Halloween and children go together like peanut butter and jam. Murder and children... not so much, right? You might be surprised...
Two families come together to share the holidays together, and ring in the New Year.
Unfortunately, their children start to fall ill, and act irrationally.
The New Year's going to be rung in with murderous intent this year...
The story's concept brings to mind the classic "The Children of the Corn", in that it too has kids killing adults. That is where the similarities end though. While the other film gives a fairly cohesive reason as to WHY the kids have turned against adults, "The Children" does not. It's simply waved off as a virus. There's no clue given as to why the virus does this... and given the reveal later, there's no mention of something similar happening elsewhere on the news or anything. It's an interesting concept that unfortunately has the holiness of a soup strainer when examined a bit in detail.
Most of the characters, except for Casey, and her mother aren't all that sympathetic. Most of them are kinda… mean and almost cynical. The children are too... though considering they fall sick to the "hate virus" fairly early on, they can be excused for that.
The acting was pretty good. I especially have to give credit to the kids, Eva Sayer (Miranda), William Howes (Paulie), Rafiella Brookes (Leah), and Jake Hathaway (Nicky). They did a fantastic job making their characters creepy, and murderous as fuck. The look on Paulie's face in the shot below is amazing- just a look of pure, unhinged fury.
Eva Sayer as Miranda, was great as well. She brought a nice calculated psychopathic touch to her character. Really quite impressive. And of course, the look on Leah's and Nicky's face in the shot at the top of the review is quite chilling and disturbing. Loved it.
While most of the camera work is fairly standard, the editing for most of the kills was phenomenal. It's done is such a way that you're tricked into thinking you saw more blood and gore than you actually did. I also really liked the way this movie was lit. The house interior was lit so that it felt warm and cozy, up until the climax, when it took on the same sort of cold, dreary look as the exterior shots.
Although there were some great things about this movie, those great things aren't quite enough to get me to watch it a second time. I would probably recommend it for a single viewing, though. I'm going to put "The Children" in "The Bad". Now, if you'll excuse me... I seem to have the sniffles...
Comments
Post a Comment