5 out of 5

Director: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

There are a good batch of killer kid movies. Some are excellent, but many fail for a couple core reasons: one – they give the kids some kind of silly mystic explanation for their newfound killer powers, or two – even though the films all play off the innocence of children, when it comes time to lay the smack down, the camera gets shy. Im not some fan of child slaughter on film, but it always seems sort of anti-climactic in movies when plotting tries to toy with our expectations and then avoids showing something exactly due to those expectations. SO: Who Can Kill a Child? While not truly graphic (except the beginning montage, which is oddly long with weirldy discordant audio – the montage features all documentary footage of war attrocities relating to children, and it IS graphic and disturbing), Who Can avoids both these genre pitfalls by keeping things vague and allowing the adults to step up and act as needed when the situation demands. In a horror era where blood is still bright red and many of the kills take place offscreen, Who Can stays affecting by keeping it pretty real, and when it chooses to show something, it carries that much more import. The plot can be surmised from my rambling – a couple finds their way to a remote island which appears to be populated only by children… who, it also seems, have killed off all the adults. The juxtaposition of the beginning doc. footage and the response of husband and wife (who is pregnant) to the happenings loads the viewer with tons of avenue for thinking on the subject matter… another highlight to this film. Killer kid movies always play with the same themes, but with the purposeful and direct presentation of Who Can Kill a Child? it actually ends up accomplishing something rare in the genre, being both creepy and contextual. Highly recommended.