We’re all getting a bit excited as we draw closer and closer to the wonderful Linda Blair coming over here for the 40thanniversary showing of The Exorcist. Her legendary performance as Reagan got us thinking about children in films. An English proverb says that ‘the soul is healed by being with children’; but then whoever said that obviously never had to contend with some of the under-16s John Noonan writes about in this list of five killer kid films.
The Children – The Children (2008)
Ah, Christmas. According to many, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. A precious moment to gather with the family and celebrate the birth of Our Lord Saviour, Cthulu. Or Jesus, if you’re a bit old fashioned. In Tom Shankland’s The Children, a middle class family have their festivities (and new age parenting techniques) turned on its head when their little darlings start displaying some rather overtly homicidal tendencies. Hinted as being the result of a virus that worksit’s way up the generations, the children find torturing the pet cat and luring Daddy into a booby trip are a hell of a lot more fun than the Queen’s Speech and Brussel sprouts. This Dora the Explorer militia will think nothing of stabbing crayons in your eyes.
When Shankland was selling this one to the financiers, he would describe the film in which a child forces a doll into an adult body cavity as ‘an elevated film exploring parent child relationships.’ Now, that’s how you market, people.
Read the rest of the list at: Monsterpictures.com.au
John Noonan 