Wicked Little Things (2006)

When I bought this movie from Amazon, it was titled "Zombies" on the DVD cover and had the "Wicked Little Things" as an subtitle. So I bought it with the hopes of it being a zombie movie."Wicked Little Things" was not a zombie movie in the traditional sense, as there weren't any brain-dead, shambling corpses or rotting corpses around. However, it was really a nice change of scenery to see dead children in a horror movie. And despite the lack of regular zombies, then "Wicked Little Things" wasn't actually a bad movie. The dead children looked cool, and their silent demeanor and black, dead eyes worked really well.The story was also quite good, a bit on the simple side though. But it was a storyline that you easily picked up on and got submerged into. There was no twists of events or subplots, just one story and it was straight to the point. A group of children working in a mine were killed and have been haunting the mountain ever since, killing people without remorse, seeking vengeance on the one responsible for their tragic end."Wicked Little Things" wasn't full of huge CGI effects, flashing special effects and the like. They made use of simple effects, but they were straight to the point and worked as intended. If you like gore, then you will not be disappointed, as there was an adequate amount in the movie as well.As for scares, well, then "Wicked Little Things" wasn't really harboring any shock-moments, but it was working on a nice slow-pace of building up suspense and story, having it come full circle at a satisfactory way at the end, although it was quite predictable.The movie was shot in a really great location, and there was a lot of spooky atmosphere to the entire movie. The location of a secluded cabin on a mountain with a spooky forest worked out really well.So despite the sort of misleading title on the DVD cover ("Zombies"), then "Wicked Little Things" was actually a great enough horror movie.

Clichés abound in this film, with such classics as the car that won't start at a key moment. But it's a little more enjoyable than most films of this genre.Quick plot. A single mother and her two daughters move to this town in Pennsylvannia where they apparently forgot to mention "Zombie Children walking about since 1913" in the Chamber of Commerce Brochures. The descendant of the guy who authorized the accident where all these kids were killed I think what makes it work well is the characters are likable and the Zombies are actually kind of creepy. And watching the rich jerk get his comeuppance was kind of satisfying.

Produced & directed by genre regular J.S. Cardone (is anyone ever going to put out a decent DVD/Blu-ray of The Slayer (1982) or what?) this was one of the seven horror films to premiere at one of those After Dark Horrorfest events & while it's not terrible I wouldn't exactly call Wicked Little Things particularly worthwhile either. For a start the script is pretty slow going, it's over half an hour into the thing before anyone dies, until that point there's exposition & attempts at foreboding which aren't particularly foreboding to be honest & after a solid twenty minutes of nothing happening most people will start to lose interest. The whole film film has the same central core as Aliens (1986) with the mother daughter relationship although here it feels like it's there just to pad things out rather than give the film or it's character's greater depth, the character's generally are walking clichés like the young cute girl who know's something is going on, the creepy store owner, a crazy mountain man who's silly stories & warnings turn out to be true, a cowardly human bad guy there to get it to redress the balance & the flesh eating zombies that feel like they belong in an Asian ghost film as much as a US zombie one. In fact I would say it's more of a ghost film than a zombie film, the ideas & themes of some terrible event in the past, a haunted location, someone wronged reaching out to the living for revenge or redemption or closure are all more prevalent in Wicked Little Things than merely flesh eating zombies rising from the grave. To be honest I thought this was quite predictable, there are no big surprises & at over 90 minutes it goes on for to long with a small body count & there's just nothing that memorable here.Wicked Little Things is a dark film, I am not talking about dark as in a conceptual or thematic sense but as in a you can barely see what's going on because most of the time the picture is black sense. If you do want to watch this make sure you get your hands on a good copy because you will need it, there are many times when it's impossible to see what's going on or what the camera is pointing at & it's just so dark with most of the screen most of the time just pitch black which is a shame since the locations are nice & you can sort of sense a decent atmosphere but the darkness becomes annoying. There's not much gore here & a pretty low body count, people are stabbed with pick-axe's, a pig is killed & there are a few shots of zombie kids eating flesh & guts plus the carcass of a chopped up pig is seen but nothing else & the gore is masked by the darkness anyway so it's difficult to see. Known under the title Zombies: Wicked Littles Things here in the UK this was originally set to be directed by Tobe Hooper & had the working titles The Children (already taken...) & Zombies.

Wicked Little Things starts as single mother Karen Tunny ((Lori Heuring) & her two daughters Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) & Emma (Chloe Moretz) arrive in the small community of Abbytown in Pennsylvania to move into an old mountain side cabin she inherited through her late husband. Although a little run down the cabin is nice enough but some of the locals are a bit strange including their neighbour Aaron Hanks (Ben Cross) who talks of evil things in the woods at night which seem to go back to a mining disaster in 1913 when several children were killed in an explosion & they still live on as flesh eating zombie kids who roam the woods at night seeking vengeance on the mines owner, soon enough Emma is talking about imaginary friends & Karen finds out for herself that the stories are true & the killer zombie kids are real...Produced & directed by genre regular J.S. Cardone (is anyone ever going to put out a decent DVD/Blu-ray of The Slayer (1982) or what?) this was one of the seven horror films to premiere at one of those After Dark Horrorfest events & while it's not terrible I wouldn't exactly call Wicked Little Things particularly worthwhile either. For a start the script is pretty slow going, it's over half an hour into the thing before anyone dies, until that point there's exposition & attempts at foreboding which aren't particularly foreboding to be honest & after a solid twenty minutes of nothing happening most people will start to lose interest. The whole film film has the same central core as Aliens (1986) with the mother daughter relationship although here it feels like it's there just to pad things out rather than give the film or it's character's greater depth, the character's generally are walking clichés like the young cute girl who know's something is going on, the creepy store owner, a crazy mountain man who's silly stories & warnings turn out to be true, a cowardly human bad guy there to get it to redress the balance & the flesh eating zombies that feel like they belong in an Asian ghost film as much as a US zombie one. In fact I would say it's more of a ghost film than a zombie film, the ideas & themes of some terrible event in the past, a haunted location, someone wronged reaching out to the living for revenge or redemption or closure are all more prevalent in Wicked Little Things than merely flesh eating zombies rising from the grave. To be honest I thought this was quite predictable, there are no big surprises & at over 90 minutes it goes on for to long with a small body count & there's just nothing that memorable here.Wicked Little Things is a dark film, I am not talking about dark as in a conceptual or thematic sense but as in a you can barely see what's going on because most of the time the picture is black sense. If you do want to watch this make sure you get your hands on a good copy because you will need it, there are many times when it's impossible to see what's going on or what the camera is pointing at & it's just so dark with most of the screen most of the time just pitch black which is a shame since the locations are nice & you can sort of sense a decent atmosphere but the darkness becomes annoying. There's not much gore here & a pretty low body count, people are stabbed with pick-axe's, a pig is killed & there are a few shots of zombie kids eating flesh & guts plus the carcass of a chopped up pig is seen but nothing else & the gore is masked by the darkness anyway so it's difficult to see. Known under the title Zombies: Wicked Littles Things here in the UK this was originally set to be directed by Tobe Hooper & had the working titles The Children (already taken...) & Zombies.Although set in the US in Pennsylvania this was actually filmed in Bulgaria & to be fair the locations look creepy but it's a shame that it's so dark you can't really see them that well. The acting is OK, Geoffrey Lweis turns up in a small role while the majority of the rest of the cast appear to be Bulgarians whose names I can't pronounce.Wicked Little Things is a modest film, it has it's moments I suppose but the predictable plot & dark photography stop it from being anything more than average at best.