User Reviews

"It's a challenge to work with kids," according to THE CHILDREN director Tom Shankland. "We searched really really hard for these four" future zombie-like parricidal maniacs, he added. After a boating trip to familiarize these juvenile actors with their film "parents," Shankland followed up this maritime treat with an educational tour of the movie crew's prosthetics lab. "It's important to emphasize to (child cast members) that this movie was a game; it wasn't 'real,'" the director concluded.

Jane Karen, THE CHILDREN's on-set "child wrangler," did not seem to think that attacking adults with gory mayhem was likely to have a lasting effect on the wee quartet. "Kids are really good about just being in the moment," she opined.

One interesting tidbit to be gleaned from this DVD bonus feature, which was not readily apparent while viewing THE CHILDREN, is that one of the adult victims is done in with a make-up pencil. Perhaps Wal-Mart and K-Mart will need to do background checks on would-be purchasers of such deadly weapons in the future.

The Children: Working with the Children is a documentary lasting for just over five minutes that features on the US Blu-ray/DVD release of the British horror film The Children (2008), I am not sure if this special feature appears on any other release anywhere else though.

Obviously clocking in at a modest five minutes there's not a lot to be learnt here & it's it could hardly be described as comprehensive. Working with the Children is your basic talking heads promotional documentary where everyone who is interviewed says how great everything is inter-cut with some relevant scenes from the film itself & some mildly interesting behind the scenes footage mainly focusing on the children on set.

There are no great revelations here, writer & director Tom Shankland confirms that the kids all had fun & were treated well & made to understand what was going on & that most of the time Jane Karen coached the kids & director Shankland didn't spend too much time with them until they were on set shooting their scenes.

The Children: Working with the Children is one of those throwaway promotional filler pieces that really doesn't tell you anything, some of the behind the scenes footage may interest fans of the film but otherwise there's no real substance here. Acceptable but totally forgettable.