anxietyresister If you're going to look after a child, make sure they don't live anywhere near a graveyard. Especially if said kid has a habit of drawing gory pictures and disappears at night among the tombstones to see her 'friends'. But, our long haired heroine, oblivious to all the signs, shacks up with her family the Nortons, which include a strict father and a dullard older brother who becomes a love interest for our budding babysitter. Even more spooky than the zombie gang outside is the cast's tendency to talk even when their lips aren't moving, and for the words to not match the movement of their mouths. But enough of that.. domestic animals are being sacrificed, old ladies are having eyeballs torn out and the orchestra won't shut up during any scene, even the quiet ones. Oh, and the editor is having a day off going by the way the film drones on.In fact, it would been better if everybody involved had taken a breather, smelt what they'd signed up for and gone AWOL. Yes, I know it's hard to get into movies these days, but this sort of starter point is not one on your CV you'd want. If would be like a trainee farm labourer having a conviction for chicken molesting. Featuring one of the worst lead performances ever by the shrill Laurel Barnett, and another almost equally as bad by the charisma-free child actress Rosalie Cole (The next Dakota Fanning she ain't) the film meanders on and on with nothing but padding until we get what passes for a climax.This involves five or six members of the undead barricading our utterly useless heroine in a shed, while her bit of rough fends off these ghouls with a plank of wood, a one shell shotgun and whatever he can lay his hands on. But back up a minute.. earlier on they were in the car, and they accidentally discovered that the creatures found the noise of the horn so repellent they shuffled off at the sound of it. So do they stay where they are safe? No of course not, they run off to this abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, so the bloke can prove what a hardnut he is the girl can act like she's having a nervous breakdown.Finally, the film closes. It doesn't end, it just goes to a grinding halt. The main character wanders back to her vehicle covered in fake blood, as if nothing horrible had happened. But, my dear viewer, something horrible has happened. You have just sat through one of the most lamebrained, boring horror films you're ever likely to see, and lost 82 minutes of your life you'll never get back. Just think.. years from now on your deathbed, what you'd trade an hour and 22 minutes for just to spend a bit of extra time with your family. Sadly, it's already too late for me. Don't you make the same mistake :( 2/10

lovecraft231 Rosilan (Rosalie Cole) is a girl with some problems-like her psychic abilities that allow her to talk to her dead mother, levitate objects, and raise the dead.From producer Harry ("Axe","Rituals", "Hitch-Hike To Hell" and plenty of soft core flicks) Novak comes "The Child", an uneven but still watchable take on the Zombie movie. The movie itself takes a while to get going, and like many movies of this type, the acting is terrible (especially Rosalie Cole, whose character is too much of a brat to be interesting or threatening), and the electronic score by Rob Wallace is grating.Still, when the final 20 minutes kick in, the movie kicks up. There's some nice moments, and the zombies themselves, while not Romero or Fulci levels, are still pretty creepy. The make up effects are also pretty good, especially considering the movie's budget."The Child" is an alright Bad Seed movie, only with the supernatural and the living dead instead of a killer kid. Don't go into it expecting much, and you might sort of enjoy it. It would make a nice double bill movie with "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", I'll tell you that.

Coventry A pretty lady is hired as the nanny of a spooky little girl called Rosalie. The girl is a bit of a loner, mostly hanging out in the woods that surround her house and grieving over her dead mother. Thing totally go awry when Rosalie starts to act more and more like a little psychopath, drawing morbid pictures of her family and hiring her "friends" from the woods to kill people that get in her way. There's some eerie atmosphere in "The Child" as well as some ominous guiding music and macabre scenery. The pacing is slow, though, and there's much too much weirdness going on that remains unexplained. The kid is okay, I guess, but not half as creepy as the juvenile murderers in "The Children", "Bloody Birthday" or "Village of the Damned". The budget obviously was very limited, resulting in poor editing and cheesy make-up effects. Not a bad little movie, but you'll forget about it pretty soon.

Hessian499 Not great, but not bad, either, The Child is a lot like Dawn of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead set in the late 1930s. The cars and sets look like the era they are set in (the 1930s) but the sitter Aliceanne wears a dress that looks like it is more from the 1890s and both she and the adult son of the farmer have 1970s hair styles - not much consistency in this period drama! The film is also inconsistent in its lighting, as one scene will have daylight, the next scene will be night, then go back to day, etc. While it does have some technical flaws and takes a while to get exciting, it does turn into a good zombie movie in the final twenty minutes. The two heroes (unknown performers who look a lot like a young Susan Dey and Michael Cole from the Mod Squad) have to try to fight off a group of zombies in a remote shack, in the film's exciting climax. The zombies themselves amble along like the creatures in the films of George Romero, but have excellent makeup and look quite demonic. It is not completely like Romero's films, in that zombies are not rampaging throughout all of the setting of 1930s America in this movie, but you do get the same sense of desperation and hopelessness in this production by Harry Novak. The script does plod along and you really never get to know any of the characters well (even Aliceanne acts a bit strange at times), but it is worth a look if you can find it. Reminded me of what would happen if a bunch of zombies attacked the Waltons!