Movie Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

Boy, talk about bleak. Who Can Kill a Child? is a Spanish horror movie about an island of killer kids, but played as seriously as you can possibly take an absurd premise like that. Thanks to some intense suspense and an eerie atmosphere, this transcends the threshold of shlock and delivers a genuinely unnerving experience. 

The movie opens with an extremely dour credits sequence that features nearly eight minutes of actual footage from various wartime atrocities like the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, and famines resulting from African civil wars. The accompanying narration articulates the idea that children always wind up suffering the most as a result of war. It's shocking and kind of exploitative, but bear in mind, this is from the heyday of exploitation movies so it kind of works. If nothing else, it sets the appropriate dour tone that is to follow. 

Once the movie begins in earnest, it follows Tom and Evelyn, a married couple from England who are vacationing in Spain before Evelyn gives birth to their third child. The opening third of this feels remarkably similar to the Stephen King short story, "Children of the Corn". The couple travels from a coastal Spanish resort town to the nearby island of Almanzora, only to find it mysteriously deserted save for a few taciturn tykes. There are no adults to be found on the island, which perplexes the couple. After getting a mysterious panicked phone call from a non-English-speaking woman, Tom and Evelyn go on high alert. A lesser film might have bungled this part; it's all too easy for characters in a horror movie to fall prey to that terrible "they're only making dumb decisions because the narrative says so" trap that plagues many horror movies. Thankfully, the characters are cautious and about as smart as a normal person would be in a bizarre situation like an island of killer kids. 

The couple slowly begins to realize that the children are the only people living on the island because they killed all the adults. Why they collectively snapped and why they're on a killing spree are never clearly explained, but the movie is better for it. Tom offers a hypothesis towards the end, suggesting that maybe it has something to do with the collective unconscious of children who have suffered during wartime. It's a pretty lame speculation, and thankfully the movie treats it as just that: speculation. It's much creepier never knowing exactly what caused the children of Almanzora to turn evil, but there are a few hints it's maybe something supernatural. The evil kids seem to have the ability to psychically turn regular kids into evil ones, just by staring at them. 

For a horror movie about killer kids, you might expect a great deal of violence, but Who Can Kill a Child? is tastefully restrained. The violence is very brief, and when it occurs, you really feel the dramatic weight. Horror movies, in particular, can be bad about cheapening the dramatic weight of violence. This, however, does an excellent job of making the few deaths feel shocking and impactful. We learn that the children were able to take over the island because no adult could bring themselves to kill a child (thus, the title). When push comes to shove and the tourist couple has to strike back, it's every bit as horrific as it should be.

This is a fantastic work of suspense. It's reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, both in the silent, shuffling antagonists, and the film's downbeat ending. The empty Spanish village is as eerie as it is beautiful. It's a film that had the potential to be a goofy exploitation movie about evil children but instead delivers a harrowing, nail-biting experience. If you weren't creeped out by kids before, you will be after this.