One thing I’ve always struggled with in horror cinema are so-called ‘creepy kid’ movies. Aside from The Bad Seed and the original Child’s Play I have yet to see a film convincingly depict a young infantile as the central threat to adult life, let alone one that doesn’t inspire unintentional laughs every time the demonic offspring appears onscreen with a sharp implement. Perhaps it’s simply a case of personal taste but I generally don’t find kids that scary, however as evidenced through the box office results of last year’s smash hit Orphan, many a genre fan would disagree. In some ways comparable to the recent Eden Lake, Tom Shankland’s broodingly ambiguous and impressively unnerving The Children (picked up by Ghost House Underground) actually manages to provide a fresh take on a sub-genre now arguably a victim of its own absurdities.
It’s a white Christmas in a small English town and a family of cousins and their young children gather together at a house in the woods to celebrate the end of year festivities. Everything starts out relatively well but when the younger generation begin to show minor signs of illness and a few strange events occur that would implicate their doing, the parents begin to question whether or not something sinister is at work behind their progeny’s seemingly innocent eyes…
The first thing that strikes you about The Children is how remarkably well executed it is. Unlike so many other fright flicks of the same ilk, Shankland imposes his film with a sense of unease and tension so strong and intoxicating that from the moment we’re introduced to the children it’s abundantly clear something is wrong, even if we have no inkling at all as to what it is. As the children progress from the ostensibly naïve to the increasingly hostile this same sense of uncertainty and danger only grows more intense with each passing scene, consistently keeping the audience on edge in dreaded anticipation of what horrors lie ahead for the oblivious parents. When the violence finally does arrive it’s surprisingly vicious and unapologetic, both in its simplicity and undiscriminating nature, with Skankland never once shying away from implementing a demise on his minors just as grotesque as those suffered by the film’s elders. From a audience perspective this is precisely what makes the temperament of The Children so compelling and transfixing: nothing ever feels immature or taken for granted.
Another production hurdle mastered by Shankland and co. is the successful casting of some impressively malicious youngsters and the host of folks pleading for their mercy. Raffiella Brooks is particularly striking as the oldest of the pre-teens in a role that challenges not only her ability to suggest a hidden menace but also her capacity to repress it in the face of her parents. The remaining trio of conspirators (the maximum age of which is surely below ten years) are all disquietingly creepy in their own right and do a fine job of zeroing away their emotions and replacing them with deathly cold visages of disconnection. The only weak link is the occasionally goofy Stephen Campbell Moore who always seems to react somewhat strangely in moments of distress, often times inspiring a few unintentional giggles that have a habit of breaking the intensity of the moment.
There are many more things to admire about The Children, such as its superb cinematography, intricately arranged sound design and accomplished editing technique, but these are things I urge you all to witness for yourself on screen rather than having you read any more of my rambling praise. The Children is more than just a killer kid movie; it is an exercise in how to grip an audience from the first scene to the last, not only through the grammar of thriller cinema but also by intrigue and valid ambiguity. One can only wonder why this movie was given the theatrical shaft…maybe Saw V was taking up too much cinema space.
Dir: Tom Shankland
Writer: Tom Shankland
Cast: Eva Birthistle, Stephen Campbell Moore, Jeremy Sheffield, Rachel Shelley
Country: UK
Run Time: 84mins
Rating: MA15+
A surprisingly good film. I agree with you about the building tension. I think it's because it never feels over the top or like a caricature like a lot of these films do. It would be easy to drop drop the film into the farcical but, it always feels some how realistic and possible.
ReplyDeleteI agree too. The Children was ambitious and disturbing and really went for it with the story and actions. Loved it.
ReplyDelete@The Fright Writer: Spot on, I say. That's one of the things I find so frustrating about creepy kid movies - they constantly drop the ball into the cheese pot and never recover from the lunacy. But this film really hit a nerve for me and as you say, playing it straight ultimately results in a plausible result.
ReplyDelete@TheGirlWhoLovesHorror: Absolutely. It pulls no punches at all in fact. When's the last time you saw a teenager impale a toddler on a shard of wood?