The Children
Encyclopedia
Wicked Little Things is a Zombie horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 directed by J. S. Cardone and stars Lori Heuring
Lori Heuring
Lori Ann Heuring is an American film and television actress, perhaps most known for her roles in The Locket and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive .-Early life:...

, Scout Taylor-Compton
Scout Taylor-Compton
Scout Taylor-Compton is an American actress and singer. She has appeared in numerous small television roles and in feature films that range from dramas to those in the horror genre....

 and Chloe Moretz
Chloe Moretz
Chloë Grace Moretz is an American actress, known for her role as Hit-Girl in the 2010 superhero film Kick-Ass. She also appeared in The Amityville Horror, Days of Summer, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Hugo, and portrayed Abby, the child vampire, in Let Me In.-Personal life:Moretz was born in Atlanta,...

.

Plot

In 1913, in Carlton, Pennsylvania (shot in Bulgaria), the cruel owner of the Carlton mine exploits poor immigrant children. After an explosion, a large group of the children are buried alive. In the present day, Karen Tunny has just lost her husband after a long period of terminal disease and has inherited her husband's home near the since-abandoned Carlton Mine. She moves to the house with her daughters Sarah, a teenager, and Emma, who is younger.

The three stop by the local market for supplies and is told by Walter, the shop keep, that he doesn't deliver to the area they live in. Returning to the road, Karen has a near miss with a man crossing the road. She exits the car, looking for the man and he's nowhere to be found. They soon arrive at the house and Sarah points out the blood on the door while Karen declares it's just "paint." Emma runs up the stairs looking for her new room, while Karen heads to the basement looking for the circuit breaker and Sarah checking if the water is up and running.

Sarah meets a couple of teenagers around her age, and mentions to them that she lives up in the hills, and one replies, "Up where the zombies are?"

Emma hears the children giggling and leaves the house following the giggling. Karen goes out looking for Emma and finds her upon entering an old mine. As they try find they're way back to the house, it becomes nightfall and are lost. They find a house, which is occupied by Hanks, and enters. Karen is advised by Hanks to stay at home in the night, and he also tells her that there is no need to thank him for the blood smeared on his and the Tunnys' door.

William Carlton, the last surviving heir of the Carlton estate, which owned the mine in 1913, and still does, is hungrily devouring property and kicking people off his own property, which he claims goes from the mine to Addytown.

Meanwhile, the zombie-like children begin to kill, which is dismissed among the community as disappearances, though it is hinted that most of the community is aware of the presence of the "children".

As it turns out, the Tunnys and Mr. Hanks, a neighbor who leaves animal sacrifices for the apparently cannibalistic children, are all relatives of the zombie-like children, who ignore blood relatives, while killing all others. Emma, who has had friendly contact with a less violent zombie named Mary, informs her mother that the "zombies won't eat me" and that Mary would not directly hurt her mom (who is not a direct Tunney blood relative), but passes on the warning that the other children might. Karen finds some old family photo albums in the basement that contain pictures of her late husband, as well as of the Tunny and Hanks children who died in the mine disaster, thus revealing that the family is related to some of the children who died.

Karen and Sarah leave the house to go look for Emma. As they exit the mine, not able to find Emma, they become surrounded by a dozen of the children. They escape, with the children pursuing, and finds a car on the road passing through with Carlton inside, and enters, telling them to drive, but the tires are slashed before they can pull away. Karen and Sarah run to the Hanks house unsure of what to do. Soon enough, Karen figures out that Hanks blood has a supposed repellent effect on the zombie children. As both Hanks and Carlton attempt to shoot the children, they realize the bullets are ineffective, and run to the barn. Hanks realizes that as he and Emma are direct blood relatives, it turns out Mary has an older brother that's also a Tunny, and Karen is in some way protected by Emma's relationship with Mary. The children are really after Carlton, as they blame his family for the mining accident that killed them. After Carlton is killed by the children, Emma remarks that "they won't be hurting anyone anymore".

At the end of the film the Tunny family drives away and reveals that the house has not been sold. Now, Mary lives in the house, with the doll that Emma gave her.

Cast

  • Lori Heuring
    Lori Heuring
    Lori Ann Heuring is an American film and television actress, perhaps most known for her roles in The Locket and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive .-Early life:...

     as Karen Tunny
  • Scout Taylor-Compton
    Scout Taylor-Compton
    Scout Taylor-Compton is an American actress and singer. She has appeared in numerous small television roles and in feature films that range from dramas to those in the horror genre....

     as Sarah Tunny
  • Chloe Moretz
    Chloe Moretz
    Chloë Grace Moretz is an American actress, known for her role as Hit-Girl in the 2010 superhero film Kick-Ass. She also appeared in The Amityville Horror, Days of Summer, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Hugo, and portrayed Abby, the child vampire, in Let Me In.-Personal life:Moretz was born in Atlanta,...

     as Emma Tunny
  • Geoffrey Lewis as Harold Thompson
  • Ben Cross
    Ben Cross
    Ben Cross is a British actor of the stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of the British Olympic athlete Harold Abrahams in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire.-Early life:...

     as Aaron Hanks
  • Martin McDougall
    Martin McDougall
    Martin McDougall is an actor best known to US audiences for his role as the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale in the Sci Fi Channel's 2003 miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.-External links:...

     as William Carlton

Production

At one point, Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...

 was set to direct the film, but when he dropped out to direct 2005's Mortuary
Mortuary (film)
Mortuary is a 2005 horror-thriller film directed by Tobe Hooper. It stars Dan Byrd, Alexandra Adi, and Denise Crosby.-Plot:After the loss of their father, the Doyle family, Leslie, Jonathan, and Jamie, move to the Fowler Mortuary in hope of starting a new life. The three find the mortuary to be in...

, J. S. Cardone stepped up to direct. The film was shot in the mountains of Bulgaria.

Release

The film debuted as one of the eight films that make up the horror movie festival 8 Films To Die For
8 Films to Die For
After Dark Horrorfest is an annual horror film festival featuring eight independent horror movies, sometimes with "secret" bonus films, all distributed by After Dark Films in the USA...

.
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