The Children(2008).Elaine and Jonah and their teenage daughter and young son, come to spend New Year with her sister Chloe and husband Robbie and their three young children at their isolated country home. One by one the children, after apparently being sick, become increasingly malevolent. Written bydon @ minifie-1... Synopsis The Children(2008)
Movie Title: The Children(2008)
Run Time: 84 min
Rating: 6.0 / 10
Genres: Horror |Mystery |Thriller
Release Date: 5 December 2008 (UK)
Director: Tom Shankland
Writer: Paul Andrew Williams ,Tom Shankland... and other credits
Actor: Eva Birthistle,Stephen Campbell Moore,Jeremy Sheffield
Definitely worth the attention of horror fans, this nasty little movie is all about a group of kids who become infected with some virus that then makes them . . . . . . . homicidal. Before anyone can notice and palm them off to an unsuspecting babysitter the kids are offing the adults and terrorising those who start to realise what may be happening.
While it's far from the best horror movie in recent years where this movie impresses is with it's fearless approach to the twisted material. Kids involved in horror movies are often cast as passive villains or innocents, they're rarely thrown in with the really nasty stuff and often removed from the main death scenes but that's not the case here. These kids are savage and treated as savage at times. It's a kill or be killed situation and you really don't mind seeing young children fended off by increasingly violent actions as they continue to show how cunning and lethal they want to be.
The cast all do pretty well. Hannah Tointon fares the best (and is also very pleasing to the eye) as the rebellious young woman who becomes the first one to actually realise the horror of the situation but all of the adults do enough to convince in their roles as middle-class parents who keep their problems and insecurities tucked away from sight. The children themselves are all excellent, carefree and distinctly normal one moment and menacing and deadly the next.
Tom Shankland does well enough, making the most of his locations and scenery, and works with writer Paul Andrew Williams (who also gave us The Cottage and London To Brighton) to bring a very effective build up of dread and terror despite the diminutive size of the "baddies". A solid horror.
See this if you like: Village Of The Damned, The Brood, The Good Son.
