (it was Chucky from Child’s Play until I saw The Exorcist for the first time), but my sense that it was more than possible that those fictional characters had tracked…