The sounds of children wailing and screaming is tedious and enough to make you want to turn off this film and get yourself sterilised! Acting is good in places but the foley and after dubbing is plain painful, I wanted to invest myself in this film but could not. Dire!

Goddamn, is this film ever creepy as f*ck.Ever thought about killing your kids when they p*ss you off? Well, what if they were trying to murder you, and you had no other choice? I actually hated this little low budget horror-thriller, from the UK, at first. Because the first half is so saturated with the incessant screaming of pre-pubescent little bastards, that it is beyond annoying.However, that is done with intention, as to put you on edge (and I'm sure this is much more effective with people who are actual parents...although parents might be endowed with a certain tolerance, from their years of exposure, that I lack).Either way, by the end, it had completely won me over with it's overt creepiness, realistic gore, and general atmosphere of tension.It starts off with a couple families of best friends getting together to spend the Christmas holidays together.Everything starts off relatively banal, until the children contract an illness while playing out in the woods- when things start to take a darker turn.Tantrums, and what could be attributed to an accidental death...quickly develop into full fledged murder...What the children lack in stature and strength; they make up for with wit and utter remorselessness.Leaving what ensues, one of the most realistic, and plausible, sequence of events that you can expect to find in a gory tension filled slasher.The end is eerily similar to that of Vinyan, which was also released in 2008, and would qualify as being part of the same oeuvre.Making this, not wholly original, but really quite effective.Notable, particularly, for it's realism...it is definitely worth a watch!!! 7 out of 10.

From the many good reviews and great praises this movie had gotten, then I had my expectation up high. But I must say that the movie failed to live up to those expectations. While the premises were quite interesting and the movie did offer some unique things, it just didn't push the right buttons for me.The story is about two families away together on a countryside vacation. And what starts as an idyllic vacation with snow and fun suddenly turns into a fight for their lives as their children mysteriously turn ill and start attacking the adults.Personally I found the no description of what caused the children to go berserk an interesting thing, because it keeps the audience in the dark and guessing. But I could also see how it would be a cause of frustration to some.And the fact that it is children who kill and also gets killed is something rarely seen in movies. So director Tom Shankland deserves a thumbs up for breaking the norm and going into taboo land.There were some good enough death scenes and a bit of blood and gore too. And again the director dares to show stuff that goes past what is commonly seen in movies.However, there was just something missing from the movie in order for it to really captivate me. I don't know what it was, but it just lacked that special ingredient.

When a family gathers together at a large mountainside cottage for a reunion, the children come into contact with a strange virus that makes them homicidal maniacs who begin to kill off the others one-by-one, forcing them into a fight for survival to get away. This one was a pretty problematic yet still enjoyable effort. When this one works, there's several things here that make this wholly enjoyable. There's some nice atmospheric scenes here with the snowbound setting provided a great place here which is incredibly important at deriving the perfect sense of isolation required here, as the coldness and wintry feeling is quite appropriate for the type of story here. There's also the fact that there's a rather nice series of encounters and attacks here that move this along very well, as the initial encounters out amongst the very edges of the house playing demented versions of children's games that constitute deadly forms of chasing around as scenes in the playground or out in the frosty woods surrounding the house so there's a lot of enjoyable times with that. As well, there's other rather fun encounters inside the house as the kids get more aggressive and daring in their homicidal instincts which brings about some really thrilling chases around the house as the scenes in the kitchen and bedroom are all featured here which makes for a rather fun time, and feature enough gore to get this one some extra fun along the way. These have enough to make this enjoyable enough, even if there's quite a few storyline problems. That is a major stumbling block with the film, as the majority of the time with this one is spent in situations that not everyone can relate to. Far too much of this is based around the situation of how parents would react in those situations, but that leaves way too many scenes where the parental instincts are pushed to the forefront and common sense and logic fall by the wayside. This one constantly keeps them in danger after failing to realize the obvious and trust in their parental instincts, and it gets old after the twentieth time spent utilizing the same set-up over and over again due to the stupidity exhibited. The other flaw to this one is the true lack of explanation for the virus, as there's little given here about its properties and origins for infecting the kids since all we get is the specific age range and how to get infected, but after that there's nothing here to give this away or what it does. That can be somewhat infuriating, but otherwise there's not all that much wrong here.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, violence-against-children and children-in-jeopardy.