Search - Children of the Night on DVD

Steven H.
Reviewed on 5/13/2016...

This is an exquisite arthouse film, not a campy B-horror flic

There are always at least two stories to an Ivan Noel film. Of course there is the film's story (along with its numerous back-stories). Then there is the "making of" story, which is much more than the featurette--it also comes out in the director's commentary. While that might be said of most movies, for Noel's films, the "making of" is easily the most intriguing of the stories, especially in this movie.

Unfortunately, the distributor packaged and retitled it to try to appeal to a wider, baser audience. Try to find noelfilms.com original art to get a better idea of the film.

For a low-budget film, there is no skimping on the location. I suspect that travel and location expenses were almost his entire budget.

This movie turns a number of popular conceptions upside down. It certainly gives new meaning to the term "Child Predator". While most vampire movies tend to portray vampires as a parody of religion, this one shows religion as a parody of vampires. I took my mother to a spanish-language mass last xmas, presided over by a vatican-trained priest, who genuinely believes that the wine and cracker turns into the blood and body of christ. So I was amused by the star's reference to this rite.

There are a few easter eggs hidden in scenes that are on the screen for a fraction of a second. I won't spoil these by giving any more detail.

It's a fun movie, but with many layers. Any aversion one might have to showing children being harmed, is offset by showing how much fun that have making the movie.

I hope he someday makes a director's cut, or at least posts the out-takes somewhere

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