Beware: Children at Play
Beware: Children at Play
R | 24 November 1989 (USA)
Beware: Children at Play Trailers

Parents are in a panic as their children mysteriously disappear. Little do they know that the only thing worse than their children disappearing would be them coming back. After the youngsters of Ellenburg fall under the ruthless control of a cult leader, they turn on their parents with gruesome results.

Reviews
IslandGuru Who payed the critics
Freaktana A Major Disappointment
Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
d_m_s Pretty disappointing B movie. The story is daft (a kid turns feral after a camping trip in the woods where his dad dies and he is left to fend for himself. Years later, he somehow coaxes children of the near-by town into living with him in the woods and attacking all adults. None of this is explained apart from an extremely tenuous idea that he turned murderous because no one came to help him and his dad - no search party? How he brainwashes all the other kids is not even mentioned).All in all, a real slow mover with nonsensical script, character actions, plot etc. Terrible acting too.However, the last 5 minutes are crazy, when a bunch of adults from the town come and slaughter all the wayward kids that have been living in the woods (this includes their own children). It is nonsensical madness but even more than that, I was *slightly* disturbed by the rather perversely graphic killings of the kids in what was a sudden and jarring change of pace and atmosphere. I was particularly surprised at the guy who holds a kid by the hair, puts a gun into his mouth and blows the back of his head out. I don't know why I felt slightly disturbed but I did. Still, the fact that it suddenly became weird, fast paced, gory and a tad more interesting earned it one more star than I would otherwise have given.
udar55 Author John DeWolfe (Michael Robertson) heads with his wife and young daughter to a puritanical town (in Jersey?) to visit relative Sheriff Ross Carr and his family. The town has been struck by a series of abductions of children, one every two months with the Sheriff's daughter among them. Seems a child abandoned in the woods a decade ago has been recruiting kids to his cult that worships the epic poem Beowulf (really). This is like CHILDREN OF THE CORN but set in the wilds of New Jersey and minus the corn. Director Mik Cribben (who has a large supporting role) stages moments and dialog that come of more as a comedy, like the town lynching party that just stands around for hours. Sadly, he was trying to be serious. He does get credit for throwing around some blood and the all-out kid massacre during the film's final scene. Nothing much else there really. Picked up and released by Troma.
Master Cultist Come on, admit it, you've just got to love that title. Z grade horror, as we have come to expect from Troma. For some reason, the kids of A.N.Other town, USA, have decided to live out the tale as told in the Anglo Saxon poem Beowolf. Well, we were all young once so must be able to empathise on some level only, at my school, we opted to recreate the world of Dixon of Dock Green instead.... As a result, they have turned against the adults, gone all Lord of the Flies on our asses, and taken to cannibalism.Awful acting, woeful dialogue, and some of the worst SFX you will see outside of an episode of vintage Dr Who, this is great fun.
Flak_Magnet This movie is a total bait and switch. I went into it having some positive expectations, namely, that I'd see a lot of grade school kids murdering their parents in a series of bloodsoaked rituals. However, this kind of stuff never really happens and it isn't until the FINAL 90-SECONDS that the director pulls out the stops, providing us with a hilariously bad "massacre" scene that had my brother and I rolling. The rest of this movie, however, is entirely forgettable and I can't recommend it. That final 90-seconds is awesome, yes, but you have to sit through a lot of boring crap and listen to a lot of bad writing to get there. If you just have to see the funny clip at the end where the kids all get killed, I'd search the web versus wasting a rental slot. Trust me, this movie sucks. A lot. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet