Killer Kids on Film

The use of children as either victim or villain in horror films is always problematic.  For one thing, you can guarantee a knee-jerk negative reaction from various sections of the media before they've even seen any such film.  If it can be presented as having some kind of artistic merit and shows nothing explicit, like Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1962), then you can probably get away with it and eventually your film will be hailed as a 'classic'.  At the exploitation end of he spectrum, then you can expect a much rougher ride.  I've just been watching The Children, a low budget direct-to-video horror from 1980.  It garnered terrible reviews upon its initial release, with the LA Times, for instance, calling it a 'despicable movie' that 'reeks of a nasty, ill-defined dislike of humankind'.  Other reviews resorted to personal insults aimed at the cast's appearance, describing them as 'ugly'.  The film's main 'crime', of course, is that portrays a group of children turned into radioactive killers by a leak from a nuclear plant, as a bunch of evil monsters casually killing all the adults they encounter.  Worse still, it sees them finally dispatched by violent means: when it becomes clear that they are impervious to bullets, the local Sheriff resorts to chopping off their hands with a sword (which kills them).  All of which breaks just about every social taboo with regard to the portrayal of children in films - not only are they evil and violent, but they are also shown being not just killed but dismembered.

Obviously, there is a deep-seated social and moral reasons why such portrayals of children are generally taboo.  For one thing, as adults, we should have naturally protective instincts toward children, whether or not they are our own.  Furthermore, religion, particularly Christianity, plays a powerful role here, with its insistence that the souls of children are innocent, as yet untainted by the sins of the material world.  All of which, of course, makes it extremely tempting for film makers, particularly those whose job it is to provide shocks, to try and subvert these perspectives, turning children into less than innocent antagonists who we can only protect ourselves against by somehow overcoming our natural protective instincts and employing violence against them.  Now, ordinarily, it would seem all too easy to dispatch such child-monsters - they are still children and therefore physically no match for an adult.  Which is why they are typically imbued with supernatural powers: either they are possessed of the devil, the Anti-Christ, aliens in disguise or radioactive mutations.

Which brings us back to The Children.  While I wouldn't call it 'despicable', it really isn't a very good film.  My main objection to it is that it is poorly made. with low production values, a terrible script and a plot that doesn't so much as progress logically, as stumble along confusingly with little rhyme or reason.  There is absolutely no character development, leaving the viewer not caring as to the fates of the various characters or the fact that innocent kids have been turned into monsters that go around frying their families to death when they touch them.  It isn't offensively bad, but it certainly isn't so bad that it is good.  Ultimately, it just comes over as a cynical exercise in trying to shock by exploiting the taboo notion of children as monsters.  This is particularly evident in the attempt to portray the surviving adult characters' moral dilemma over using violence against the mutants - it is all too trite, coming over as the writers just playing lip service to a complex idea that could and should have lain at the core of the plot.  Moreover, the fact that the only way to kill the mutants ids by cutting off their hands makes no sense other than as a cynical way of justifying some 'shock' sequences of children being dismembered.

The fact is that, even  in terms of low budget film making, the whole concept of children-as-killers has been done much better.  Bloody Birthday, for example, which was released a year after The Children is far more effective, despite having a pretty ludicrous explanation for the evil nature of its trio of ten year old villains: they were all born during a solar eclipse, which means that they were born without consciences.  While its resources seem no better than The Children, (it is shot like a TV movie), it is better written, with a reasonably logical plot and a degree of characterisation which leaves the viewer actually caring about the potential victims.  Unlike The Children, the antagonists of Bloody Birthday don't have any special powers, they are just ruthless little bastards, pure psychopaths prepared to remove any obstacle to their plans.  Which makes the murders they commit truly shocking.  Using mainly everyday stuff that ten year olds might have access to - skateboards, skipping ropes and the like - they make several murders look like accidents, before progressing to the use of a stolen gun and a sister's archery bow.  Ultimately, the plot hinges on the fact that the heroine and her younger brother can't convince anyone else of the evil of the psychopathic children and face the dilemma of defending themselves without killing the little gits, which would make them, in the eyes of the town, the villains.  It still isn't a great film, but it does handle the central concept of murderous kids much better than The Children, something reflected in the somewhat better reception it received upon release.