the jaded viewer

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Children (Review)

The Children

The Children (2009)

Directed by Tom Shankland

[this is a review I wrote for UGO.com's Movie Blog, hence the shortness and the letter grade]

The Children represents a subgenre of horror that will never be fully accepted in the United States of America. Oh yeah, we’ve had our share of “killer kids” films, namely Children of the Corn, The Omen and The Good Son but it’s probably never going to be mainstreamy anytime soon.

Well thank the UK for keeping this creepy ubergenre alive. Tom Shankland’s The Children brings the chills and the wickedness of kids not being kidlike as they go murderous against the adults. It’s succulently evil and scary it made me a very happy horror fan.

The movie’s set up is rather simple. At a New Years gathering, two families come together for a celebration. They consist of two older sisters and their husbands, an eldest hottie Rachel Bilson looking daughter and all their kids (4 total younglings).

The adults, in a twist are almost irrelevant as they are the victim fodder. It’s the children that work so effectively as the little Dennis the Menaces. They soon develop a H1N1 like virus that starts turning them irritable then very serial killery. Each little tyke brings performances that match any Damian persona and even though they are overtly cute, they show their dark side instantly.

Soon, the adults are on the run like teenagers at a summer camp. Many of the scenes are simple, yet effective. Violence between the kids and the adults erupt at a greenhouse, then within the snow covered woods and then inside a house.

Shankland builds up the suspense with some playful foreshadowing and just a hint of quick edits for those gratuitous jump scares. Also, there is some decent amount of gore with head and ocular trauma, broken vertebrae and neck wounds. The movie doesn’t tread lightly on the adult-icide or kid-acide which makes it more chilling when the death scenes occur.

The overall moral theme that gets grappled is one that encompasses all these killer kid films. Would you be able to kill a kid or *gasp* your own child to save your own or another child’s life?

Many of the characters struggle with this and the paternal and maternal instinct are so ingrained, their logic becomes illogical and more emotion. Many might not be able to view such a film where kids wink with such evilness, especially parents.

But for those who are brave enough to watch The Children, you will never see a playground the same way again.

Grade: A

You'll like it if....

You love creepy kids being creepy movies
You dig an anti Disney, suspenseful, scary and thrilling kid killer horror movie
You like movies like The Omen, Children of the Corn and Them aka Ils

You won't like it if....

You’re a parent who morally objects to killer children movies
You can’t stand the sight of gratuitous gore and head trauma
You think children killing adults is just ridiculous and cheesy

The Trailer

Labels: 2009 horror dvd, ghosthouse underground, the children, the children review, UK horror

Posted by the jaded viewer at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Thaw (Review)

The Thaw

The Thaw (2009)

Directed by Mark A. Lewis

[this is a review I wrote for UGO.com's Movie Blog]

“They’re bugs and they eat people, it’s that simple.”

It’s a simple premise for a simple movie. However, this movie wants you to think it’s more than that. If you haven’t heard of an ecological horror movie, let me introduce you to The Thaw. The overarching theme is we should all be ashamed of ourselves. Little did we know our gas guzzling SUV’s, aerosol cans and non recycling lifestyle would lead to the rise of a creepy crawlies epidemic on a global scale. You didn’t see that coming, right? It’s a horrible inconvenient truth and definitely a horror film Al Gore would love!

There have been a number of creepy crawly movies with an environmental global warming theme of late. OK, maybe just one. The Last Winter, directed by Larry Fessenden is the one film that The Thaw will draw comparisons too. Also think Splinter or The Ruins but in the Arctic. The threat of little parasites infecting you is almost a universal fear, something you’d see on TLC or Discovery. The fact that these creatures exist, makes this movie work effectively.

The Thaw introduces us to Dr. David Kruipen (Val Kilmer) and his team as they discover a wooly mammoth thawing in the Canadian Arctic. Unknown to them, they also discover a prehistoric parasite that has been hibernating in the animal’s as well. Quickly, the team gets infected and the opening shot of a bug making its new home in the head of a woman clearly will makes you feel jittery.

Later, Bart a helicopter pilot flies a group of students led by Kruipen’s daughter, Evelyn to the base camp. The students are an eclectic group of characters that are not typically the stereotypical, oversexed, dumb teenagers we usually see. Evelyn is a very effective final girl; Atom plays out as a level headed counter to Evelyn while Federico portrays the everyman, the guy who will do anything to survive. Finally, Ling is the hottie who has early demise written on her forehead. I found something interesting in these characters; they played out as real to me, not hipsters doing hipster things in a horror movie.

But the real star of the film is of course, the bugs. Created with a very decent amount of CGI, their scenes bring some panic into the fold. A tense moment in the lab will get you itching. The bugs also enable us to witness a very effective arm cutting scene with a cleaver. But the most chilling scenes are just seeing the infected with bite marks all over their bodies and devouring a carcass. It’s downright gross, but somehow successful in getting the point across.

However, the movie does have some flaws. With the creatures swarming all over the camp, our supposedly smart students show disregard to the fact that they could get infected by staying in areas they should be avoiding. Also, the bugs though highly contagious seemed very ineffective in the suspense scenes later on in Acts II and III. Other movies took the parasitic nature and evolved it. Here, the bugs seem to be slightly boring and could have been more menacing and scary.

The ending brings home the global warming theme back home though to tell you the truth I’m one of those people who have an indifferent approach to the whole greenhouse effect thing so I wasn’t converted. Overall, The Thaw is an effective sci-fi horror film that draws our fear of parasites run amok. Though the parallel to global warming bringing about a bugpocalypse is a little farfetched, when you’re putting on the hand sanitizer it’s that fear that The Thaw latches on to. So recycle, ok?

Grade: B

You'll like it if....