‘Do you play football, or do you play powder-puff?’
Creepy kids have been a staple of horror cinema since time immemorial. The Omen, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Lodge, Orphan… the list goes on. It’s the subversion of something that is supposed to be pure and innocent into something evil and dangerous that ensures that this trope endures. As you’d expect from a film entitled There’s Something Wrong with the Children, the creepy kids here are particularly creepy…
A pair of couples rent a cabin in the woods (will they never learn?!). Ellie (Amanda Crew) and Thomas (Carlos Santos) just want to get their marriage back on track after an unfortunate sexual encounter with another couple that ended badly (the description of this episode makes it sound incredibly depressing). Margaret (Alisha Wainwright) and Ben (Zach Gilford) are free spirits who love travelling. Everything is going just swell until the two couples stumble across a strange structure in the woods. After peering into an ominously large hole instead of just immediately turning around and going about their day, Ellie and Thomas’ kids Lucy (Briella Guiza) and Spencer (David Mattle) start acting a little… off.
Director Roxanne Benjamin has been heavily involved with the V/H/S franchise over the years having written, produced and directed various segments across different movies. She brings some of that weird energy here and while I was never overly frightened during this movie, there is no denying that Benjamin and her talented cast succeed in creating an eerie and troubling atmosphere. It helps that the score, created by composing duo The Gifted is an all-timer. While the film itself is an effective and successful horror film, the music and sound design belong to a much better movie.
Elsewhere, Gilford is a genre veteran by now having become a mainstay of the Flanaverse and he does well here, particularly when his character starts sliding into paranoia (in a move that recalls Rosemary’s Baby in its ability to have the audience questioning how much of what we can see on screen is real). There are nods to other horror classics too, most notably Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Evil Dead.
While it’s debatable whether There’s Something Wrong with the Children sticks the landing, at just over 90 minutes this is a strange and lovingly crafted horror film that ensures that There’s Something Wrong with the Children is not just a phrase that I find myself uttering whilst shaking my head during my role as a teacher but also a solid horror movie.