Director: Tom Shankland
Year: 2008
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Evil Kids
Plot:
When a family gathers together at a large mountainside cottage for a reunion, the children come into contact with a strange virus that makes them homicidal maniacs who begin to kill off the others one by one, forcing the surviving adults into a fight for survival to get away.
Review:
This one was a pretty problematic yet still enjoyable effort. When this one works, there are several things here that make this wholly enjoyable. There are some nice atmospheric scenes here with the snowbound setting providing a great place which is incredibly important for deriving the perfect sense of isolation required here, as the coldness and wintry feeling are quite appropriate for the type of story here.
There's also the fact that there's a rather nice series of encounters and attacks here that move this along very well, as the initial encounters out amongst the very edges of the house playing demented versions of children's games that constitute deadly forms of chasing around as scenes in the playground or out in the frosty woods surrounding the house so there's a lot of enjoyable times with that. As well, there are other rather fun encounters inside the house as the kids get more aggressive and daring in their homicidal instincts which brings about some really thrilling chases around the house as the scenes in the kitchen and bedroom are all featured here which makes for a rather fun time, and feature enough gore to get this one some extra fun along the way.
These have enough to make this enjoyable enough, even if there are quite a few storyline problems. That is a major stumbling block with the film, as the majority of the time with this one is spent in situations that not everyone can relate to. Far too much of this is based around the situation of how parents would react in those situations, but that leaves way too many scenes where the parental instincts are pushed to the forefront and common sense and logic fall by the wayside. This one constantly keeps them in danger after failing to realize the obvious and trust in their parental instincts, and it gets old after the twentieth time spent utilizing the same set-up over and over again due to the stupidity exhibited.
The other flaw to this one is the true lack of explanation for the virus, as there's little given here about its properties and origins for infecting the kids since all we get is the specific age range and how to get infected, but after that, there's nothing here to give this away or what it does. That can be somewhat infuriating, much like some of the low-budget limitations that occasionally show up throughout here, but otherwise, there's not all that much wrong here.
Overview: ***.5/5
Enjoyable enough if slightly problematic somewhat, there's a lot to enjoy with this one even though a few of these drawbacks are a bit more problematic than expected. Those who are intrigued by this particular style, appreciate holiday horror fare, or aren't bothered by these features will want to give it a shot while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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