谁能杀死孩子？

The question in the title of this Spanish horror made by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (his second and final feature, who was relegated to the TV department thenceforth), is not so much “who can” as “who dare to” kill a child? Opening with harrowing reportage of children’s mortality during modern warfares, in hindsight, this tale of manic, homicidal children is dished up as a cynical retribution, for those numberless young lives gone too soon solely due to adult’s crimes and utter inanity (even Fellini courts sideswipe as a Fascist). From this perspective, it might sugar the pill of the film’s perversity.

Tom and Evelyn (Fiander and Ransome), an English couple comes to a small Spanish coastal island for vacation, where Tom has been several years ago. They are more than happy to escape from the jollification and ruckus in the mainland tourist town (fireworks, parades and piñatas), as Evelyn is pregnant with their third child. Upon arrival, weirdly, they find the village is practically deserted, no adults in sight, only kids, sprawled randomly over the place, some boisterous, some coy, but uniformly stiffing their gestures of communication.

What follows is the unthinkable violence exacted upon any adults who are still breathing, at the hands of the villages’ children. Without divulging any explication of the children’s abrupt, unnatural cruelty, the film dutifully if unremarkably grinds out threadbare set pieces counter to common sense (for instance, Tom, albeit witnessing horror in first hand, under the pretext of her gravid state, uncharacteristically keeps a lid on the 411 from Evelyn, who cannot understand a word of Spanish, so that they just stay put in lieu of scarpering on the spot), both also dreams up a sort of telepathic contagion that is chilling enough to jolt any woman who has a bun in the oven out of her philoprogenitive inclination. Ransome gives an excellence impression in the standard terrified mode, whereas Fiander’s Tom has to become a child murderer to ward off elements of children menacingly inching en masse.

Admittedly, the timing of WHO CAN KILL… also entices viewers to speculate its political connotation. released after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, and with a new generation literally and indiscriminatingly slaughtering any member of the old one, spreading from their insular original to the continent, Serrador is smart enough to capture the zeitgeist and rouse the younger generation to feel a sense of justification and empowerment in themselves. No long a lamb of sacrifice, behave well, grown-ups, it only takes one night to transmute innocence into apathy with a sinister intent.

referential entries: James Watkins’ EDEN LAKE (2008, 7.5/10); Sam Peckinpah’s STRAY DOGS (1971, 7,6/10); Robin Hardy’s THE WICKER MAN (1973, 7.4/10).