this is where i write about horror films and also write horror stories and sometimes i write about non-horror films but mostly i just write about horror films and write horror stories.

Sunday 11 February 2018

THE CHILDREN / 2008 / 85 minutes (UNFINISHED REVIEW)

this one is i think from about eight years ago. straight pasted from a .doc. no fucking idea what's even in this thing or how far through it i got. anyway, its a great fucking movie you should check it out.

It goes without saying that evilkillerchildren movies should, by all rights, fucking suck it. There are exceptions, of course. There are always exceptions. But, generally, kids aren't all that scary or threatening because what are they gonna do? Stand around and look menacing? Actually, it's worse than that. Scary kids in horror films generally stand around and *try* to look menacing based on their still-developing understanding of just what exactly "menacing" might actually look like. And I don't consider myself a particularly strong or burly guy, but menacing or not, I would knock the fucking shit out of most of the toddlers in the following films: The Devil Times Five, The Good Son, The Omen, Joshua, Bloody Birthday etc. I wouldn't fuck with that crazy little bitch from Orphan though and I would suggest that y'all take a step back and check yourself before going upside her head as well.

Look, we're all adults here. Well, I'm assuming that we're all adults here. Most of us, in a pinch, could categorically fuck up the shit of anyone at least 10 years old, if not actually much older. This is a flaw inherent in all non-supernatural scary kid flicks. A flaw that is generally counterbalanced by the understanding that killing a child, even a fucked up and evil one, is right up there with marrying your cousin (FIRST cousin) and cosplay as shit that you just shouldn't fucking do. This question of "who can kill a child?" was posed and more or less answered in the film Who Can Kill a Child? which you should watch or wait for me to review and then watch or just read my review without following it up with a viewing of the film or none of the above or all of the above (?). There is another evilkillerchildren film also coincidently called The Children (1980) where the kids can set the adults on fire just by hugging them. Unfortunately, this is not used to its full and obvious vigilante potential where the kids set up sting operations to capture and immolate sex offenders and pedophiles. And the chief of police turns a blind eye, there is much public support, nationwide news coverage etc but the kids know that once they grow up they will still be afflicted by their immolative abilities and so they will have to live a life free from physical demonstrations of affection. They will never know the full and biblical love of a mummy and a daddy who are naked in many respects and trying to make a baby (although there will be several horrifying failed attempts). They will be met with fear and outrage from the community who once embraced them and they will flee the towns and cities in caravans and freight trucks, eventually finding solace in a small and isolated hamlet, undisturbed by the pious judgements of the modern caste, and they will raise a colony of Fire Childs and for generations and generations they will train and be taught to hate the enemy and hone their Fire Skillz until their numbers are as strong as their murderous rage and they will then descend upon the civilised society that cast them aside and they will burn those mutha fucka down to the god damn ground.

Actually, I should stop harping on about The Children '80 as I intend to cover it more extensively when I review as many infant-psycho films as I can over the following months. Also, to avoid confusion,  the film that I am reviewing today will be referred to as The Children '08. I got a little chill just then when I noticed the numerological symmetry. I really should have done a back-to-back review of these and titled it The Children '8008' nerdlihC ehT but it's a little too late for that now and also I had to cheat a little bit to make that cool looking title look as cool as it does.

So, what we have here is an outstanding British example of the LFP (Little Fuckin' Psychos) genre that defies most of its contemporaries by being intelligently and competently written, shot and edited and by not boring me or insulting my intelligence anywhere near as much as a horror film about giggling, vomiting, homicidal children generally, and understandably, would try to. I had watched it a few years ago and remember being really impressed with it then. But I hadn't seen it since that first viewing and I had been watching a lot of really fucking terrible horror movies at the time and, I'll be honest, I was worried that this thing was merely comparatively good as opposed to genuinely and actually good. 

Well, it turns out that I was right and the users of IMDb were wrong because this is a tense and classy nightmare of a film that takes its time establishing mood, character and geography before unleashing the scary and it has a maturity of tone that is almost completely lacking in the majority of modern horror films.

What little plot there is involves

that's it.

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