There's Something Wrong With the Children
Jun. 19th, 2023 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado1So, I watched this Blumhouse movie yesterday, mistaking it for a film adaptation of the comic book, "Something is Killing the Children." XD I don't usually have ANY thoughts worth sharing on modern horror movies, but this one got to me in multiple ways. In a sense, it was the best Blumhouse horror I've ever seen ... and also the worst.
First, the good stuff:
The concept was creative and chilling; actually creepy! On vacation with their parents and two adult friends, two siblings hike to a ruins in the woods. Inside, they find a deep pit that seems to glow. Only the children can see it. Later, the kids sneak out and return to the cave, where a family friend watches helplessly as they commit suicide by jumping into the pit. He returns to the cabins, gutted, only to find the kids alive and well, playing in the yard.
From there, the children are vastly changed, but only Ben can see it. They mock him; they're disobedient; they speak to each other in quiet chitters; they're obsessed with dead insects; they're just all-around creepy! But Ben is bipolar, and his wife just doesn't believe him; she worries that Ben is in a manic episode.
As the movie progresses, there are twists and turns taken by the screenplay that surprised and delighted me -- mostly because I don't expect to be surprised by a Blumhouse movie. The kids' suicide was first. Ben's bipolar was second. Soon after, Ben fights the kids and accidentally kills one, Spencer, and that surprised me too. There was just a surprising number of moments where the screenplay bucked the typical horror movie formula, just enough to please me.
Another big factor in its favor is the characters' intelligence and competence, particularly Ben's wife, Margo -- the final girl. Two moments come to mind: when she's trapped in the cabin with two murderous kids, Margo hides in the kitchen. The kids announce they'll give her a ten-second head start on hide and seek. As they count to ten, Margo slowly, quietly grabs her car keys and slowly, quietly, opens the front door. I was flabbergasted. Just run! Why are you wasting your head start? But then Margo, instead of running for her car, leaves the front door open and hides in a nearby room. When the kids see the open door, one of them races through it, assuming Margo is outside.
Fucking great.
At another point, Margo traps a kid by shoving a dustpan underneath a closed door, upside-down, so the door won't open. She does it so quickly and without thought -- so it makes the audience sit up and take notice. Like damn, that was quick thinking! Any other Blumhouse movie would have shown her holding the door closed, focused on the nearby dustpan, shown her face as she thought it through, amped up the tension as the kid banged on the door -- and now she's reaching, oh, but it's so far away -- oh, she can't grab it and keep the door closed at the same time, can she?! It's risky, it's risky--
So on and so forth.
Another plus: The dialogue. Between the adults, at least, the dialogue was surprisingly natural, endearing, and funny. Performance-wise, all the adults were fantastic. The women in particular had tons of charm. I started off liking Thomas, Margo, and ...Ellie?... the best, but quickly switched to Ben about 15 minutes in, for reasons I'll discuss in the cons.
Cons:
The music! The music the music the music!! Holy cow! Cheesy, overdramatic, FUCKING DRACULA ORGAN MUSIC SOMETIMES. The music was always waiting in the shadows, waiting to jump in and ruin every damn good moment in the film.
While I praised the performances earlier, no one is entirely free from criticism here. Every actor, I think, has a moment of bafflingly bad single-take college-film acting in this movie. Just absolutely confusingly terrible. For the adults, it's just one line apiece. For the kids, it's the entire movie. Poor kids. I do think it's the director's fault, not theirs.
Likability: While the performances are endearing, and the dialogue is natural and funny, the characters are so damn hate-able. I hate them, dawg. The charming, goofy, likable performances work against them when they're dishing out the gossip about their failing marriages. Early on, the movie tries to show us that Thomas is acting odd -- I say "try" because it wasn't done very well. We, the audience, don't know what Thomas is normally like, so when he just acts like a normal, quiet dude, we don't have alarm bells. But it DOES seem odd to us, and annoying, when Thomas is just a normal, quiet dude, but every time he speaks, everyone around him makes significant eye contact and pulls aghast faces.
