This is the story of an English married couple on vacation in the Mediterranean. While enjoying the sights on the coast they decide to rent a boat and go over to a near by island. It quickly transpires that all is not well on the island and the reason there doesn't seem to be any adults is that the kids have come up with a murderous new game that has removed them.
An excellent, but damn near impossible film to see, this is one of those movies thats been unjustly lost to the ages. Its a slowly building well modulated horror film that sneaks up on you even when you know whats going on. Its not really a gory or bloody film, instead this is a film of ideas, where the notion of being alone and out numbered against a terrible enemy is made all the worse by the fact that we humans are almost programmed not to harm our young, even when they do truly evil things. Could you really kill a child- especially one that looks so completely harmless? Originally filmed as a sort of horrific allegory about children and the nature of war the film, played in the severely cut version I saw(by about 20 minutes), as a frightening film where the monster is one you can't bring yourself to kill even when you know its going to devour you. I'm sure that one can read into it a subtext about how we treat law breaking children, but I would prefer just to see it as a scary movie...
Definitely a movie you'll want to keep an eye out for or search out (under one of its many titles). A semi-recent DVD release seems to have come and gone with out making a blip on the radar so you'll want to remain sharp eyed.(I'd go for any version I can find since I saw a 90 minute version and it played fine-even though the full version is some 20 minutes longer)
An excellent, but damn near impossible film to see, this is one of those movies thats been unjustly lost to the ages. Its a slowly building well modulated horror film that sneaks up on you even when you know whats going on. Its not really a gory or bloody film, instead this is a film of ideas, where the notion of being alone and out numbered against a terrible enemy is made all the worse by the fact that we humans are almost programmed not to harm our young, even when they do truly evil things. Could you really kill a child- especially one that looks so completely harmless? Originally filmed as a sort of horrific allegory about children and the nature of war the film, played in the severely cut version I saw(by about 20 minutes), as a frightening film where the monster is one you can't bring yourself to kill even when you know its going to devour you. I'm sure that one can read into it a subtext about how we treat law breaking children, but I would prefer just to see it as a scary movie...
Definitely a movie you'll want to keep an eye out for or search out (under one of its many titles). A semi-recent DVD release seems to have come and gone with out making a blip on the radar so you'll want to remain sharp eyed.(I'd go for any version I can find since I saw a 90 minute version and it played fine-even though the full version is some 20 minutes longer)