Well, first, let's see what the movie does right. Creepy children is definitely a plus. I think everyone knows that it just takes the right kind of push to bring out the slightly-hidden terror of little kids. Just like clowns and ventriloquist dummies, they teeter on that brink, and writer/director Tom Shankland does a good job of making the brood in his film seem like Damien's daycare buddies or lost denizens from the Village of the Damned. What's most distressing, though, is how that push is so soft as to be almost invisible; the kids continue to laugh and play while Shankland uses musical and directorial cues to let the audience but not the characters know that something really awful is just around the corner. In one of the movie's best moments, the director pulls off a great shot where a camera pans backwards and forwards past a table that contains an object on the first pass but doesn't on the second, right before one of the bigger, better moments.

I don't want to over-credit them (since "great" child actors are becoming a dime a dozen), but Shankland and his casting directors Gary Davy and Amanda Tabak have definitely found a good group of kids to play the four pint-sized roles. I've seen more disturbing performances by the pre-pubescent in movies before (the best still being Seo-woo Eun, in the South Korean film Phone), but these young actors still nail a few scenes, such as when Elaine (Eva Birthistle) tries to rescue her son Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield) from atop a set of hanging bars, or the way Miranda (Eva Sayer) silently stops a door from closing behind Jonah (Stephen Campbell Moore).

The Children is also drenched in a suffocating sense of dread. Running a mere 85 minutes, the film wastes almost no time on setup (only maybe hinting that the mysterious affliction that turns the children evil may have accidentally been caused by Jonah's interest in "traditional Chinese medicine"), racking up subtle indications that everything's going to turn bad in a real hurry. A scene of Elaine approaching a zipped up tent sucks the air out of the room, and the little signs that indicate when each consecutive child has got "it", whatever "it" is, are accompanied by sound effects that are primed to make people squirm.

The flipside of this is that every setup requires a payoff, an area where The Children isn't as successful. Most of the movie's suspense ends with a mild crack rather than a bang, thus, as the film continues, it becomes increasingly less compelling whenever it looks like something's going to happen. Some of the more action-oriented scenes are hampered by the fact that obviously the child actors can't be in any great danger, forcing Shankland to chop the scenes to pieces to hide dummies and stuntpeople. He also throws in more than a handful of "shock" cuts of some terrifying thing happening that last for a split second. They might have worked, but he accompanies each one with an abrasive screeching noise (maybe he's afraid the audience will miss them), which turns a potentially atmospheric tactic into a lame jump scare.

The characters are also bogged down in a familiar stew of soap opera dramatics. You'd think eventually writers would learn that romantic jealousy -- especially romantic jealousy that's only imagined in the minds of vindictive women -- has got to be on a list of the least interesting plot devices in movies and television shows (somewhere above underdog sports teams and beneath mismatched buddy cops). One our supposed heroines, Casey (Hanna Tointon), is also slightly annoying until the chaos begins, acting out in the kind of strained, faux-teenager ways that aging writers devise.

In the end, I'm still not quite sure what to think of The Children. On one hand, the film feels like it's the right length, but on the other, I feel like more might have been the answer to feeling definitively about it. It's not that scary, but it's more effective than plenty of the dreck I've had to sit through as a genre fan. I might know more if I watched it again, but do I want to? Maybe the fact that I don't know is a sign in and of itself. The most definitive thing I can say is that The Children is okay, and from there, I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide whether or not such a film is worth your time.

The DVD
The Children comes in cool-looking Ghost House Underground packaging, which means a clear plastic slipcover with the Ghost House Underground logo and a screaming skull slid over striking DVD cover art and a standardized back-cover design. The case is an Eco-Box, but you really can't tell underneath the thick plastic slipcover. Inside the case, there's an insert with the other three Ghost House releases from this wave on one side and the older ones on the back.

The Video and Audio
Lionsgate offers The Children in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and the image is looks surprisingly terrible. A large chunk of the film takes place in the woods, and not only do the trees blur together into a fuzzy, disgusting-looking mess, but the tiniest ones are burned away by extremely hot whites. I'm pretty sure that the cranking is an intentional effect (to cover up how thin the artificially added snow is), but the image is so soft, it's really hard to tell for sure. Even in middle close-ups fine detail looks smeared and muddy. Blacks are also not as rich as I'd like and contrast could be better. Overall, the transfer isn't among the worst, second-worst or even third-worst levels of transfers I've seen, but it's the kind of image you'd have expected from a catalog title back in 1997, not a heavily-promoted specialty title in 2009.

Meanwhile, English Dolby Digital 5.1 is the sole audio track on the DVD, and it's night and day compared to the image, with plenty of environmental ambience and surround effects, plus the creepy score by Stephen Hilton and lots of squishy sound effects. English and Spanish subtitles are also included.

The Extras
A group of featurettes makes up the bulk of the bonus material here. "The Making of The Children" (19:32) is your basic making-of featurette, and as far as these things go, this one's pretty average, with too many film clips. "Working With the Children" (5:03) not surprisingly reveals that these kids are perfectly cheerful, funny and well-adjusted in real life, accompanied by predictable gushing from the older cast and crew. "Shooting on Location" (3:41) is a nice idea, briefly chatting with the family that owns the house where the movie was shot, but they don't have any particularly thrilling stories. "Paul Hyett Talks Prosthetics" (4:53) is a casual interview with the gore-effect artist, but to be honest, most of his effects go by so fast in the movie that I ended up feeling bad that this featurette showcases his work better than the final product. "Snow Set Design" (6:30) is probably the most interesting of the clips, showing lots of B-roll footage of Snow Business faking the movie's wintery setting, plus interviews with their technicians. Finally, "Inside Tom Shankland's On-Set Lair" (8:20) is a look around Shankland's hotel room, with him explaining the various things tacked to the walls and lying around, some of which suggest ambition beyond his ability. Some of these secondary clips may have been produced for an official website, since they end with the film's logo.

3 deleted scenes (1:44, 2:03 and 1:52) are included. I feel like the inclusion of the third scene in the final cut might have been enough to to push me into the lightest of light recommendations, but who knows for sure?

"Ghost House Micro Videos" (2:54) is a horrible montage of metal and screamo songs set to sped-up trailer footage from the four Ghost House releases. No thanks.

A spot for Ghost House Underground, red-band trailers for The Thaw, Offspring and Seventh Moon and an advertisement for Break.com play before the menu, and are also accessible via an "also from Lionsgate" link on the special features menu. The original theatrical trailer (1:29) for The Children is also included.

Conclusion
I think I felt more underwhelmed by The Children than anything else when it was over, but at the same time, I mean I felt 48% satisfied and 52% disappointed. Who knows if I'll ever revisit it, or what my opinion will be like then, but interested parties should rent the film instead of purchasing, since the extras are pretty bland and the picture quality ain't so hot.