‘I’m the abortion that got away…’
Kids can be scary. Especially if you’re not a parent. What the hell do I say to the little bastards? Why do they act like that? Why do they always have something in their mouth? The Children takes all of these fears and anxieties and presents the viewer with a simple question: if all the kids in the room suddenly turned on us, what would we do?
Two families meet up for a relaxing Christmas vacation but then a virus turns all the kids into murderous lunatics. One family is headed up by Elaine (Eva Birthistle) while the other matriarch is Chloe (Rachel Shelley). However, the story mainly centres on Elaine’s rebellious teenage daughter Casey (Hannah Tointon).
While The Children has some enjoyably nasty violence and an interesting central premise, Tom Shankland’s film lacks focus. We have a lot of characters and other than Casey we don’t spend much time with any of them. This means when the bodies do start piling up it’s not as emotionally affecting as it should be. The film should be applauded for taking the killer kid subgenre and doing something genuinely different with it but there is a nagging feeling that with a bigger budget and a more accomplished cast, Shankland could have delivered something really special.
The Children is an interesting curio that deserves a wider audience but it also has the whiff of missed opportunity about it – a decent but unspectacular British horror film.
