The Children (2008) - Synopsis

ㅤ Published: mayo 01, 2022

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Two related families seclude themselves in a house on the outskirts of England to spend Christmas and enjoy the snow.  "The Children" revisits the archetype of the sinister child who threatens the survival of the adult world present in films such as "The Prophecy" (1995), "The Children of the Corn" (1984), "Village of the Damned" (1995) or "The Good Son" (1993).

This time the cause of a radical change of nature towards a destructive power in complicity to annihilate the adult world, resides in an unknown virus that attacks against the infant organisms. Perhaps this is the decision that removes all ambiguity from the image by making use of a safe argument.

While the aforementioned films channel the evil nature innate to the child, "The Children" had the possibility of seducing with change, development and the spontaneous proliferation of a love for blood as a diversion.
 

The film ends up following the apocalyptic course of biological mutation. Beyond playing on generic justification, Tom Shankland manages to suggest provocative situations within the horror genre.

Innocence as an opportunistic bet on murder, the moral and tactical decision of having to reduce one's own filiation in order to survive -also present in the TV series "Falling Skies" (2011)-.  Children are the new revolutionary ammunition, the army where the destructive germ of society is deposited.

The children's self-consciousness in the face of their potencies for amusing blood acts as a strategy of terror and destruction.

Shots of blood-stained snow abound as an extension of a perverted innocence. Were it not for the virus, the film would attain a horrific polysemy and poetic depth.

That other archetype that undermines the middle-class family structure is the latent sexual child in adolescence.

Chloe wants to get off with the guy. The family drama sustains the film by flirting with flip-flopping lolita during the first act. The iridescent deaths by infant experimentation eroticize the virtual-reminiscence of the sinister child.

That thinking adolescence stopped in the generational "in-between" ends up turning towards darkness. Perhaps the virus is a temporary prolongation of the generational gap directed to absolute collapse and return to chaos. The postmodern end of history.

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