The Children DVD Review
The Children DVD Review
Not those 'Damned', 'Corn', or 'Men' wimps, these are just The Children. Word.
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Talk about your late-term abortions. When mothers start killing their five and six year old children, you know you're watching a no-holds-barred horror movie. But, to be fair, they are killing in self-defense — the same cannot be said of the relentless little villains of Tom Shankland's U.K. sensation The Children.
The movie starts off innocently enough, quite reminiscent of the lulling scenes in Neil Marshall's The Decent, or Eli Roth's Cabin Fever — you get to know everyone in a casual, realistic setting before they are brutally massacred before your very eyes. Truth be told, The Children is a bit boring at first. The set up goes on for just a while too long, and what we learn about the characters does not necessarily inform their death scenes. But whatever. Doesn't really matter too much, because once the scares start they don't let up.
It's Christmas holiday, and sisters Chloe (Rachel Shelley) and Elaine (Eva Birthistle), along with their husbands and young broods, are spending some quality time at an isolated cabin in the snowy, sparse woods. The youngest kid is Paulie (William Howes), has arrived to the party sick (vomit spews); and the eldest is teenager Casey (Hannah Tointon), who is just sick of it all (eyes roll). The women have to deal with the demands of their spouses and the whining and crying of their offspring, so it's no wonder they're both a bit on edge as the day plods on. Ah, family-time!
But then the housecat Jinxie turns up missing and everyone's attention is focused on her… then attention spirals out of control once we (the audience, not the families) learn that some sort of an intelligent and deadly virus has seized the tiny feline as its host, then leapt into the smallest child, then another child… and so on. The tenacious life form seeks only to survive, which of course means the humans in its orbit can't. Still, the adults seem to be immune; to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what the goal of the virus was. But some of the more gruesome moments, after excellent suspenseful lead-ups, made me not mind too much. There are several shudder-inducing moments, especially one involving a scalp skin-flap that's got serious ick-factor.
The Children isn't a really great movie overall, but it was enjoyable enough once it got going. The extras on the DVD are well-presented in the form of commentary and deleted scenes ("Jinxie's death" is indeed extraneous in the context of the film, but it's good to see how that was handled). The Making-of featurette is a little too cinema verite / B-roll for my taste, but some will no doubt find it of value.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Latest User Comments:
| Disagree | |
| I find that you do not pay much attention to the intricacies of this film. I'd respond further, but you can read my review of the film, which I believe is a response to reviews like yours at: [URL="http://www.horroramnesty.com"]http://www.horroramnesty.com[/URL] | |
| 10-09-2009 by Gregburnscds | discuss |