Blumhouse are such a safe pair of horror hands that, when they announced that they were opening up a gaming division, we did a little fist-pump. We’re not exactly overrun by quality horror games (not until Silent Hill kicks into gear again), so having their smarts overseeing new, terrifying games is a fantastic prospect.
We’re confident because their horror films are so consistent. Their output is greater-than-the-average budget, has a bit of a subversive edge to it, and they clearly know what they are doing. But there are always exceptions that prove a rule. There’s a reason why you might not have heard of There’s Something Wrong with the Children: it’s not been advertised well because it’s not very good at all.
Fans of Children of the Corn will know what to expect here. There’s Something Wrong with the Children kicks off with two families – one with two children, the other childless – arriving at a forest retreat for a bit of a get-together. They play games, go for walks, have late-night drinks and chat about stuff. It’s a run-of-the-mill holiday that you may have experienced yourselves, many times over.
If you’re a certain kind of person, the horror will start immediately. The family blessed with children immediately dig into why the other couple don’t have children, and it’s enough to make you writhe in agony. Leave the poor couple alone, for god’s sake! There’s plenty of hints and tics in these moments that you know will beat fruit in the last half of the movie: something is amiss with the relationship between the married couple, Ellie and Thomas, and Ben seems to have some skimmed over mental health history.
The dialogue doesn’t exactly flow in these opening sections. Alisha Wainwright (Margaret) is the MVP here, desperately manhandling the conversation over the line, trying to catalyse a script that’s dry and stodgy, alongside some delivery that’s on the leaden side. She clearly has a strong career ahead of her, and raises the production level from film student up to something approaching Blumhouse.
As you’d hope/expect, the plot takes a turn at the end of the first act. The two couples and the kids head into the woods, where they come across a derelict building that looks a bit like the shield generator from Endor in Return of the Jedi, but left to rot for a few decades. Inside it is a large pit, which gives everyone the willies, apart from the children, who stare into its depths, wittering about beautiful lights. The kids are stopped from triple-jumping into the hole, and the parents retreat back to the house.
You can see it coming, can’t you? The kids stay over at the kidless couple’s house, who babysit so that the other couple can get some rest, but the kids abscond in the night to the hole. There’s a panic as the kids can’t be found, and Ben finds them at the shield generator, where they promptly jump into the hole. Dead, they should be. But when he returns to the chalets, the kids are alive and well, which makes him question his already faltering sanity.
Needless to say, for anyone who has watched more than two horror movies, the kids aren’t alright. What ensues is a quick rat-a-tat-tat through some genre cliches, entirely predictable plotting and the odd scare that teeters between unintentionally hilarious and slightly unsettling.
There’s Something Wrong with the Children bets all its chips on you finding kids scary. You have to feel a creeping dread at long-haired pre-teens standing in doorways with smiles on their faces. They play with dead animals, bash beetles with rocks, and pester poor Ben, clearly trying to wind him up so he does or says something stupid. The two young actors gamefully try to make themselves unsettling, but they’re too young and inexperienced to come off as anything but annoying. It’s more Children of the Corny.
When they’re finally let loose, it’s all rather tame. We got the sense that There’s Something Wrong with the Children is aiming for lower age ratings with its horror and gore, as everything that happens is off-screen or silhouetted. We aren’t normally averse to that – there’s a reason that Jaws is so well loved, even though you see very little – but there’s such a ridiculous difference between the threat that the kids imply onscreen (precious little), to the violence and power they seem to have offscreen (tossing people out of windows, metamorphosing). The kids are like the Boo’s in Mario games: unthreatening when you look at them, bringers of doom when you don’t.
Stupidity is often a complaint in horror movies, as characters do moronic stuff that will surely get them crocked. But if the past decade has told us anything, there’s plenty of people who will do stupid, selfish things under moments of stress. So, we give stupidity more leeway than we’re used to. But here it rises to levels where people utterly lack self-preservation. They say stupid, ridiculous things that will only get them into trouble; fail to describe things so that other people might help in a timely and successful fashion; and generally throw themselves like lemmings into danger. Man, it gets tiring to watch.
With nobody helping themselves, it means that the plot unfolds exactly as you expect it will. Events are less telegraphed and more shouted from hilltops, and the lack of gore or horror means you don’t even get the satisfaction of a pay-off. It’s like being told a story you’ve already heard before, but painfully slowly, and by someone who’s got the charm and dryness of a ryvita cracker.
The final shot has a certain poetry to it, and we wondered if the film-makers worked backwards from it. And we will take any opportunity to salute Alisha Wainwright again: she really does bring an easy sympathy to a woman who is surrounded, mostly, by imbeciles. Without her, the entire movie would deflate like a bouncy castle.
Blumhouse has accumulated more than enough goodwill to survive a stinker, and a stinker this is. Blunted of any scares or onscreen horror, There’s Something Wrong with the Children turns to its kids, who can’t hold a candle to some of cinemas spookier pre-teens. Without any rumbles of threat from them, the plot gets exposed for being as conventional as it so clearly is.
Unless kids really, deeply give you the willies, we’d avoid adopting There’s Something Wrong with the Children.
You can buy or rent There’s Something Wrong with the Children from the Xbox Store
Over the next few weeks, we are going to be trying something new: we’re going to be reviewing some of the new releases in the Xbox Film and TV Store. Let us know what you make of these features in the comments below.
