There’s Something Wrong with the Children – Film Review

Margaret and Ben take a weekend trip with two longtime friends and their two young children. Ben soon suspects something sinister is afoot when the kids start behaving strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight.

Despite the fact that this is a Blumhouse-produced horror flick, there has been next to nothing in terms of marketing for Roxanne Benjamin‘s There’s Something Wrong with the Children. Not many posters, not many trailers, and almost no word of mouth. It strikes me as genuinely odd seeing as how great the cast is and how it’s produced by the biggest horror studio in the world.

Now whether or not it’s actually good or not is a whole different story. Long story short, however… it’s not. While the effort is there – it’s a highly respectable film – it just falls flat every single time it tries to be something unbelievably scary. It’s yet another one of those “creepy kid” style horror films loaded with tropes galore.

This movie comes complete with bone-headed characters that made spur-of-the-moment decisions that’ll make you shake your head and wonder how they don’t die in the first five to ten minutes of the movie, as well as the cliché in which someone doesn’t believe another character when they insist that something very wrong is happening.

Thankfully though, T.J. Cimfel and David White‘s script isn’t entirely devoid of substance as occasionally, they do find surprisingly good ways to introduce some solid character drama into the mix. For example, Zach Gilford‘s character Ben is absolutely terrified of Thomas’s children after noticing them do some rather strange things.

As the movie progresses, these kids do increasingly creepy things which basically causes Ben to hate them, which in turn, causes Thomas to hate Ben because of his hatred for his kids. The way it all unfolds is actually quite entertaining for the most part. Sure, it gets old a little quickly, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.

Mostly though, this is a film that has no tricks up its sleeves. You’ve seen this exact type of movie a million times before, and better, mind you. There probably won’t be a single scene that horror fans won’t see coming because it’s largely predictable even if it does have its occasional glimmers of greatness sprinkled along the way.

Another thing that keeps this film on its toes are the lead performances but namely from Zach Gilford, who does a fantastic job playing Ben. Previously, Gilford starred in Mike Flanagan‘s bone-chilling limited series Midnight Mass, delivering a masterful performance there as Riley.

Gilford also has great chemistry on-screen in this film with Alisha Wainwright who portrays his partner Margaret. Carlos Santos is also a bright spot here as Thomas, who feels completely on-edge the entire movie, right up until the final few frames. Everyone brought their A-game.

But speaking of the final few frames… they’re awful. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a horror movie ending as bad as this one, actually. If you were a big fan of the movie up until the ending, you won’t be once you see how it all comes to a conclusion. It’s honestly one of the laziest endings of any film I’ve seen in years.

This isn’t a terrible movie but it’s certainly not a movie that I would classify as “good,” either. It is, however, a highly respectable effort. There’s some shimmers of greatness every now and then but it’s mostly a missed opportunity to tell a much darker, unpredictable story.

There’s Something Wrong with the Children is a majorly underwhelming horror film riddled with tropes and an awful ending, even if there are glimmers of greatness along the way. There’s definitely something wrong with this movie – the script.