‘There’s Something Wrong with the Children’ Review: Murderous Kids Have No Right to Be This Fun

We’re less than a month into 2023, but there’s already an early frontrunner for the year’s most accurate movie title. You can love or hate “There’s Something Wrong with the Children,” but nobody can deny that there is definitely something wrong with those children. (Though  “A Sad Orgy Can Really Ruin Your Life” would have been an equally accurate title.)  The latest Blumhouse movie about creepy kids is a fitting addition to one of horror’s most reliable subgenres, and it manages to elevate itself above the competition through some genuinely compelling adult drama and a delightful Duffer Brothers-esque supernatural twist. And it’s infinitely more enjoyable than any direct-to-streaming January horror movie has any right to be.

Much like her directorial debut, “Body at Brighton Rock,” Roxanne Benjamin’s sophomore feature feels like a throwback to an era when horror movies were more fun. While it’s set in the present day and is certainly not a nostalgia picture, it features plenty of stylistic elements that could have made it the highest-grossing horror flick of 1986. A synth-heavy score that sounds like it’s ripped straight from a John Carpenter movie. A title card written in That Stephen King Book Cover Font. And an unabashed willingness to have zany fun without slipping into the dreaded “self-awareness” that plagues so many scary movies these days.

Margaret (Alisha Wainwright) and Ben (Zach Gilford) and Ellie (Amanda Crew) and Thomas (Carlos Santos) have been friends since college, but adulthood has begun to pull the two couples in separate directions at an alarming rate. Ellie and Thomas have thrown themselves into raising their kids, Lucy (Brielle Guiza) and Spencer (David Mattle), with full force. Margaret and Ben, on the other hand, are more than content to live a jet-setting, child-free life. Taking the occasional vacation with their friends’ children is a fun novelty, but who actually wants to be responsible for another human being at all times?

So when the four friends (and two kids) decide to get out of the city for a weekend in the woods, everyone thinks it’s a win-win. The college pals get to reconnect, Margaret and Ben get to fill their annual “spending time with kids” quota, and everyone gets a bit of fresh air. But from the moment everyone arrives at their swanky Airbnb cabins, something is off. Ellie and Thomas are both clearly on edge, and their constant snapping at each other makes the vacation almost intolerable from the get-go.

Their friends inevitably ask what happened, and as it turned out… a really bad foursome happened. In an attempt to reinvigorate their sex life, the two parents reveal that they recently attempted something resembling swinging with another couple. And it did not go well. The fallout from the evening created a deepening rift in their marriage, and now they never seem to have enough free time to fix it. They eventually settle on a brilliant idea: Margaret and Ben can babysit the kids in their cabin for the night while Mom and Dad get some much-needed alone time.

The plan works perfectly at first but hits a minor snag when Ben wakes up and discovers that the kids have completely vanished. Naturally, he finds them in the one place they were specifically prohibited from going: the abandoned fort in the woods with a creepy cliff inside it that may or may not be a portal leading directly to Hell. Ben doesn’t arrive until right after they dive in, and he’s unable to grab them before they plummet to their deaths.

Ben and Michelle are understandably distraught. It’s always a bummer when your best friend’s two kids die, but it’s particularly embarrassing when it happens during your 12-hour babysitting shift. But just minutes after watching the kids leap to their inevitable deaths, he finds them alive and well back at the cabin.

More accurately, he finds them alive at the cabin. But something has definitely changed in these children, even if Ben is the only one who notices. They’re picking up skills that they never had before. They occasionally speak in tongues. And their new favorite game is committing acts of violence against everyone on the trip while conveniently pinning all of the blame on Ben.

With nobody able to leave the cabins, the movie turns into something resembling a murder mystery parlor game as everyone tries to guess who is behind the mayhem that the kids start causing. Nobody believes Ben when he says these two adorable children are scheming to ruin his life, and his case isn’t helped by the fact that he’s been prescribed mood stabilizers for his manic depression. Nobody wants to trust the mental patient, which inevitably turns the vacation into a bloody game of cat and mouse between four helpless adults and two immortal children with superpowers who can fake their own deaths at will.

While it’s a premise we’ve seen many times before, “There’s Something Wrong with the Children” punches above its weight by doing all the little things right. T.J. Cimfel and David White’s script is built like a Swiss watch, setting up countless twists without ever wasting a line. They wisely never tell us what this magical cliff in the woods actually does, allowing the mysterious plot device to take on “Pulp Fiction” briefcase status in our imaginations. On the infrequent occasions when the plot hits a lull, it’s immediately bailed out by a badass music cue from The Gifted’s stellar score. And the colorist really deserves a raise because the climax unfolds in a series of sunset hues that turns the adventures of these creepy kids into genuinely gripping cinema.

It’s a real shame that “There’s Something Wrong with the Children” is being relegated to streaming because it’s very easy to see the film being a smash hit in a different era. But who knows, maybe it can grow into a cult classic without the pressure of a theatrical release. After all, if there’s one lesson to learn from this ill-fated camping trip, it’s that responsibility isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Grade: A-

Paramount will release “There’s Something Wrong with the Children” on digital and VOD platforms on Friday, January 17. It begins streaming on MGM+ on March 17.

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