Come Out and Play (2012)

This is the remake of Who Can Kill A Child? I mentioned in the introduction of yesterday's review, which I got on Blu-Ray from my friend Newt in 2020 and which was my introduction to this whole story and concept. As I said yesterday, when I first watched the movie, I thought it was fine and all, but I certainly didn't think it was amazing. Looking up reviews, it seems to be a rather polarizing film, with some finding it to be quite compelling and even daring, while others agree with me that it's a very so-so horror flick overall. For his money, Newt feels it's something of an improvement over the original 1976 film, and I do agree that it does take that story, cut out all the fat and superfluous parts, and whittle it down to a lean 86 minutes, as well as throws in some appreciated rawness, especially in the performances, and makes other improvements. However, at the same time, I miss the quietly atmospheric aspects of Who Can Kill A Child?, as Come Out and Play instead goes for just a constant state of creepiness and dread throughout. In addition, while the protagonists of that film certainly weren't amazing, the main characters here have even less depth and come off as quite bland, the children are portrayed as more overtly evil, making them less effective to me, and, while I appreciate the lack of documentary footage of real-world atrocities this time around, the movie is much more gruesome than the original and, in some instances, feels needlessly so. But its biggest problem is that it's virtually the same movie as Who Can Kill A Child? It's not a shot-for-shot remake, per se, but it hits all the same story beats, a number of scenes and images are recreated almost verbatim, and, in the end, has little new to offer aside from the couple being American, the story being set in Mexico rather than Spain, and a handful of other tweaks, resulting in a big wasted opportunity.

Much more interesting than the movie itself is its director, a shadowy, mysterious man known only as Makinov. Virtually nothing is known about his background, save for some information that was once on the official Toronto International Film Festival website (that page no longer comes up when I click the link on the article on Entertainment Weekly.com I got this from). According to them, he was born in Belarus, worked in Russia as a focus puller, and shot two documentary films in Mexico before being hired by the producers at the production company, Canana Films, to direct Come Out and Play, which they'd been planning to make since 2007. The final film is almost completely Makinov's creation, as he not only directed it but was also the screenwriter, main producer, cinematographer, editor, and, supposedly, even did the score (I say "supposedly" because, on the film's IMDB page, someone named Santiago Cendejas is credited as having scored the film as Makinov; it may very well be the same person under a different name, but who knows?). He's also more reclusive a filmmaker than Stanley Kubrick or even Terence Malick, determined to keep his identity secret because, as he himself said, "Through anonymity, I can be all I want." That mask you see him wearing in that photo is something he supposedly wears all the time, even while writing the screenplay and actually directing the movie. Moreover, according to the article on Entertainment Weekly's website and e-mail conversations with Makinov himself, he was sometimes not even on the set, instead communicating with the actors occasionally through a radio. This whole thing is so bizarre that some initially thought it was a hoax perpetrated by another director, such as Eli Roth, who's well-known for being an admirer of Who Can Kill A Child?, or even the producers behind the movie and the production company. But, no, according to both the producers and one of the lead actors, Makinov is a real person and actually acts this way.

When Come Out and Play was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was accompanied by a video manifesto from Makinov, which was uploaded to YouTube (it's still there, if you're curious to see it). After he smashes a cellphone with a crowbar, he gives his views on filmmaking, the modern world, and life in general, and they're quite... troubling, to say the least: "For a time now, I have been torn and disgusted of seeing stupid modern life. We grow confused at

what really matters. That’s why I am devoted to make this horror stories. To remind us who we are without a cell phone. We must remember we are made of blood. An old proverb says that it is better to murder during time of plague. I would say the same when we talk about cinema. People watching stupid heroes saving the world, when the world is surrounded by pain. What a joke. Cinema should teach us about pain. That’s why I make these precious sad stories. To remind us that life is limited and that we are gonna die. I believe in the mystery of the spirit. That’s why I want to scream at the stupid person that keeps checking photos in Facebook when you can go to the woods and get yourself a good fuck... As a beloved writer says, I believe in my mask, the man I made up is me. I believe in my dance, and my destiny. Cheers." He says all this while standing in the woods, as the sound of someone sawing wood can be heard offscreen. And yet, despite what he says about modern living, he was somewhat active on Twitter around the time the film was circulating through festivals, asking, "If a fella wants to buy my film. What do they want to buy? The reels? The pain? The people inside?", and sent another manifesto for its screening at the AFI Festival in November of 2012. After it was all said and done, Makinov said he had another project in mind concerning animals becoming self-aware, but no one's heard from him since, so who knows if he's ever going to do it or if he's even still alive?

Just like in Who Can Kill A Child?, the protagonists of Come Out and Play are a couple of tourists, this time Americans Francis (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Beth (Vinessa Shaw), on vacation in a Spanish-speaking country, which happens to be Mexico in this case. Beth, like Evelyn in the original, is pregnant with their third child and, while her husband speaks Spanish quite well, she barely speaks it at all. After staying overnight in a Mexican village that's in the midst of a wild, loud

fiesta, they rent a boat to reach the isolated island of Punta Hueca. Upon arriving, they find the place entirely deserted, save for the local children, who are behaving strangely. Francis chalks the absence of any adults up to the island's own fiestas, figuring everybody's probably hung over or still asleep. Finding a deserted bar, he leaves Beth there while he goes to find a store to find something for them to eat. While he's gone, Beth is visited by a young girl named Maria, who takes an interest in her pregnancy, touching her belly and putting her ear to it. Also, while he roams the village by himself, Francis gets the eerie feeling that he's being watched. After reuniting with Beth, having an off-putting second encounter with a young boy who was fishing down by the docks when they arrived, and receiving messages from a woman speaking Swedish on the bar's two-way radio, they find the local hostel, only for it to be deserted as well. Francis searches the place for two Swedish guests he finds are registered there, but while he doesn't find them, Beth spots an old man hiding behind a wall with his cane sticking out. Before Francis can speak with him, a little girl shows up, sees him, and starts beating on him with his cane. Francis stops her, wrestling the cane away, but when he asks why she did it, she just smiles, giggles, and runs away. He attempts to help the old man, who's still alive, but when he returns with supplies to bind his wounds, he finds the children have taken him and witnesses them stabbing him repeatedly as they drag him across the ground, before finishing him off by smashing his head with a large rock. He runs back to the hostel, chases after the girl, who's threatening Beth with the cane, and barricades them inside the interior courtyard.

