Search - Wicked Little Things - After Dark Horror Fest on DVD

Sarah F. (Ferdy63) from DALTON, GA
Reviewed on 4/21/2008...

Fairly good horror flick - a different take on the zombie genre - a little predictable but a few good scares

2 of 4 member(s) found this review helpful.

"Wicked Little Things" would be century-old zombie children

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 03/26/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Wicked Little Things" was number 7 of the "8 Films 2 Die 4" that made up Horrorfest 2006 (darn, I did not get to use 1, 3, 5, or 9 in that sentence). Without the virtue of actually looking up any information about the films at the official website or any place else I had assumed that there would be a variety of horror films to see over the three days. Indeed, there were your traditional splatter flicks with homicidal killers, ghost stories both foreign and domestic, one with vampires, and one with a restless corpse (cadaver to be more specific). One of the things I was expecting what with the recent success of "28 Days Later," "Shawn of the Dead," and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake was a zombie movie. But when this film began and we saw this mother and her two daughters driving through the forest to a mining town in Pennsylvania I turned to the guys sitting near me and said, "Well, this must not be the zombie movie." Boy, was I wrong.

This is one of those films with a prologue set in the past that sets up the horrible things that are going to happen in the present. In 1913 when the local mine was using children to plant dynamite in small holes to open up new mine shafts there was an accident and children were killed. You do not need to be a fan of horror movies to know that this was a bad thing and that somebody is going to have to pay. Jump to today and Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring), who has recently lost her husband and apparently has no choice but to move with her daughters, teenager Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) and younger Emma (Chloe Moretz), to an abandoned house they have inherited in this dying mine town. The house looks rather strange, but that is because the movie was filmed in Bulgaria and not because the house is evil or anything. However, the inside looks pretty wretched and when Karen finds fresh blood smeared on the door you have take everything with a grain of salt that their plight is so wretched they do not choose to just in the car and get out of town as fast as possible.

Good thing that Hank, the crazy old coot played by Ben Cross, continuing his descent from "Chariots of Fire" to roles like this, is around to explain to Karen how what happened over a century earlier is now putting her family at risk. Meanwhile, Sarah has hooked up with a group of local kids her own age, who not only tell her the story of the coal mining kids but also provide the requisite future dead teenagers to become early victims once the killing starts. Then there is little Emma, who says that she has made friends with somebody who used to live in the house and keeps wandering off into the deep woods to play. Finally, we have the guy whose family has owned the mine all these years and who actually is covered by the whole guilt laid out until the seventh son of the seventh son deal.

Ultimately, the cinematic points of reference for "Wicked Little Things" is not the current crop of zombie films but rather movies like "Village of the Damned," because the main selling point here is creepy kids. A whole pack of creepy kids, still dressed out in their mining duds from a century earlier, and when they start moving through the forest after their prey there are some decent moments, but then they catch the prey and things start going downhill. By biggest grip is that this is one of those films where the rules of the game kept bothering me, because over the course of a century these little things should have turned this mining town into a complete dead zone let alone a ghost town. Just do the math based on the body count they rack up in this film and whether you multiply that by a month or a year it would be enough to get everyone's attention. I do not know if Anne Rice was the first to come up with the idea that vampires had to return the blood they took from their victims to create another vampire, but it sure made better geometric sense than having each victim each night become a new vamp. I suppose it is possible these zombie minor miners do not need to eat at all and we are just catching them during a rare feeding frenzy, but I should not be the one having to come up with a logic that makes this film work, which is why I end up rounding down on everything.

However, on the plus ledger, in addition to the pretty Bulgarian scenery doubling for western Pennsylvania there is a valuable lesson to be learned here, namely: do not try to scream and rev a car engine at the same time if you want to be heard. Also, this Horrorfest 2006 movie at least has a character who was willing to drive on their rims rather than get out of the car and try to get away as was the case in "Penny Dreadful" As for the DVD, the only special feature is a commentary track by director J.S. Cardone ("The Forsaken") and actress Heuring, who were reunited on this film having worked togther previously on "The Mummy an' the Armadillo" That 2004 film has Betty Buckley, Clare Kramer, Busy Philipps, Brad Renfro, and way worse reviews than "Wicked Little Things," so I might have to check it out.

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GOOD MOVIE!!!!!

Lawrance M. Bernabo | 05/28/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I must admit I only watched this because Scout Taylor-Compton who stars in the new Halloween. But then I watched it and I really liked it. The children scared the heck out of me. Dont believe all these bad reviews. check it out for yourslef."