Eventually it comes out that Thomas is 'off' because he and Ellie had an unplanned foursome. Ellie went all the way with old friend Kyle while Thomas half-heartedly canoodled with Kyle's wife and watched. This was weird for me: it's not exactly adultery, but it seems like Thomas feels it was adultery. It's causing just as much tension in their marriage as an affair would. But Ellie and Margo snicker about it and speak in cutesy, light-hearted terms; they joke about it, get distracted by enthusiastically discussing how good Kyle was -- and that made it really unappetizing for me. But this was just the start.
What really made me dislike Margo, Thomas, and Ellie, is how the film handles Ben's bipolar. Which is also probably why this film stuck with me! A timeline, for clarity:
1) Ben sees Spencer and Lucy jump into the pit, killing themselves
2) Ben returns home to find Spencer and Lucy happily playing outside
3) Ben tells Margo what he saw; she tells him it's just his bipolar and urges him to take a nap
4) Ben takes his Lithium and rejoins the group, where the kids torment him by offering him food filled with dead bugs. Spencer shows Ben that he has Ben's Lithium bottle and that it's been emptied out. Ben glances up and sees Lucy offering her dad a beer. He freaks out and takes the beer away.
This results in a big confrontation where Ben tells Thomas and Ellie what he saw. It's a really nasty fight, and it makes all three of the non-Ben adults unforgivably awful imo. Thomas mocks Ben (his best friend?!?) for needing mood stabilizers; Ellie tells Ben that his wife doesn't want to have kids with him because he'll pass the crazy along (GIRL!!!); and Margo staunchly takes her friends' side and shows an astonishing lack of understanding or empathy for her husband's mental health issues. This is a writing issue, for sure, but Margo does NOT come across as someone who's been married to a guy with bipolar for 10+ years. She comes across as a 6-month girlfriend who's never witnessed a manic episode, never done any reading, and just hopes the subject won't come up again. But we are told explicitly that she has been there for Ben's manic episodes before, so it's just ... appalling. The way all three of them treat each other, and Ben especially, made me lose all sympathy for them.
I know, I know: it's a horror movie, the characters are supposed to be unlikable! That way you cheer when they die! But I always preferred horror movies with likable characters. The unlikable character strategy just feels lazy to me.
Ah well. Other faults: the little demon kids are very run-of-the-mill. The screenplay suffers from lots of little unanswered questions that would have been VERY easy to answer. I don't just mean big plot holes. I mean, basics. How do these characters know each other?? How LONG have they known each other? College? Individual characters mention their individual college experiences, but the dialogue never places them there together at the same time. Are some of them related (I don't think so, but there are moments where poorly-written dialogue appears to cast Thomas and Ben as brothers...)? Are they on vacation or do they live here permanently (I eventually decided they're on vacation, but I don't think it ever actually tells us)? If they're on vacation, then how does Ben know how to bushwhack his way to the ruins on their first hike? How does he know the ruins are even there?
Early on, there's even some confusion over whose kids are whose. Both couples are interracial, and the kids don't particularly look like any of the adults, so for a good chunk of the movie, I was sitting here like, "Okay, so Spencer is Margo's kid, and Lucy is Ellie's...oh, wait. No, I think it's the other way around. Wait, are Spencer and Lucy related??? Wait, so then one of these couples doesn't have kids at all? Which one?" Finally, they show Ben and Margo discussing their lack of kids, and the mystery is solved, but not after causing a distracting amount of questions for the viewer.
OK, I should admit though, it's quite possible that I just missed some of this information. I paid close attention to the film but my roommate was there with me, and he was critiquing the film LOUDLY all the way through XD There were times I wanted to pause the movie and go "DUDE!! STFU! I'm trying to enjoy this!!" But in all honesty, critiquing it was more fun. I will probably watch this one again and see if these questions actually did get answered, but mostly I'll be rewatching it to bask in my sympathy for Ben.
ETA: Oh my god, yeah, the screenplay is fine. Those unanswered questions were my fault for not paying attention. On the second watch, too, I noticed lots of subtle hints that Ben has bipolar before it was revealed! I loved that. Stuff like Ellie's unease around Ben bushwhacking, and how she calms down when Ben hands the machete to Thomas -- even though Ben is an experienced hiker, and Thomas is not. Or the awkward silence between Ellie and Margo when Margo says she and Ben "aren't kid-people" and Ellie says, "Well, it's probably for the best."
