Child Eater (2016)
Directed by Erlingur Thoroddsen
Starring Cait Bliss, Colin Critchley, Jason Martin, Dave Klasko, Brandon Smalls, James Wilcox, Melinda Chilton, Andrew Kaempfer

This is another title that snuck by me when it was making the rounds a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it got the attention it deserved because I am just hearing about it now. So I’m trying to help either re-start the ball rolling, or at least continue it, because this little flick is more than worth your time.

After a very bizarre opening with a little girl and a missing eye, we fast forward a few years and meet Helen, played convincingly by Cait Bliss. She is the sheriff’s daughter who seems to have some of her own problems. She gets volunteered to babysit for a family that has recently moved into the small town. It’s just the father and his young son, who seems to have his own issues at night. It doesn’t help that the house they moved into has some sort of dark history to it, which is cleverly hinted or eluded to, but we don’t get all the details. Just yet. During the evening, Helen’s boyfriend shows up, which she isn’t too happy about. But just as we think we’re going to learn what is troubling Helen, the young boy, Lucas, disappears. As they quickly start searching the wooded area around the house, the dark secrets of the area slowly reveal themselves. Lucas is played by Colin Critchley and does a great job here, acting well beyond his years, enough that it has you worrying about his safety.

The more they search, the more we learn about Robert Bowery, a local nutcase that was kidnapping children and eating their eyeballs. He had some sort of degenerative disease with his own vision and had convinced himself that eating eyeballs would help cure him. And the younger the eyes, the more he thought it helped. For most of the movie, this character is hidden in the dark, never really getting a good look at him. This helps add the creepiness of the character and the effectiveness of the story. As Helen keeps searching for Lucas, more of the history of this place, and of Bowery comes to light.

It is always so refreshing to see a film that does something that most Hollywood films just can’t seem to do…and that is something original. While many have tried to come up with the next Freddy or Jason, some sort of new slasher character to start a new franchise with, they just can’t seem to make it click. But writer/director Thoroddsen has done just that here. What is different is that he seemed more interested in making something really creepy, set inside a good little story, and filled it out with very believable characters that are brought to life by a cast of talented actors, rather than some quick knock-off. With a lot of these low budgeted horror films, more attention is put into the effects or the monster’s look and not the acting, which is usually fair at best. For the viewer to really get involved in the story, it takes good actors for you to care about them, which then draws you into the film, and helps build tension and suspense when they are in danger. You get all of that here.

Based on his 2012 short film of the same name, Thoroddsen decided to expand that into a his first feature length project and I think he knocked it out of the park. I have to give this director so much credit for coming up with not only an original look for the monster here, but the story behind it as well. We get just enough history about the character to let your mind ponder it without going too far to take away any mystery, something that sequels tend to do. After seeing this film, I’m really excited to see what else Thoroddsen has done and what he has yet to do!