The Children

Though it gets off to a relatively bumpy start, The Children ultimately establishes itself as a suspenseful, downright thrilling exercise in horror that benefits substantially from filmmaker Tom Shankland’s endlessly inventive visual sensibilities. The movie follows two couples as they converge on a remote country house with their respective broods to celebrate the New Year; chaos ensues as the children fall victim to a mysterious virus that essentially transforms them into vicious (and surprisingly cunning) murderers, with the remainder of the proceedings detailing the surviving adults’ attempts at escaping from the increasingly perilous situation alive. There’s little doubt that the promising setup is initially threatened by the proliferation of characters, as the convoluted nature of their relationships with one another proves a hindrance to one’s efforts at wholeheartedly embracing the picture. It does, however, become increasingly easy to overlook such concerns as the storyline unfolds and horrific things begin to occur, with the progressively suspenseful environment perpetuated by Shankland’s atmospheric directorial choices – as the filmmaker does a superb of job of infusing the proceedings with a number of impressively sinister shots and interludes (ie a fantastic overhead shot of a snowy crime scene, several Shining-inspired visual allusions, etc). The suspense-filled buildup ultimately gives way to a thoroughly enthralling third act that’s capped off with a note-perfect conclusion, thus cementing The Children‘s place as a creepy and flat-out indelible horror-movie effort.

***1/2 out of ****