A solid balance between set-up, conflict, and horrific execution. Just a well-made horror film all around.

| Aug 28, 2015

All build and no bang.

| Oct 18, 2013

The Children is a surprisingly tense, slow-brewing horror film that plays on current trends (rabid flu-like infections) and refreshes old clichéd conventions (killer children).

| Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 16, 2010

As killer kid horror movies go, 'The Children' is easily one of the best.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 2, 2009

Borrowing liberally from classic evil-children horrors, the gruesome deaths are inventive, but this is more about killer set-pieces than a satisfying story. A respectable genre outing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2008

Shankland's approach is oblique rather than graphic, but these icy chills will send shivers down your spine.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Dec 5, 2008

Watching The Children is like listening to babies cry. Unsettling and exasperating, you pray for it to stop.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 5, 2008

The grown-ups, rather hysterically, blame each others' parenting skills. The plot promptly disintegrates into a gory struggle for credibility against appalling odds.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2008

The fundamentally disturbing and creepy aspects about such random and unpredictable child-centric mayhem are always present, no matter how ludicrously intense and darkly humorous things get.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2008

This efficient British chiller ticks the right boxes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2008

The Children could be a blackly comic warning to give kids their MMR jabs, an anti (or pro) abortion metaphor (one male victim looks like they're giving birth and Toynton's character was almost aborted), or simply a bloody, good horror film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2008

A novel idea that deserves a remake with better effects, better writing and better acting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2008

The idea of cosseted middle-class tots becoming feral psychopaths has potential, though most of it is squandered by uncertain direction and some unconvincing psychology.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2008

While hampered by a miniscule budget, young performers and a plot with a few holes, director Tom Shankland proves a master of suspense.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2008

The movie is surprisingly gory and suspenseful: a joyous corrective to the festive cheer.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2008

This is a rare film that strikes a perfect chord between subtle and visceral scares, between the primal and the nightmarish, between surreal and survival horror...Tom Shankland delivers the most white-knuckled experience yet with The Children.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 28, 2008