First, the good stuff:
The concept was creative and chilling; actually creepy! On vacation with their parents and two adult friends, two siblings hike to a ruins in the woods. Inside, they find a deep pit that seems to glow. Only the children can see it. Later, the kids sneak out and return to the cave, where a family friend watches helplessly as they commit suicide by jumping into the pit. He returns to the cabins, gutted, only to find the kids alive and well, playing in the yard.
From there, the children are vastly changed, but only Ben can see it. They mock him; they're disobedient; they speak to each other in quiet chitters; they're obsessed with dead insects; they're just all-around creepy! But Ben is bipolar, and his wife just doesn't believe him; she worries that Ben is in a manic episode.
As the movie progresses, there are twists and turns taken by the screenplay that surprised and delighted me -- mostly because I don't expect to be surprised by a Blumhouse movie. The kids' suicide was first. Ben's bipolar was second. Soon after, Ben fights the kids and accidentally kills one, Spencer, and that surprised me too. There was just a surprising number of moments where the screenplay bucked the typical horror movie formula, just enough to please me.
Another big factor in its favor is the characters' intelligence and competence, particularly Ben's wife, Margo -- the final girl. Two moments come to mind: when she's trapped in the cabin with two murderous kids, Margo hides in the kitchen. The kids announce they'll give her a ten-second head start on hide and seek. As they count to ten, Margo slowly, quietly grabs her car keys and slowly, quietly, opens the front door. I was flabbergasted. Just run! Why are you wasting your head start? But then Margo, instead of running for her car, leaves the front door open and hides in a nearby room. When the kids see the open door, one of them races through it, assuming Margo is outside.
Fucking great.
At another point, Margo traps a kid by shoving a dustpan underneath a closed door, upside-down, so the door won't open. She does it so quickly and without thought -- so it makes the audience sit up and take notice. Like damn, that was quick thinking! Any other Blumhouse movie would have shown her holding the door closed, focused on the nearby dustpan, shown her face as she thought it through, amped up the tension as the kid banged on the door -- and now she's reaching, oh, but it's so far away -- oh, she can't grab it and keep the door closed at the same time, can she?! It's risky, it's risky--
So on and so forth.
Another plus: The dialogue. Between the adults, at least, the dialogue was surprisingly natural, endearing, and funny. Performance-wise, all the adults were fantastic. The women in particular had tons of charm. I started off liking Thomas, Margo, and ...Ellie?... the best, but quickly switched to Ben about 15 minutes in, for reasons I'll discuss in the cons.
Cons:
The music! The music the music the music!! Holy cow! Cheesy, overdramatic, FUCKING DRACULA ORGAN MUSIC SOMETIMES. The music was always waiting in the shadows, waiting to jump in and ruin every damn good moment in the film.
While I praised the performances earlier, no one is entirely free from criticism here. Every actor, I think, has a moment of bafflingly bad single-take college-film acting in this movie. Just absolutely confusingly terrible. For the adults, it's just one line apiece. For the kids, it's the entire movie. Poor kids. I do think it's the director's fault, not theirs.
Likability: While the performances are endearing, and the dialogue is natural and funny, the characters are so damn hate-able. I hate them, dawg. The charming, goofy, likable performances work against them when they're dishing out the gossip about their failing marriages. Early on, the movie tries to show us that Thomas is acting odd -- I say "try" because it wasn't done very well. We, the audience, don't know what Thomas is normally like, so when he just acts like a normal, quiet dude, we don't have alarm bells. But it DOES seem odd to us, and annoying, when Thomas is just a normal, quiet dude, but every time he speaks, everyone around him makes significant eye contact and pulls aghast faces.
Eventually it comes out that Thomas is 'off' because he and Ellie had an unplanned foursome. Ellie went all the way with old friend Kyle while Thomas half-heartedly canoodled with Kyle's wife and watched. This was weird for me: it's not exactly adultery, but it seems like Thomas feels it was adultery. It's causing just as much tension in their marriage as an affair would. But Ellie and Margo snicker about it and speak in cutesy, light-hearted terms; they joke about it, get distracted by enthusiastically discussing how good Kyle was -- and that made it really unappetizing for me. But this was just the start.
