… aka Trapped, etc etc …

Well, I’m a big fan of evil movie children, so this was immediately right up my alley, hehe. This is one of those movies that gets around the “shoulda been under 90 minutes” problem I usually have with anything so genre as it is that runs over that magic figure by using its extra 30 minutes up front to introduce its main characters. For where the movie goes in the end, the opening is fiendishly slow but it makes the real bulk of the movie, from 30 minutes in when they leave the mainland, all the more gripping than it’d likely be without the set-up.

The thing I find most noteworthy about this is how genuinely on edge it put me. If I’d read a review of this that drew out how scary some of the smiling children are here I wouldn’t have believed it. But there’s something about some of those smiles, let’s call it the Hannibal Lector effect – remembering that moment when Clarice Starling first happened upon the genius cannibal, that simple smile with no real explanation behind it. Even on the most beautiful adolescent girl, the first of the island’s residents that we see, even as she seems to all intents and purposes to be perfectly harmless, it’s almost downright terrifying.

The second thing that makes this movie a cut above most of the genre is that it really goes all the way. I don’t know how to elaborate on that without spoiling it, but hey it’s been out for over 30 years so consider yourself warned, lol. There’s a moment at the end here where I really didn’t know where the movie was going to turn. I didn’t know where I wanted it to turn, even. But once the moment passed, I knew that I would’ve felt betrayed if it’d gone the other way. That didn’t stop the feeling of, “OMG he did it!” in my stomach though.

It borrows from plenty of movies – of course the title itself (the one I’ll always refer to it as, at least) recalls Children and Village of the Damned – and there are just a couple of scenes towards the end that attempt to explain away the childrens’ condition in a manner akin to those older movies, when really it works better when there’s no explanation. And if you’re coming here for gory visuals you might be disappointed by how fake they are. But this has bold intentions and takes no prisoners. I found myself right on the fence between seeing it as almost black comedy and a genuinely scary social commentary and I can imagine repeat viewings taking me to either extreme entirely. Definitely worth seeking out if you’re a fan of the genre, and worth taking time out for even if you’re not.

Tags: children, cuties, horror, society, violence, war

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 7:53 pm and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.