Come Out and Play (2013)

A remake of the 1976 Spanish Cult Classic, Who Can Kill a Child?, Come Out and Play works on the assumption that no one could ever kill a little kid, even if their lives were in danger.

Fair enough.

I'll be the first to say though that if a gang of kids were trying to kill/cut/chop me up, and do nasty shit to my corpse once I was dead, I'd kill those little bastards with no compunction whatsoever. Sure, I'd probably need intense therapy for the rest of my life, but there's no way that a bunch of 9-year-olds are taking me out without one hell of a fight.

Then again, I wouldn't be on some isolated Island with the hot Mexican sun beating down on my very pregnant wife's head, so the point is moot.

That's really the issue that I have with this remake, and to a lesser extent, the original film; people go to such lengths to avoid harming a gang of sweet little killer kids, that it doesn't take long before the whole experience becomes frustrating and tedious.

Let's break down on of the worst plots of the year, shall we?

Come Out and Play begins with an American couple on Holiday in Mexico; he's not much of a thinker, and she's 9 months pregnant and ready to pop. They decide to rent a tiny motorboat and head over to some isolated Island, crossing what I'm assuming are the choppy waters of The Gulf of Mexico in what looks to be 100+ degree weather, because who cares if any of that makes sense for a woman about to give birth to be doing.

Long walks in ridiculously hot weather is great for pregnant chicks.

When they arrive at La Isla de Fucked Up Kids, there's no one around, save for a few kids who are acting all creepy. No warning bells go off in their heads, because maybe the locals are all on a siesta. They walk through the deserted streets and happen upon a Cantina... which is also deserted. Still, no warning bells, but hey, let's open up a few beers and relax, despite the place looking like it was turned over by banditos on crack. Then hubby is all like "stay here and relax, I'm going to go find a store." Thankfully Nothing Creepy happens to her while he's gone that basically seals her fate.

Meet Nothing Creepy, a local waif.

After stealing a bunch of shit from the store (and totally missing the bloody corpse laying in the middle of aisle cinco), they head off and find the Island's Hotel, only to find that it too looks to have been ransacked and abandoned. Still not dismayed at how wrong everything feels, they do what any normal, rational people in their place would do, and just decided to check themselves in. All of this asinine behavior aside, can we take a second to ponder how dumb you have to be to just help yourself to shit in an isolated part of a Foreign Country?

No, Gringo. It was not meant to be.

Despite receiving a bunch of eerie radio communications and finding a girl beating an old man to death, they still make no attempt to leave La Isla de You're Fucked, Gringo. By the time one of the last surviving adults on the island shows up and tells them just how fucked that they truly are, it's far too late to do a damn thing about it... unless of course they're willing to kill a bunch of kids to survive.

Needless to say, the Gringo's are el screwedo.

"Foreigners... come out and play-eee-ay!"

 

Come Out and Play is a remake of Who Can Kill a Child? (1976), and while the mechanics of both films tend to confound us at times, their shared premise is a great one; a city full of crazed/possessed/"sick" kids is out to kill you, and if you want to live, you're going to have to do them in first. All of them.

The movie looks and sounds great, and is a well made effort overall. The atmosphere was pretty solid and remained tense throughout also.

What was the deal with the kids though? Was it a supernatural force that possessed them, or was it like in The Children, where some creepy virus made them all into little maniacs? We'd really love to know the answer to this question.

Siesta, forever.

Why even remake Who can Kill a Child? I understand why you remake movies, but if you're not going to add anything new with your version, or try something different with the premise, then it's all just window dressing, isn't it?

Don't grab the spare gun that the dead kid isn't using anymore, because there's only 63 more rabid, killer kids out there on the street who still want you dead. Also, once you finally use the gun that you do have, albeit very briefly, just go ahead and drop it, because why live? ...and did you not see the boat just sitting there at Abuela's house? It was right there for the taking! ...and where the hell was the human pinata scene, Makinov? 

The bottom line is that too many gaps in logic kept this movie from being truly great.

"Why are you doing this to us, Mexico!"

Makinov.

Yes, the director of this movie goes by a mysterious pseudonym, and wears a hood in interviews. Maybe we're too jaded for our own good, but that just comes off as nothing but pretentious to us, and it irks the living shit out of us.

Kids killing adults, adults killing kids, a baby killing their mother from inside of the womb... this movie is pretty disturbing, violence-wise. Towards the end, the blood and gore get crazy graphic, mostly involving little kids playing with decapitated body parts. This one is not for the squeamish.

He's a Wrangler, and he's, one tough customer...

 Nothing that we didn't already learn from the 1976 original. Not one new thing.

If you can look past the film's silly plot-holes and gaping chasms in logic, then you might just have a fun time watching Come Out and Play. We recommend that you instead seek out and watch the original film, because for some reason that version just worked better for us, despite both films being nearly identical in execution. *Maybe because it's old and grainy, which always tends to make movies feel creepier?

What this film does get right, it gets very right, but it's definitely going to divide audiences and test most people's Bullshit Meters.

It should be on Netflix by now, so if you're looking to check this one out, that's probably the best way to do it. 

C-

Vinessa Shaw was looking good in this movie, even with her character being really, really pregnant.