Wicked Little Things (2006)

Good concept, poorly executed.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lori Heuring ("Mulholland Dr.") plays Karen, a young widow with a teen aged daughter (Scout Taylor-Compton, Rob Zombies' "Halloween" films) and little girl (Chloe Grace Moretz, "Carrie" '13). After the death of the husband / father, they move to the isolated woodsy abode that they supposedly inherited from his family. They'll find that adjusting to rural life is not going to be their primary concern. The aggressive, bloodthirsty spirits of children who perished in an early 20th century mining accident will be out and about, ready to kill whomever they please."Wicked Little Things" is pretty standard stuff, with a story by Boaz Davidson ("Hospital Massacre") and screenplay by Ben Nedivi. Filmed in the wilds and studios of Bulgaria, it has plenty of that truly forbidding rural scenery that you can often get in European cinema. It is nice to see that veteran director J.S. Cardone ("The Slayer", "Shadowzone", "The Forsaken") cares so much about atmosphere, and creates so much of it. For a while, the story is fairly absorbing without being extraordinary in any way. It does play all its cards too soon by being too quick to show the childish spirits in action, and by showing just how barbaric they can be; it may have been better to hold off just a bit longer. As it is, it does descend into typical body count / gore fest shtick. This approach may appeal to some horror fans, but a lot of the gore loses its impact by being shot in a realistically low lit fashion.The characters aren't unlikable, but Taylor-Compton is required to be rather useless, and Moretz' tendency towards wandering off gets to be annoying. Heuring is okay as the heroine of the piece. The late wonderful character actor Geoffrey Lewis ("The Devil's Rejects") isn't seen for long before being unceremoniously dispatched. Ben Cross ("The Unholy" '88) does make a strong impact as superstitious local Aaron Hanks. And Martin McDougall is a mildly amusing slime ball as the greedy Mr. Carlton."Wicked Little Things" doesn't have that much to offer, but it's not a complete waste of time. The resolution is, ultimately, rather unsatisfying.Six out of 10.

The main reason to watch this film would be the story as it gives a refreshingly fresh take on the Zombie genre.The Carlton's had owned the land for generations. On that land were forests, houses, and a mine. Deep in the mine were buried the Carlton's darkest injustice. But some transgressions don't stay buried... These ones are on the hunt for retribution.The Carlton's used child labour down in their mine and one day an avoidable incident caused the deaths of most of the youngsters. Carlton was cleared of any wrongdoing and was never prosecuted for the deaths. The event was ruled a tragic accident.Wanting revenge, the children now walk the woods looking for Carlton and his bloodline...Enter Karen (Lori Heuring) and her two daughters, Sarah (Scout Taylor- Compton) and Emma (Chloe Grace Moretz), who move into a property on Carlton land. The house had been left to their husband and father, who had passed away leaving them in enough debt that they had to sell their home. The house is one of the most oppressive I've ever seen. It's dark and foreboding. The door is open and blood has been painted on the door.It's not long before Emma has made a friend in Mary... The trouble is, nobody else can see Mary.The director, J S Cardone (of The Slayer - reviewed on this blog) does a winning job of creating atmosphere, tension, and suspense at all the right times in the movie. The night scenes in the moonlit woods are lovely, verging on beautiful, they do give an eerie feel to the location and situation. However, as I stated in the review to The Slayer, it appears he also likes dark houses. It's actually brighter outside in the woods by moonlight than it is in the house with all the lights burning. It's just as annoying here that the light of an electric bulb only radiates a couple of feet. There are some wonderful iconic and haunting shots of the children in their miner's garb carrying their work tools, which they use to dispatch anybody they run into.The actors all give good performances, though, at times, both Ben Cross as Aaron Hanks and Martin McDougall as Mr Carlton ham it up, but they do reign in the piggies after a short while. Not one actor or actress stands out above the rest, they are all fair at making their characters believable. Though I do have a fondness for Geoffrey Lewis, especially after the hauntingly eerie rocking chair scene in Salam's Lot that stays with me today. He is good as the irascible plumber Harold.It's the story that's the star in this film, though, and that is a very unusual thing to say about a horror film. It's the fresh take on the Zombie mythos, in some ways it harpers back to the original Zombie, where a spell or a curse would resurrect the dead. They then become unstoppable until the curse is lifted has run its course. The course here is the revenge of the children on the Carlton bloodline.I would recommend this to all horror fans or the casual viewer looking for something respectable in the genre. You could do worse.

This movie as been on my watch list for some times, like so many other movies, I gave it go as it was on Netflix.The movie dose not start off that bad at all, I actually the opening from the movie was really good,.With in the first ten min, I was actually thinking this could turn out to be good. However it's didn't last long, as I found the movie to very bland for most parts.I found the movie to very slow in parts, it dose pick up again in later part of the movie. I didn't really find anything that scary or creepy, I was expected to see some fake scarce scenes in this movie,I not even sure if that good or bad thing. Well there movie had some okay-ish death scenes, some gory moments in this movie.The acting was decent form the whole cast. 3 out of 10

Having spent all of her money caring for her terminally ill spouse, recently widowed Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring) moves with her two daughters Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Emma (Chloe Moretz) to her late husband's run-down family home in rural Pennsylvania, where local legends speak of zombies who roam the woods at night.Just seeing the names of this film's writer and director in the opening credits was enough to send shivers up my spine: Boaz Davidson is the 'genius' responsible for penning the scripts for such STV titles as Octopus 1 & 2, Spiders and Crocodile, whilst J.S. Cardone gave us the godawful 'video nasty' The Slayer and dull vampire flick The Forsaken. With such dubious talent responsible, I didn't expect much from Wicked Little things.And having just finished the film, I'm glad I kept my expectations low.Although the movie looks good at times, with lovely use of the eerie woodland locale, and the cast give reasonable performances given the clichéd drivel that they are working with, the plot is so laboured, poorly written, and derivative that it's impossible to be enthusiastic about. Most importantly, perhaps, the film's killers, undead children who rise each night from the mine in which they died, aren't in the least bit scary, a smudge of makeup, black contacts and some crappy joke shop scars doing very little to add to the sense of menace. Scout Taylor-Compton and company do their best to look afraid of the tiny terrors, screaming convincingly with every confrontation, but their admirable attempts to instill a sense of fear in the audience is to little avail: the little blighters just ain't got what it takes to chill the blood.There are a few lacklustre zombie chow scenes in a futile bid to win over gore-hounds, and the final kill, which sees the victim's blood drench both Compton and Heuring, is suitably tasteless, but on the whole, Wicked Little Things (AKA Zombies in the UK) is instantly forgettable trash—just another clunker in the filmographies of Cardone and Davidson.