Six months pregnant Evie (Prunella Ransome) and her husband Tom (Lewis Fiander) use the time before the birth of their third child for a final holiday before the times of too little sleep start again.
Tom is intent on spending most of the time on the island of Alcanzor, a small, quiet place he had visited years before, instead of the annoyingly touristy Benarez. Both don't recognize the importance of the bodies of two murdered women that wash up on the beach in Benarez for their future fate. And why should they? After all, people are getting killed all the time. Even children do. So it's no reason to lose one's sleep over it.
When the couple arrives at their destination, they're greeted by the idyllic picture of playing children. Well, the children are surprisingly silent and their stares are a little discomforting, but they're just children, right?
When they enter the small town that is Alcanzor's only settlement, they find it deserted. Houses and businesses look as if they had suddenly been left by their occupants. Tom says he thinks the townsfolk are on the other side of the island, having a yearly fiesta, but he looks just as worried as his wife does. One could think he doesn't really believe what he says.
Since they just have a long ride on their boat behind them, both decide to first rest up a little before they decide what to do next. So Evie settles down in a small restaurant while Tom visits the grocery shop to get some food. He'll leave money for the things he took, of course. The trouble is, the place just doesn't feel right. Of course, Tom isn't going to say a thing like that out loud - his movements and the looks he casts around are speaking a different language, though.
Unfortunately he throws said looks into the wrong direction, or he would have seen the dead body hidden in the grocery shop.
At the same time, the old-fashioned phone in the restaurant is ringing. There doesn't seem to be someone on the other end of the line, at least no one who wants to speak to Evie. But she gets some company in the form of a young girl who doesn't say much and, if you ask me, has quite a disturbing stare. In the end, she just seems to be one of those baby belly grabbers, always on the look-out for pregnant women whose privacy can be disturbed without greater social consequences. Afterwards, the girl runs away.
This is not the last strange thing that will happen. After Tom has returned, the telephone is ringing again. There's a young woman on the line. She tries to tell him something in a language he just can't understand.
Evie and Tom decide to go to the hotel they were planning to stay in. The pregnant woman really needs some more rest in a cool place and Tom is still seemingly adamant in his conviction that the villagers will soon return.
He won't stay this way very long anymore. While he is looking through the hotel for traces of people (after all, the call must have come from somewhere), Evie sees an old man with a cane walking down the street. When Tom goes to investigate he witnesses a girl running up and killing the man with his own cane. Afterwards the girl runs away. Tom, in shocked disbelief trying to spare his wife from the truth, hides the dead man in a barn. As soon as he has left the building, he hears strange noises from inside. He turns and looks inside, just to watch a group of "playing" with the dead man's corpse. Those dead people make great playthings for traditional Spanish games, I tell you.
Now Tom is starting to panic. All is well with Evie, she just needs some rest.
A little later, they meet a villager who was hiding himself for some time. He tells Tom what has happened. Two nights ago, all the village's children suddenly awoke, screaming and laughing. They divided up into small groups and went from house to house. In each house they visited, terrible screaming started.
Tom, Evie and the man plan to make a run for their boat, but before they can act, the villager's little daughter walks into the room. She tells her father that his wife and her grandmother have been terribly wounded by the "bad children" and begs him to go for their help. He knows very well the girl isn't saying the truth, yet she is his daughter, so what can he do but go with her? The last thing we hear of him is a scream and the laughter of children.
From here on out the film follows the same rules as the apocalyptic zombie movies that are so dear to me, just with children instead of zombies and a script that knows what kind of difference this make and is absolutely fearless to show it.
Who Can Kill A Child? is the type of horror film that could only be made in the Seventies. Films like the Children of the Corn movies look in comparison even more like the timid crap they are. Who'd have thought that making killing children a problem for the main characters would give a film about murderous children a higher impact? No American horror director, that's for sure.
The film isn't even all that bloody. Instead it goes for the greatest emotional impact of the violence that it does show, carried by very fine acting and a slowly building mood of dread, but also the unflinching gaze typical of the best horror films of the era, showing us the most terrible thing imaginable without copping out at the last moment. (This cop-out can take many forms, like hollywoodized sentimentality or the use of an overabundance of over the top gore that makes what is happening too unreal to have much impact.)
Director Narciso Ibanez Serrador shows an incredible sense for the telling detail that lets a seemingly normal place suddenly seem dangerous and just not right. Even better is the fact that he does this in a film that mostly takes place by day in some of the brightest light imaginable; far away from the tradition of the Gothic, painfully modern in its way.
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