Wednesday, October 7, 2009

"Beware the Children...



...pray you never meet them!"

Pray you never meet the Children indeed. Not to be confused with the just released Ghosthouse version, this is an 80's flick that while has some merit it just has too much against it to be considered a great viewing choice. I had the luxury of watching it a couple of nights ago on Netflix Instant and that is probably the wisest choice, it doesn't eat up one of your DVD/Blue Ray choices and you can turn all the lights off and bask in the glow of the tube.

The story deals with the sleepy little town of Ravensback as a schoolbus delivers its children home. Within the bus the six children and their driver pass through a yellowish cloud that blows across the roadway. Also passing through this gas cloud is one of the children's pregnant mother. As is shown later in the film the cloud has turned this children into mutants, their fingernails turn black and they can't be killed by gunshots or being hit by cars, etc. The children begin to kill everyone they come in contact with...literally. When one of them touches you, yellowish smoke billows out and you are burned to a crisp.

There are some nice shock moments in the movie, since it was made in the 80's it has that horror edge that a lot of the b-movies sported back then, for example the sheriff at one point is barricading himself and two others in a home as the children try gain entry to attack them. One boy makes it in the house and the sheriff grabs a samurai sword from the wall and cuts the hands off the reaching child...which kills the kid and his severed hands return to normal. Now I'm not sure why that family had a Samurai sword but it sure comes in handy when the decision is made to now take the fight to the children with the sword and quickly picked up double bearded axe.

Unfortunately while the idea of the movie is suitable for an A picture, the cast is filled not with B movie actors but at the most C level thespians. Of course some of the blame has to go to the script but there is some extreme over acting on display in the film. The ending which I'm sad to say anyone can see coming in the first ten minutes wildly flails against any logic the movie has tried to lay down.

Since I really want to avoid hard spoilers the review kind of has to stop here...so I'll go on record as saying if you are really, really, really bored you might want to give it a look just to see some creepy kids and their black fingernails.

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