What really made me dislike Margo, Thomas, and Ellie, is how the film handles Ben's bipolar. Which is also probably why this film stuck with me! A timeline, for clarity:
1) Ben sees Spencer and Lucy jump into the pit, killing themselves
2) Ben returns home to find Spencer and Lucy happily playing outside
3) Ben tells Margo what he saw; she tells him it's just his bipolar and urges him to take a nap
4) Ben takes his Lithium and rejoins the group, where the kids torment him by offering him food filled with dead bugs. Spencer shows Ben that he has Ben's Lithium bottle and that it's been emptied out. Ben glances up and sees Lucy offering her dad a beer. He freaks out and takes the beer away.
This results in a big confrontation where Ben tells Thomas and Ellie what he saw. It's a really nasty fight, and it makes all three of the non-Ben adults unforgivably awful imo. Thomas mocks Ben (his best friend?!?) for needing mood stabilizers; Ellie tells Ben that his wife doesn't want to have kids with him because he'll pass the crazy along (GIRL!!!); and Margo staunchly takes her friends' side and shows an astonishing lack of understanding or empathy for her husband's mental health issues. This is a writing issue, for sure, but Margo does NOT come across as someone who's been married to a guy with bipolar for 10+ years. She comes across as a 6-month girlfriend who's never witnessed a manic episode, never done any reading, and just hopes the subject won't come up again. But we are told explicitly that she has been there for Ben's manic episodes before, so it's just ... appalling. The way all three of them treat each other, and Ben especially, made me lose all sympathy for them.
I know, I know: it's a horror movie, the characters are supposed to be unlikable! That way you cheer when they die! But I always preferred horror movies with likable characters. The unlikable character strategy just feels lazy to me.
Ah well. Other faults: the little demon kids are very run-of-the-mill. The screenplay suffers from lots of little unanswered questions that would have been VERY easy to answer. I don't just mean big plot holes. I mean, basics. How do these characters know each other?? How LONG have they known each other? College? Individual characters mention their individual college experiences, but the dialogue never places them there together at the same time. Are some of them related (I don't think so, but there are moments where poorly-written dialogue appears to cast Thomas and Ben as brothers...)? Are they on vacation or do they live here permanently (I eventually decided they're on vacation, but I don't think it ever actually tells us)? If they're on vacation, then how does Ben know how to bushwhack his way to the ruins on their first hike? How does he know the ruins are even there?
Early on, there's even some confusion over whose kids are whose. Both couples are interracial, and the kids don't particularly look like any of the adults, so for a good chunk of the movie, I was sitting here like, "Okay, so Spencer is Margo's kid, and Lucy is Ellie's...oh, wait. No, I think it's the other way around. Wait, are Spencer and Lucy related??? Wait, so then one of these couples doesn't have kids at all? Which one?" Finally, they show Ben and Margo discussing their lack of kids, and the mystery is solved, but not after causing a distracting amount of questions for the viewer.
OK, I should admit though, it's quite possible that I just missed some of this information. I paid close attention to the film but my roommate was there with me, and he was critiquing the film LOUDLY all the way through XD There were times I wanted to pause the movie and go "DUDE!! STFU! I'm trying to enjoy this!!" But in all honesty, critiquing it was more fun. I will probably watch this one again and see if these questions actually did get answered, but mostly I'll be rewatching it to bask in my sympathy for Ben.
ETA: Oh my god, yeah, the screenplay is fine. Those unanswered questions were my fault for not paying attention. On the second watch, too, I noticed lots of subtle hints that Ben has bipolar before it was revealed! I loved that. Stuff like Ellie's unease around Ben bushwhacking, and how she calms down when Ben hands the machete to Thomas -- even though Ben is an experienced hiker, and Thomas is not. Or the awkward silence between Ellie and Margo when Margo says she and Ben "aren't kid-people" and Ellie says, "Well, it's probably for the best."
