The last film of the day – and fittingly for the midnight slot, a horror. The Children starts with two families arriving at a remote house for two days leading up to a New Years party.

Its worth mentioning before I start on the characters that because they all act as if they're an extended family group they tend not to use names overly, and this combined with our normal backup who-the-hell-was-that reference, IMDB not having much details on the film yet (as it isn't released until 2009 over in the US) has me less certain than usual that I have the right people.

And I'm not good with names to start with.

Anyway, lets give it a go. Elaine (Eva Birthistle) and Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield) are a couple with two young children, Leah (Raffiella Brooks) and Nicky (Jake Hathaway). Also arriving were Elaine's sister Chloe (Rachel Shelley), her husband Jonah (Stephen Campbell Moore) and their young children Paulie (William Howes) and Miranda (Eva Sayer) as well as teenage Casey (Hannah Tointon).

Elane and Robbie have recently sold their business and are now independently wealthy and talking about homeschooling their children. Robbie likes acting as a fun uncle to teenager Casey. Jonah is a rather impressionable person currently teaching his daughter Miranda Mandarin, and considering starting a business selling traditional Chinese medicines. Chloe has (we think) had two other children with someone else, Casey the reluctant teenager dragged along because shes grounded and Paulie, who seems to have something along the lines of Autism.

Everything is going well, and people are getting along. However, there are interspersed scenes out in the woodland and of parts of the house with suitable tension building music to give you the impression of trouble brewing. The first part of the film is an exercise in suspense. When will it happen?

And then the killing starts.

I liked how this film was done. It was obviously a small budget film – everything takes place at the house or in the nearby woods, which also gives a good sense of isolation. The formula is simple and not exactly original, but is executed well, which is more than you can say for some of the characters.

Fast cut images are used well, and sparingly. The camera lingers in such a way as to give things a slightly uneasy, something is wrong quality which is excatly what's needed. That said sometimes the camera does linger too long (a closeup of pillow is probably the best example. Yes, it sounds odd. You'll know it when you see it).

The reasons this film works well, IMO, are twofold. Firstly, the cast is a believable family group. While the characters aren't deep as such they have a good set of backgrounds that intermesh. They also act the part well. The second reason follows from the first. When things start going wrong, people don't go “OK, I'm in a horror film” and break out the torches and pitchforks, they seem to be actually fucked up by the situation they are in. This is the key to getting this to work. To an emotionless killing machine the problems posed are not that difficult. But people aren't like that, especially when it comes to children.

I also liked the ending. If I had been deciding the cut for the end of the film, that is precisely how I would have done it.

This is very obviously a low budget maybe independent film it has a small cast and one location. It has one key idea and it executes fairly well on it.

Some of the camera work and editing are a bit off somehow maybe deliberately to build tension but still it just felt a little inexperienced scenes that could have cut earlier or lingering on something for longer than you needed to get the point. All things that if done differently would have made the film feel a bit more polished. It does get better the further into the film you get.

The acting was pretty good. Usually in horror films people are basically stereotypes with the depth of a cardboard cutout but in this case the characters were very human. They are a bit throwaway though and when writing this up it took a lot of effort to work out who was who.

At it's heart it plays off the whole kids can be creepy sometimes and people usually find it hard to hurt them even given plenty of motivation by way of murder sprees. The level of denial by the characters was quite well done.

I felt at times like the whole back story that was obviously quite detailed in parts was a bit opaque. They would make references to things and places out of context and with no explanation which was a bit jarring for me. It felt like a puzzle that has half the pieces missing. Still it was part of what made the characters more human than your usual scream fest fare. But then part of the problem with having characters in a horror film is that they are mostly just going to get killed anyway.

When the action kicks off after a fair amount of build up it is fairly good. They are quite inventive with building the tension and using a fair amount of misdirection.

In the end I found it not very scary as a film they are after all just children and most of the film is in broad daylight. Without the music it would have been a load of kids in a snowy forest mucking about. It has some good atmosphere and the premise is sound in a particularly insidious way, the ending is pretty good.

It's definitely something a bit different in horror and not a run of the mill hollywood scream fest. It had its moments but as an exercise it felt like it could have gone better.

On further reflection I think the key thing to take away from this film is this. Vacinate your kids.

The film explicitly states that these kids didn't get the MMR due to their parents hippy wrong headed foolishness putting their kids and everyone else's kids at risk by compromising herd immunity.

People say what's the harm, murderous children, there's the harm. That and death and disease. If they had been vacinated they would have had a wonderful happy and slightly embarassing christmas where the worst that could happen was the creepy uncle making a pass at the rebellious teenager. As it was murder, mayhem, and possibly the downfall of society. All because some charlatan with no medical or scientific background and probably a religious agenda made unfounded claims about vaccines and rather than listen to trained medical professionals they believe the likes of quack doctors and Jenny Fucking McCarthy who collectively couldn't get a clue if it was strapped to front of a train and driven over them.

Let that be a lesson to everyone vacinate your childrens or they turn into murderous psychopaths ... or get maimed or die horribly of a preventable disease it's always one or the other.