Variety Critics’ Choice: Europe Now! 2009 / The Children / United Kingdom 2008
Something is seriously wrong with the kids, who start killing off the adults during an otherwise normal family outing. Clever, claustrophobic direction transforms what should have been an innocuous plan to spend the holidays at a remote country house into an alarming and thoroughly original chiller.
A clever, low-budget horror movie destined for cult status by claustrophobic direction that leaves much to the imagination, this British chiller stirs in every memory of homicidal tykes, from Village of the Damned to Barbarella, while remaining utterly unique in flavor. Two middle-class parents spend the Christmas holidays with relatives at a remote country house, where much hugging and New Age family talk isn’t quite good-natured enough to mask the small tensions forming between the adults and their three young children (as when the teen daughter develops a hormonal crush on her uncle). By the next day, the kids are starting to act seriously weird, with small outbreaks of violence escalating into full-fledged murder — a situation made all the worse by the parents’ reluctance to chastise their kids or believe they’re capable of killing.
85 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Tom Shankland
/ Screenplay Tom Shankland
/ Dir. of Photography Nanu Segal
/ Music Stephen Hilton
/ Editor Tim Murrell
/ Producer Allan Niblo, James Richardson
/ Production Vertigo Films
/ Cast Eva Birthistle, Stephen Campbell Moore, Jeremy Sheffield, Rachel Shelley, Hannah Tointon, Rafiella Brooks
/ Contact Protagonist Pictures
www: www.thechildrenmovie.com
Protagonist Pictures
48-48 Great Portland Stcy, W1W 7NB, London
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 207 734 9000
E-mail: [email protected]
Tom Shankland
Film Director
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