Juego de niños

I'm obliged to say that the best thing in this movie is the oppressive feel of something terrible coming ahead. Even if you know the event already, 'cause the director warns you from the beginning about it, in most of the times you can't help but sense a kind of a danger, a fear that you don´t see but you do feel. On the other hand, the bad thing in Un jeu... fall on the screenplay, that is sometimes incoherent, and it's pace is rather slow. Also it's atmosphere doesn't help much in setting a scenario for originality because as we watch it, never ceases to give strong reminders of films as The innocents, The others and even the mexican one El libro de piedra (The book of stone). And alright, there´s no gore but I don't think the plot need it; if this films succeeds in anything, is in creating a malevolent space and it is precisely where the family moves: their luxurious flat.

Of course it has some flaws but all in all hits right on the target on it's proposal for a psychological fear. Why does happen what it happens? Because there's evil in the air since the old brothers came in for a glimpse at their old home. It's what set everything for what's coming (or what happened; it depends). And I think is fair with itself in this matter and the portrait of child corruption, in the killing of all innocence, hence the name. Nevertheless, this movie is good beyond just an experience for accomplish a wider range of foreign horror cinema. It may not have the best of thrills, but neither is wasted time nor money.

You think - at least I THINK - about some Roman Polanski's movies when you watch this film: LE LOCATAIRE, ROSEMARY'S BABY, REPULSION; some kind of domestic horror, "home" horror, horror among neighbours, the same family, involving elements, characters in whom the audiences could recognize themselves. There were batches of this kind in French and American movie industries, even now in 2023. It is quite good, efficient, but if you are used to this kind of plot, you'll not be that surprised. But, it's not boring at all, Karin Viard and Charles Berling are as excellent and convincing as usual. The director Laurent Tuel is rather prolific for a French film maker and he provides all kinds of topics. Something though in the storytelling. When the investigator searches about the Worms family, who visited Karin Viard, at the beginning, this cop is explained that this family died several years earlier, the father killed his whole family before setting fire in his apartment. And a couple of minutes later, this cop tells Karin Viard the father Worms died killed by his own kids....

This is not a great movie but it's quite a good one with an eerie atmosphere - ideal viewing for the early hours of the morning. I missed the beginning so had to catch up on what it was all about - but I could tell right away that those kids were up to no good. As another reviewer noted, if you're thinking of starting a family then avoid this film - you may be persuaded otherwise! Maybe the denouement doesn't explain much but hey, this is a horror movie. The characters that played Mr & Mme Worms were (I thought) hideous in the extreme & enough to give you nightmares. A quietly creepy and menacing film.

"Un jeu d'enfants", translated as "A Child's Game", is a French horror flick which is clearly inspired by Henry James' classic work "The Turn of the Screw", or perhaps more particularly by "The Innocents", the 1961 classic adaptation of that story.

You know the drill: it's a woman pitted against two kids who may or may not be evil. Or is she just crazy? Well, here the psychological aspects of the story are pretty much gone and we know for a fact there's something supernatural going on here.

Perhaps it's the lack of the psychological angle that kind of neutered the story? You see, I saw this movie on TV ages ago back in the 2000s when it was fairly new, and I never forgot some of the images from it, but I couldn't remember much else. Having just rewatched it I have realised that this was because there was nothing much else to remember about the flick, except to file it away in my brain as another adaptation of James's novella.

The movie has occasionally striking imagery that grab the attention, true, but it doesn't have much of an atmosphere and nor does it say a whole lot about these images. Something that I hadn't seen handled in horror a whole lot, interestingly, is dealt with here: the way the mother, suffering from visions that are making her act crazy, instigates sex with a couple of strange men who immediately take her up on her offer, no questions asked.

The fact that so many people will have sex with a married person with a family without a second thought is disturbing and this movie calls that to mind, but doesn't do anything with it, or any of the other lights it shines on human psychology.

The lights go on, get our attention, and then they go off again. The movie is content to get our attention sporadically and let us lose interest the rest of the time.

And the climax, when the real bad guys finally turn up, is striking only for how ridiculous it is, an anti-climax in the only throughline the movie had: shocking imagery.

In Paris, Marianne (Karin Viard) and Jacques (Charles Berling), and their son Julian (Alexandre Bongibault) and daughter Aude (Camille Vatel) compose a happy upper class French family, living in a huge apartment (for European standards). The children have a baby-sitter, Daphnée (Ludivine Sagnier) and Jacques has just been promoted in his job. The family's life changes when Marianne receives two weird old visitors, the Worms (Pierre Julien and Manuela Gourary). They ask Marianne for permission to visit the apartment, where they live when they were children. Marianne receives a phone call from her husband, and when she returns to the living room, the strange couple was leaving the children's room. From this moment on, the most mysterious and bizarre things happen with Marianne and Jacques, affecting their lives. I liked this very scary French horror movie a lot. It has the same atmosphere of `Stanley Kubrick´s The Shining', the characters are well developed, and the tension increases in an intelligent way. The viewer is never 100% sure whether the mother or the father is getting deranged or the children became evil, until the end of the plot. Unfortunately, there is a great flaw in the script regarding the visit of the Worms: why have they waited so long to come back to the apartment? My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): `Jogos Sinistros' (`Sinister Games')