This weeks movie opens with 8 minutes of disturbing real-life footage (concentration camps, victims of Korean and Vietnam wars ect. ) all captioned to remind us how badly children suffer during such things. Grim stuff.
Then we cut to a happy beach scene... Where a dead woman washes ashore - having apparently been stabbed repeatedly, including in her thighs.
This is clearly the feel-good family movie of the year!
Before long we meet out protagonists, holidaying English couple Tom and Evelyn, who have left their first 2 kids at home (the 3rd is still in Evelyn's belly) in order to visit a small island that Tom visited as a child. This island is so small it isn't on the map, yet our stars have decided to leave both the hiring of a boat, and indeed clarifying the exact location of the island, until they arrive at the nearest coastal town in mainland Spain.
You'd think that having gone to the effort of having them spend a day in said town, there would be some kind of payoff to relying on a stranger to point to the bit of the map that should contain the island; but, no, they get there just fine.
Upon arrival the town appears to be deserted but for a handful of children, and it isn't long before we find out why - the children seem to have taken a homicidal dislike to adults.
For some reason, long after Tom starts to realise what is going on, he continues to insist to his wife that the adults have probably just gone to a festival at the next town over, and that everything is fine; Unfathomably, even having seen a girl kill an old man, and then watching the local children use the body as a piñata, he still has his pregnant wife stay the night!
Eventually, they realise that they really are going to have to leave, for reasons I cannot fathom it is only then that they become a target for the children.
The title if the movie is a question asked within the narrative... Apparently the reason the children have been so successful in their adultcide is because no-one can bring themselves to kill a child.
Luckily, Tom is a little more pragmatic than the natives, and has no problem offing the little fuckers once it becomes obvious that its then or him. Evelyn, in the other hand, had me screaming abuse at the screen on more than one occasion.
Sadly, there's also a supernatural element that the film REALLY didn't need - upon finding a small group of
'Normal' children, we see that the desire to kill adults can be passed on by making eye contact (which isn't even the silliest example of the 'infection' spreading in the movie).
At times, I was reminded of the
Village /
Children of the Damned movies, so it wasn't a shock to see that this movie has also been released as 'Island of the Damned'
I did enjoy the movie, particularly the rather dark ending (the dramatic ending, not the 'sting' which relies too much on the supernatural element) but it does have some fairly major faults; that said, the acting is solid enough, and I did have fun watching it, therefore I will give this one a '
Will Recommends' ... But only just.
