The Children is a really well done movie I thought ‘A relaxing Christmas vacation turns into a terrifying fight for survival as the children begin to turn on their parents.’ It follows the same type of situation, starts off well, big party, everyone’s happy as Larry, and then it all goes wrong. This starts off like this but it sets you straight into the whole ‘somethings going to go wrong’ feeling right at the beginning. One family arrives at the other families house, and immediately one kid gets out the car, throws up and just doesn’t look all there. Uh-oh.
Love the tagline. Genius.
The Children does not hang around like a lot of movies, it starts straight off and you know that somethings wrong, all of the adults continue being hunky-dory while Casey, the oldest child, feels that something is wrong. The kids are getting ill, staring off into space and getting violent. The so-called ‘happy families’ start to fall apart as the kids get more ill and more weird. It starts with just hitting but when one of the kids sends the sleigh flying down the hill and into one of the mum’s leg, you know the doors of hell have just opened. And its just getting worse. Spoiler. When one of the dads suffers a horrific ‘accident’, he sleighs down a hill, can’t stop and goes straight into a rake of some type, that is the time when you now, it’s serious. It’s no more hitting, this is when it gets gory and harsh.
The Children does very well with building up to things, it switches between scenes but just at the right time that they go well together. Spoilers for deaths. When the dad is about to ride down the hill to his death, the camera cuts between scenes, one scene is the actual scene, him getting on the sleigh, it then cuts to a child playing with a doll and sliding it down the hill like the dad. These are done really well, as he hits the bottom and the ‘accident’ happens, it cuts away again to something else. This makes you think you have seen more than you actually have, you think you’ve seen the death but all you’ve seen is him hitting the bottom. You saw him come down the hill, you saw the toy kart with the rake but that’s it. You see the aftermath, which is quite nasty, part of his scape waves to the camera, but that’s it, you didn’t see the hit or anything. The way the scenes cut between each other makes you think you’ve seen more than you have. All of the death scenes in this movie are not shown fully, a mum’s earring is pulled out but yet you don’t see it all. You see it being pulled, you see the blood and that’s it, you know something bad is coming as it starts to cut between scenes, it cuts back to other characters, the music starts, you see a pencil being pulled, and you know exactly where that is going. The scenes cut as the pencil is brought down into the mum’s eye, yep, right in. You see it in the eye but it’s brief, it’s brief but the way it’s set out makes you remember it, you think you have seen more.
Never really liked kids...
I have never really liked kids to be honest, but seeing this, you go fully off them. “You want to be a parent! Why?! You not seen The Children?” That’ll be the question going around with newlyweds and at hospitals. The kids are annoying from the start, they are not really controlled and just run riot so when they need to be killed, you feel slightly for them. Kinda. They probably didn’t feel it anyway, they weren’t human anymore…
No thanks to the newspaper that told me about this but that also told me about the little twist at the end. If you haven’t seen it, skip this paragraphSpoilerY’know when Casey and the mum, the only surviving ones left, drive off, Casey stares off in the distance..oh my gosh, is she one?….would have been my reaction if I hadn’t read about how the actress who plays her is one of the killer kids. Thanks.
Apart from that I enjoyed this film, the ending also did not let it down, I did see it coming spoiler, I mean, when you drive off with a killer child and are a knob, you’re not going to make it far and you will be found at the side of the road. It’s fine though, he was a knob.
I did really like this movie. The only thing I would say about it was that some of the deaths and scenes were confusing, they cut so much that sometimes you really did not know whether you were coming or going. The first dad, I don’t know 100% how he actually died. They also never told you why the kids turned crazy, but I didn’t want to know, I didn’t even realise I didn’t know until I read someone else mention it. Overall a good movie. Well done.
Didn't really like kids to start with...now I really don't like them.
Stay away from sick kids, they will stick a pencil in your eye…
TheSlaughteredLamb 