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Thursday, July 9, 2009

BD impressions: The Children

2:27 PM / BD Impressions / 5 Comments

Personally, I've always found children to be creepy little fuckers, so the idea of a horror movie in which a group of them turn into murderous psychopaths and start bumping off their parents is an incredibly potent one. I didn't have monumentally high hopes for The Children going in, and it turned out to be an extremely pleasant surprise, in many ways the most enjoyable of the various movies I've watched over the course of my birthday week. Strictly speaking, Martyrs is the more ambitious film, but The Children is more straightforwardly enjoyable, and manages to avoid the sort of clichés and plot twists that sunk Eden Lake.

For the most part, writer/director Tom Shankland avoids back-stories and long-winded explanations, preferring to simply plonk his characters into a situation and ratcheting up the tension before unleashing the carnage. It's a simple approach but an effective one, and the isolated location in which the film spends its entire duration is perfectly geared towards this sort of material. The film wears its influences on its sleeve - The Omen was never far from my mind while watching it - but it never feels derivative, and it takes itself seriously throughout, avoiding the pitfalls that a film about killer kids (potentially hokey material if you're not careful) could so easily have fallen into. It's actually a pretty gutsy film, doling out gruesome violence propagated both by and against toddlers and in doing so ensuring that no-one could ever mistake this for a mainstream studio production.

It's not exactly high-brow stuff, but I had a blast with The Children. If like me you can't stand children, or at least find them monumentally creepy, then this should be right up your alley.

With Twilight and Franklyn, British label E1 Entertainment have built up an impressive little catalogue of good-looking BD titles, and The Children continues that tradition. It's probably the least impressive-looking of the three, but that's mainly down to its low budget and the intentionally rough, understated nature of the cinematography, contrasting with the deliberately slick visuals of the two other aforementioned titles. There is a not outstanding but still pleasing amount of detail to be found, and the compression is well handled. Scenes set in broad daylight look solid, but those that take place in low lighting conditions tend to appear slightly mushy, an ineffective attempt to reduce the grain being one potential culprit. Although I doubt it will wow anyone, this is a solid disc overall. 8/10

The Children
studio: E1 Entertainment; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 16.2 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 27.62 Mbit/sec

5 Comments

 
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