Postby Darkweasel » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:57 am
COME OUT AND PLAY
For reasons known only to the scriptwriter, an American couple visit a remote Mexican island. When they arrive, they find the place almost completely deserted with no adults to be seen. However, one thing there doesn't seem to be a shortage of is sinister looking children...
Having not seen the original film "Who Can Kill a Child?", I don't know how faithful a remake this is of it, but what I can say is that as a stand alone film, it's absolutely bloody awful.
The husband has to be most thunderously stupid character I've ever seen. The film opens with him walking through the middle of a town asking if anyone knows where he can hire a boat. Here's a thought, you prat. Go to the f**king dock.
Happy speaking fluent Spanish for the first third of the film, he suddenly forgets his bi-linguistic ability. Then remembers it. Then forgets it. Then remembers it again.
Upon witnessing an old man being brutally murdered, he happily leaves his heavily pregnant wife alone while he buggers off to investigate a building.
When his wife suggests they get off the island he says no and barricades them both inside a courtyard. Two minutes later and he's telling her they're getting off the island and acting like it's all his idea.
While chasing a small boy through the town, he turns a corner to find that the boy (who was only about ten feet ahead of him) has suddenly disappeared. You're standing on sand, you tit. Instead of just standing there looking confused, look for his footprints.
The wife has her moments too though as she wanders off here and there. She also makes the continuity team look like idiots when she says "the sweat is dripping off me". Just one look shows you she barely even looks warm, let alone sweating.
Also, the ending of the film had me laughing when it really shouldn't have. As our thickie hero beats up loads of kids, all it did was remind me of Nicolas Cage kicking the fat woman from The Wicker Man in the chest. Any last vestige of drama gone faster than a rat up a drainpipe.
When the end comes, it's mercifully swift but even then the scene is messed up by an actor who, face down and dead in the water, decides that in this film corpses can swim.
If the film does have one thing going for it, it's that it does look (whether by accident or design) like a low budget 1970s horror film. Very authentic looking in parts.
But that's it. Just that one solitary crumb of positivity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my pet severed head for a walk.
3/10
