Skip to content
DVDfever.co.uk – The Children Blu-ray reviewDom Robinson reviews
E1 EntertainmentBlu-ray: 
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 84 minutes
- Year: 2008
- Released: March 2009
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 1.78:1 (16:9)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: BD25
- Price: £15.99 (DVD), £24.99 (Blu-ray)
- Extras: Killing Kids: The Making of The Children, Locations featurette, Paul Hyett talks prosthetics, Snow Set Design featurette, Tom Shanklands’ Lair, Working with children Featurette, Deleted scenes
- Vote and comment on this film:View Comments
Director:
- Tom Shankland
(Bait, Bubbles, The Children, Going Down, WAZ, TV: Clocking Off, Family Business, Hearts and Bones, Jericho, Marple, No Night is Too Long)
Producers:
- Allan Niblo and James Richardson
Screenplay:
- Tom Shankland (based on a story by Paul Andrew Williams)
Original Score :
- Stephen Hilton
Cast :
- Elaine: Eva Birthistle
Jonah: Stephen Campbell Moore
Robbie: Jeremy Sheffield
Chloe: Rachel Shelley
Casey: Hannah Tointon
Leah: Raffiella Brooks
Nicky: Jake Hathaway
Paulie: William Howes
Miranda: Eva Sayer
Christmas time, no mistletoe or wine, just lots of murdering grossness in The Children
It’s difficult to describe this film without giving anything away, so I’ll do the best I can. Basically, four adultsand all their children meet up to spend the festive season together. Elaine (Eva Birthistle, from BBC1’s excellentdramaThe Last Enemy) is partnered with Jonah (StephenCampbell Moore from Ashes To Ashes Series 1), while Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield from Holby City)and Chloe (Rachel Shelley) are together. Took me a while to work out whose kids were whose, but Casey(Hannah Tointon, right – in a scene from the film, and below-right – in a picture that’s not) is known early on to be Elaine’s daughter from a previous marriage. She also takes the role ofgrumpy teenager because she’s had to ditch a great party to be there, so takes some time out to become a teen temptressto her uncle Robbie, by attracting his intention with some slightly-revealing, and inappapropriate, outfits.
For reasons I won’t reveal, a virus causes the problem – in fact, all the kids have got coughs and colds of some kind.At least this is pre-dating swine flu so that can’t be blamed.
What you need to know is that one of the kids is causing the adults to be bumped off one-by-one, but who? It’s notobvious early on – and they’re all quite freaky looking, so that’s this film’s USP. And it’s good that it has onebecause it does make a difference, and while it does use a few of the old favourite slasher situations, albeit in adifferent location, even though it’s totally daft, The Children is still worth a watch, especially for HannahTointon (she’s 21 in real life, thankyou very much!)
Some clever editing keeps you guessing until very late in the proceedings. I can certainly see elements of some greattension moments popping up her which were used in his previous movie,WAZ
And I won’t say who dies first, but let’s say it’s not just Natalie Imbruglia that was ‘torn’!
The film is presented in an exact 16:9 ratio, the picture is a little grainy at times, although this is most noticeablein outdoor establishing shots. The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, with nice split-surround effects whenweird and/or gory stuff happens.
The extras are as follows, and they include spoilers so don’t read them if you haven’t seen the film:
- Killing Kids: The Making of The Children (19:35): Behind-the-scenes featurette with various comments from the cast and crew as we see it all come together and youcan tell everyone had a great time making this intriguing film.
In fact, The Children would’ve got a 7/10 from me, but I upped it to an 8 because it didn’t shy away from having the ballsto kill the evil little kids in ways that were fairly gruesome but also not too gruesome, and occasionally a bitcomical.
- Locations featurette (3:42): Straight-forward piece about how they chose to shoot where they did.
- Paul Hyett talks prosthetics (4:53): This segment tells you how all the gross things were done.
- Snow Set Design featurette (6:35): What happens when you try to shoot a film set at Xmas… when it’s nowhere near then.
- Tom Shanklands’ Lair (8:21): A look at all the things the director needs in his hotel room while he’s away filming on location, whether they’reitems from home or something to give him inspiration.
- Working with children Featurette (5:03): Kids are annoying at the best of times. Even worse when they want to kill you, and this segment gives them a voice,also with comments from cast and crew about working with them.
- Deleted scenes (5:54): Two extended scenes and an alternate ending. None of these would *need* to be put back in as it got the message acrossquite well already, but the alternate ending would be an okay substitute as I got a slightly different vibe from thevery end, although I can’t say what that was here 🙂
The menus feature a segment of the film’s theme, along with brief clips sandwiched together. However, common complaintswith a few films from Contender, now E1 Entertainment, are that there’s only 12 chapters to the film – which isn’t nearly enoughas I work on a rule-of-thumb of one every five minutes, plus one each for opening and closing credits; and also that thereare no subtitles. There’s 25Gb of space on these disc, and 9Gb on a regular DVD where subtitles were also conspicuousby their absence. Can Contender/E1 please look into sorting out both of these issues?
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.