‘There is something wrong on this island and you’re trying to keep it from me…’
What an outstanding name for a film. Who Can Kill a Child? Who indeed. The age-old question. This Anglo-Spanish production forces us to confront what happens when faced with a pack of murderous children. Could you pull the trigger? It’s certainly a tough one…
Tom (Lewis Fiander) and his wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) are typical British tourists in Spain. They take things without asking. They speak broken Spanish badly. They complain that some areas are too touristy despite being tourists themselves. Luckily, they receive their comeuppance when they rock up on a remote island that has seen a child uprising leading to the death of all the adults. Imagine Children of the Corn mixed with Don’t Look Now and The Wicker Man and you are somewhere close.
You know that Spanish director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador means business when he opens his film with mondo footage of real-life atrocities (the film begins with Auschwitz and ends with a group of children being violently gunned down – heartwarming stuff). From there, we are presented with a tense and sinister slow burn of a movie that elegantly builds the dread and suspense before blowing it all in a finale that is supposed to be haunting but ends up just being funny. It’s a shame because up until that moment, Who Can Kill a Child? is unrelenting in its horror and unforgiving in the punishment dished out to the two protagonists.
When people ask me why I watch so many horror films when so many of them are awful, the answer is films like this. Uncovering a forgotten horror gem is what gives me life. This film is very much one of those gems.
