CONSIDERING how often film- makers have used children in horror - The Shining, The Exorcist, The Innocentsand on and on - it is somewhat surprising that nobody has, to this date, thought to make a movie in which all children are enemies. Here it is.
Children are to The Childrenas birds were to The Birds. Some alien virus or whatever has infected the world's young people and made them more than usually malevolent. Give young Timmy a telling off and, like as not, you'll get a carving knife rammed up your windpipe. It's a nice idea for a shocker, but, sadly, it doesn't quite come off here.
Eva Birthistle plays one of several middle-class parents spending Christmas in a remote English house. Various tensions quickly announce themselves. Eva's brother-in-law appears to have inappropriate feelings for her eldest daughter.
One of the party bores the rest with his plans to market Chinese medicine to western hypochondriacs.
As in the recent Cloverfield, the lead characters are such jerks, you find yourself praying for their rapid and violent dispatch. Sure enough, before the first cracker has been pulled, the little ones are flinging sharp objects at their wretched parents.
Tom Shankland, director of the horrid WAZ, gets some things right. The decision to shoot the majority of the action in dazzling, snow-filtered sunlight sets the film apart from the standard moonlit horror flick. Birthistle is excellent as the screamer-in-chief. and the film has a fine last scene which alludes explicitly - but not in a smart-alec fashion - to one of its most conspicuous influences.
Unfortunately, the action sequences are assembled so chaotically that it becomes difficult to discern who is in peril or where the threat is coming from. Look at me; I've got scary eyes. Ah, a hurtling sledge. Watch out, something obscurely sinister is happening in that tent. By the close, a good idea has been resoundingly squandered and a decent cast largely wasted.
It all happened so fast, officer. I can't honestly remember a thing.
Directed by Tom Shankland. Starring Eva Birthistle, Freddie Boath, Raffiella Brooks 18 cert, gen release, 84 min **
