Thursday, January 7, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW: The Children

Wow, another killer kid movie. This seems to be turning into a killer kid week.... Unfortunately, The Children wasn't nearly as good as Orphan.

When two families spend Christmas holidays together, the children begin acting strangely and eventually start killing their family. But their parents can't bring themselves to murder their own kids.

The Children doesn't have much of a plot, just kids killing their parents, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that it never gives a reason for the kids going crazy. At first the kids get sick, so I guess it's some sort of illness that turns them into killers? I would've liked some more explanation on what the sickness was, why it was happening, etc.

All the characters, with the exception of teenage daughter Casey, were morons and I couldn't stand any of them. I know they're just kids, but if one of them had a knife and was about to stab me, I wouldn't just stand there staring. And as Casey said, Jonah (her mother's boyfriend/husband/whatever) really was a knob. I loathed him and hoped throughout the film that the kids would get him.

But the aspect of the film I hated the most was how a character would be shown screaming or gasping and then it would cut away to something else and not return to that character for 20 minutes. It's important for a film to have suspense, but it shouldn't torture the audience.

Even though I hated the characters they played, the actors gave great performances. Especially the kids, they were all very creepy.

The whole film was pretty creepy and the kill scenes were gory and shocking, especially when kids were killed. Even though they're crazed killers, they're still kids.

Overall, The Children isn't a bad film, but I think an explanation about why the kids went nuts and more likable, less moronic characters would've made it better.

Rating: 3/5

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