Christmas is primarily a time for children and the noisy tykes certainly have a bloody good time - with the emphasis on bloody - in Tom Shankland’s gruesome, contemporary horror.
Tapping into every parent’s nightmare, the British director’s follow-up to WAZ conjures a hellish vision of the festive season, pitting two couples against the cherubic offspring they have raised their entire lives.
Expanding upon an original story by Paul Andrew Williams (London To Brighton, The Cottage), writer-director Shankland bides his time with the gore, building tension slowly as the pint-sized protagonists fall victim to a mysterious contagion and succumb to uncontrollable, murderous desires.
Once the blood-letting begins, we can’t help but recoil at some of prosthetics designer Paul Hyatt’s horribly realistic creations including a snapped leg complete with jutting bone and a pencil embedded in an eyeball.
The snow is deep and crisp and even as Elaine (Eva Birthistle) and her husband Jonah (Stephen Campbell-Moore) travel by car with their kids - truculent teenager Casey (Hannah Tointon), Miranda (Eva Sayer) and Paulie (William Howes) - to spend yuletide with Chloe (Rachel Shelley), her beau Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield) and their tearaways Nicky (Jake Hathaway) and Leah (Rafiella Brookes).
One by one, the younger brats fall ill and unbeknownst to their parents, they experience disorienting visions of carnage and mayhem.
As bloodlust takes hold, the urchins strike out at the adults with terrifying consequences.
The parents and an increasingly distraught Casey try to keep the demonic whippersnappers at bay, hastily planning an escape route from their remote, snowbound location.
Yet, every way the uninfected turn, a possessed poppet waits to strike…
The Children poses a thorny moral dilemma - in order to save your own life, would you harm the one thing in the world that is most precious to you? - but Shankland’s film doesn’t ponder or deliberate in any real depth, erring on the side of campy as the zombified offspring start wielding sharp implements with ghoulish intent.
Older cast members are despatched in the order you expect (the more detailed the back story, the greater the chances of survival), with a stomach-churning sticky ending involving a sled for one unfortunate soul.
Chloe’s blindness to a large spot of blood on her daughter’s sheets, which is clearly visible to the camera, is almost as unlikely as her paranoid ramblings about Casey being somehow responsible for the trail of terror (a clumsy way to drive a wedge between the survivors and separate them, ready for the slaughter).
Hopefully, the downbeat ending doesn’t signal Shankland’s intent to babysit a sequel.
- Release Date: Friday 5 December 2008
- Certificate: 15
- Runtime: 84mins
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