The Children (2008)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Children |
| Original title | The Children |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| length | 81 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Tom Shankland |
| script |
Paul Andrew Williams Tom Shankland |
| production |
Allan Niblo James Richardson |
| music | Stephen Hilton |
| camera | Well Segal |
| cut | Tim Murrell |
| occupation | |
| |
The Children is a British horror thriller directed by Tom Shankland, who wrote the script based on Paul Andrew Williams. The film premiered in Ireland on December 5, 2008.
action
Elaine and her husband Jonah and their three children visit their sister Chloe and her family in a remote country house to celebrate Christmas with them. Elaine's 15-year-old daughter Casey is far from enthusiastic about family celebrations and reluctantly complies. Her 5-year-old brother Paulie can't really feel any joy either, because he is indisposed, apparently because the car ride wasn't good for him. During the Christmas party, the rest of the children also show their first symptoms of the disease, apart from Casey. Leah and Nicky get a cough with bloody sputum, all four are weepy and in a bad mood. Elaine's 9-year-old daughter Miranda even had a fit of rage during the dinner and vomited.
To distract the children, Chloe's husband Robbie goes to play with the rest of the children outside in the snow and has a serious accident. Paulie had crossed the toboggan run with a handcart , which ultimately led to the accident.
When Elaine tries to cover the injured person, who by the way no longer gives any signs of life, with a blanket, he can no longer be found. Traces of blood on the snow-covered ground lead to the children's play tent. Elaine doesn’t get to look inside because her son Paulie is sitting on the climbing frame next door and is crying. Elaine tries to help him down and also has an accident. Casey finds her mother lying injured in the snow, takes her to the nearby greenhouse and makes makeshift care for the open break. There they are soon attacked by a stranger. Someone throws stones at the greenhouse, the windows burst. Paulie crawls out from under a shelf and attacks mother and sister with large scissors. In the ensuing tussle, Paulie falls unhappy and is fatally injured.
Chloe looks for the children in the garden and also looks into the children's tent. There she meets her daughter Leah, who escapes without an explanation. Furthermore, she finds the body of her seriously injured husband laid out in the position of a sleeper under a blood-stained sheet. When the tent is attacked from the outside, Chloe reacts hysterically and runs back into the house. Her son Nicky can be recognized through the incisions in the tent roof.
Discussions take place in the house. Chloe reproaches her sister for always being a bad mother and now having Paulie on her conscience. Then the desperate woman continues her search for the children in the neighboring forest and actually finds them there. While they are still hugging, Nicky pulls his mother's earring - a large hoop - to the ground so that Leah can poke her eye with a colored pencil. They watch their mother die with amusement.
When Miranda begins to destroy the phone, the only connection outside, in the house, Casey intervenes violently. Her father Jonah rushes to help Miranda and locks Casey in one of the upstairs children's rooms. Downstairs, Miranda says goodbye to her seriously injured mother in a hypocritical voice, wickedly pulls the sticks that were supposed to stabilize the leg injury out of the makeshift bandage and leaves the house with her father.
Although Elaine locks all the doors of the house, Nicky and Leah are able to break into the house. Despite a leg injury and great pain, Elaine drags herself upstairs to free Casey from her "prison". Leah and Nicky follow her. The moment Nicky tries to hit his aunt Elaine's leg with a fruit knife, Casey manages to break through the children's room door. Immediately she kills Nicky and storms her cousin Leah. But Elaine begs for mercy for Leah, with success. Mother and daughter now go to the car and start their way home.
Robbie's car, with which Jonah and Miranda escaped, is parked on a remote forest path. Casey finds her father lying half-dead in the snow and is ambushed by Miranda with a crowbar shortly afterwards . Elaine reacts quickly and saves her older daughter by running over Miranda in the car. Casey vomits like the other children before. Then she looks up ... and suddenly, out of nowhere, a dozen children stand motionless in the forest, Leah among them. Casey takes refuge in her mother's car and gets a transfigured, apathetic look on the drive , just like the other children shortly before their change of character.
