Acting almost like an alternate universe take on ‘Children of the corn’ that answers the question ‘What if the grownups just…didnt give in to the weird childrens bullcrap?’ ‘Beware: Children at play’ feels all too familiar in the ground its treading and the genres its working with. But that doesnt stop it from occasionally striking out on its own.

This is a horror film with a streak of jet black comedy running right through it, and honestly having seen that this is generally distributed by Troma films…A lot of this movies style quickly made sense.

The plot? a perfectly normal family are heading to a small town out in the backwaters to hang out with friends, on the way they stop to help an aging religious fellow who’s heading in the other direction who basically insults most of the townsfolk our leads are heading towards, calling the religious yokels who’ll easily part with their cash the second ‘God’ comes into the equation.

They help him on his way, but on arriving in the town they find out pretty quickly that things arnt right. A large number of children have dissapeared over the past few months/years and a series of bizarre murders have been taking place. It doesnt take long for the film to reveal that the missing children are in fact the ones doing the murdering, and they’re doing so, so that they can feast on the flesh of their victims and use the corpses in satanic rituals.

Its implied heavily that their may be some kind of demonic force at play, and when our ‘normal families’ daughter ends up being abducted by the cannibal murderous children. It sends the father down a rabbit hole of detective work alongside the police to find out where the missing children have gone to, what their end goal is and how further dissapearences and murders can be stopped. All leading to probably this films most infamous sequence, a GRAND finale that even today could be seen as quite shocking and surprising.

I think one of the biggest problems this film has really is its script. This really REALLY feels like it cribbed 90% of its plot from ‘Children of the Corn’ (its basically the core plot, but with the religious overtones tuned down to a more neutral position…and of course, the adults are still alive at this point, whereas the original kills all the grown ups off pretty quickly) It’s lack of originality on that front is actually kind of astounding, im surprised Stephen Kings lawyers didnt step in honestly.

But even overlooking that fact, the first hour or so of this hour and 40 movie is just really kind of slow and dull, it’s largely exposition dumping from our main characters who take WAY too long to cotten onto the fact that it’s the missing kids doing the killing, and a large chunk of the runtimes dedicated to wandering around in the woods or scenic shoots, and not much else. By the time the film DOES finally fully get into gear, theres about half an hour left, and while that closing half hour IS really REALLY good fun. It just kind of left me wondering why the rest of the film WASNT.

Pacing is fairly pedestrian for the first two acts of this thing, it crawls from location to location with only the occasional garish gory kill to help keep this thing from becoming a sedative. the kills themselves are cheap and cheerful (they reminded me a lot of SOV style effects) but they’re fun enough and do help drive up the campiness of the whole thing. the tone is very paletable, balancing VERY bleak horror elements to quite wonderfully self aware and tongue in cheek black comedy. This is a movie that isnt afraid to be a bit silly in places and his happy to push the envelope, and its no surprise to me at all that the UK seemingly never got this movie.

The act structuring is clean, if not a little slow, transitions are a little heavy handed, but they work fine enough. I just…really wish they’d tried to make this film a bit more unique. Had the tone and pacing of the last act been replicated for the first two, this would have been much MUCH higher rated for me. As it stands, it’s never a good look when I have to ask the person im recommending this film to, to ‘Stick with it for the first 50 minutes, because after that, it gets SO much better!’

Direction and cine are pretty solid, Its nothing massively groundbreaking, but for the lower budgeted side of movie making, theres a fairly subtle style here that helps tie the whole movie together, the kills are cheap, but help carry the vibe, the teams all seem to be working in relative harmony together, the cast are all seemingly pretty well involved with the director, who seems to have helped guide them through each scene. The child actors here do seem to struggle a bit more with the exact direction, but given the adult themes present (I.E trying to articulate to a 5 year old how to die on screen and make it look real) Im not too surprised that its a bit of a mixed ability room.

The cine again is to standard, shots with okay composition, theres a little bit of experimentation thrown into the mix. Honestly, i’d like to have seen WAY more here to really help boost its identity, but it’s ‘To standard’ which, while better than nothing, is still a little dissapointing.

The edits slow, has plenty of breathing space and honestly could have lost 15-20 with no issues at all. B-roll seems to be a little thin on the ground as, while the effort was made to capture close ups and some scenes have coverage for alternate angles, a lot of scenes have been left high and dry, with minimal cutaway footage and not a whole lot available to help keep the momentum of the film going. It really could have done with another couple of passes to help get it optimally timed.

Ultimately?; While this one DOES have its fun moments here and there, and that ending is still quite unbelievable (im VERY surprised the MPAA passed it) there just isnt really a whole lot here to warrent it being recommended. it feels very heavily influenced by quite a few movies that were out at the time and that lack of originality, married up to some fairly generic direction, cine and performances just makes a film that left me quite literally thinking ‘welp…that was a movie’ by the time of the end credits.

Not an essential watch, i’d say if you DID like the ‘Children of the corn’ movies and just basically want more of that. Here you go. if your looking for something that feels very different to the usual mid tier horror offerings, this wont scratch that itch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/beware-children-at-play/