Locations
The film was shot in the former Cistercian monastery Cookhill Priory and in the nearby villages of Cookhill and Alcester in the English counties of Worcestershire and Warwickshire , respectively .
Soundtrack
Four songs sung by Eva Abraham were used in the film:
- Christmas everyday
- Almost flyin 'Freddie
- Aphrodisiac
- This night i roam
and two more of the singer Amino:
- One and a same
- Background radiation
Trivia
Casey's tattoo was based on the portrait of a womb on the album cover Ágætis byrjun by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós .
Reviews
"Stylishly staged 'children's horror film' that does not look for conclusive explanations, but concentrates from the beginning on the staging of a threatening atmosphere and increases to the representation of sheer terror."
“Even if you will find minor defects in the details, such as falling into some horror film clichés, these are not really significant here. Because over the majority of the running time, the viewer is gripped by the nerve-wracking and highly exciting atmosphere, which, thanks to its uncompromising and high degree of severity, should convince even the greatest skeptic of children's horror films. "
“Slow tracking shots and extravagant shots stand [...] in contrast to the hectic cuts that are used in the bloody interludes. Because once this has happened, 'The Children' develops into a nasty little genre surprise with its angry little children, all the blood, bizarre ideas, a bit of black humor and lots of atmosphere. The fact that the origin of the peculiar childhood disease, which comes along with black sputum and can have fatal consequences, at least for the adults around it, is left in the dark does not satisfy the audience's thirst for knowledge, but is always better than possible outrageous to ridiculous attempts at explanation . "
“Actually, children are always a taboo subject in horror films, which of course is blatantly broken here. I don't need any violence by or against children in the film either, but I have to credit the film [sic!] That it usually seems as if the children themselves hardly noticed what was really going on during the shooting. This was covered very well by a clever editing technique, so that the little monsters in the film come across as really bad. With the spacious and snow-covered property, the backdrops are optically very beautiful and due to the isolation in the mountain, neither the police nor the ambulance are able to appear there, which increases the tension again. Unfortunately, the film takes a little too long to really get into the pot and hardly offers enough depth or variety in terms of content to save itself on almost 80 minutes, it lives from the tension and the atmosphere, so that the film only over long stretches is a good average, only the finale in the forest was very impressive. "
“Films in which the evil emanates from children are a dime a dozen. Most of the time it is only standard food, and many of them will no longer be able to take the little ones seriously. It is all the more gratifying that 'The Children' stands out from the crowd and manages to do just that. Tom Shankland, who so far has mostly worked in the TV sector, directed the film and garnered a lot of praise. He deserves it because he makes a good contribution to the genre. "
“Shankland [attaches] great importance to atmosphere in the further course of the terrorism, whereby he repeatedly takes the pace out of the film and slowly builds up the tension again. Thanks to the convincing portrayal of the children in particular, 'The Children' has become a pleasantly uncompromising, atmospheric and exciting psychological thriller that does not answer all of the viewer's questions, but grabs them by the throat. "
Awards
Director Tom Shankland won the Special Mention Award at the Fant-Asia Film Festival in 2009 for his professional approach to the children's actors in the film.
Web links
- The Children in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Children on kinozeit.de
- The Children on moviemaze.de
- The Children on moviereporter.de
- Official website (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ the property from a bird's eye view
- ↑ Filming locations on imdb.de
- ↑ Soundtrack on imdb.com
- ↑ Trivia on imdb.com
- ↑ Album cover Ágætis byrjun
- ^ The Children. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 15, 2018 .
- ↑ Film review on moviemaze.de
- ↑ Film review on Filmstarts.de
- ↑ Film review on Die-besten-Horrorfilme.de ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Film review on moviereporter.de
- ↑ Dirk Hoffmann: The Children. In: Zelluloid.de. April 2, 2010, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on September 15, 2018 .
- ↑ Awards