Unlike Tom in the original, Francis tells Beth right up front that the children killed the old man, one of the few changes made to the protagonists and also one of the few that's beneficial, as it allows the movie to bypass that awkward section where Tom lied to Evelyn about what he witnessed. Other changes made by Makinov in the writing were to drop all the bits of backstory and conflict that existed between Tom and Evelyn. Here, there's none of the uneasiness that lingered between them

over Tom's initial wish to abort their current unborn child or the history Tom had with the island, as he'd visited it some time before, and Makinov also doesn't invent any new bits of character all his own, save for Francis not telling Beth that their boat doesn't have enough fuel for them to make it back to the mainland (which is superfluous). In short, you have almost the same story, except with two protagonists who aren't as rich as their 1976 counterparts. And I mean it when

I say "the same story," as from there, it all falls in line with the original film: they meet a man at the hostel who tells them how the kids suddenly began attacking the adults the night before, Francis tries to save the Swedish woman but the kids murder her first, he and Beth escape to the other side of the island and take shelter in a woman's home, only for the evil kids to turn her children homicidal as well, and they retreat back to the village. Beth even stops Francis from running over the kids, causing him to crash the truck they've commandeered, which

makes her look especially stupid since, unlike Evelyn, she knows exactly what's going on. They also take shelter in a jailhouse, hole up inside a cell, a kid tries to shoot them through the window, and Francis is forced to shoot him first, a course of action that horrifies the both of them.

It's during this late part of the story where our main characters manage to give much more emotional and affecting performances than those in the original. The breakdown Beth has over Francis shooting that boy is really gut-wrenching, as she cries and asks why the kids are doing this to them, as well as how it got to the point where Francis had to do what he did. It's all Francis can do to calm her down by embracing her and speaking to her softly. But Beth's death scene from the fetus attacking her from the

inside is where the acting truly shines. First, while it was implied before, it's made clear here that Beth is so traumatized and shocked by what's happened that she imagines hearing the children laughing. She becomes hysterical about it, at one point thinking it's the one kid who's still lying dead in the alcove behind the window, with Francis having to stop her from fiddling around with the bars. Then, she starts feeling pain from inside her womb, and it's clear from her sweating and yelling that it's

really excruciating, as she says the unborn baby is stabbing her. Like the children laughing, it's suggested she may just be having a miscarriage that turns out to be fatal, as she gets Francis to feel her stomach and he says he doesn't feel anything. She flat out yells, "Take it out! It's killing me! It's killing me! It's killing me!", as Francis frantically tries to figure out what to do. Blood leaks and drips down from between her legs, she mentions the encounter she had with Maria at the bar, and dies suddenly after several pained screams and with a

lot of blood running down her leg. The way her eyes glaze over and her head goes limp does make her look like someone who just died, but it's Francis' reaction that sells it. While Tom was mainly in weary shock over Evelyn's death, Francis, after failing to revive Beth, lets out anguished yells and positively breaks down crying, begging for it not to be so. He even looks under her skirt, saying "no" repeatedly, clearing in denial, and then lets out more anguished cries. And unlike Tom, who simply left Evelyn's body behind,

Francis wraps up Beth and cremates her body in the cell. From there, like in the original movie, he shoots down a bunch of kids, makes his way to the dock, fights off and brutally kills a bunch of them as he tries to untie the boat, only to be gunned down when the Coast Guard shows up (here, their appearance comes about because Francis sent out a distress signal from the radio equipment in the jailhouse).

Makinov also pared down the already minute number of supporting characters in the story, leaving just three major ones intact: the man whom Francis and Beth rent the boat from, the man on the island who tells them what's happened with the children, and the woman who momentarily takes them in following their flight from the village. All three of them serve the exact same purpose as before. The man (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) on the island, again, initially threatens Francis and Beth

with a broken bottle but they're able to talk him down and, once he's calmed himself, he tells them what happened the night before, that the children suddenly began attacking and killing the adults and that his own wife was killed in the mayhem. He also gives a bit more substance to the still ultimately unknown cause to the children's madness, as he mentions that both his daughter and his neighbor's son were suddenly wracked with pain and found it difficult to breath. And just like in the original, he's lured to his death by his own

daughter. (On a side note, doesn't that guy look like Robert Kerman in Cannibal Holocaust?) The man who rents them the boat, Felipe (Gerardo Taracena), comes off as a bit more sketchy than the man in the original, being hesitant to rent it to them at first and, even when Francis agrees to pay him for it, seems a bit annoyed by their very presence when they show up the next morning. He is willing to take a down payment of $2000 and, after ensuring that Francis knows how to work the new engine he installed into his boat, points them in the right direction to the island of Punta Hueca. He also tells Francis they'll need to refuel in order to make it back and that he'll probably meet them on the island the next day, when he delivers some meat, but like in the original, whether or not he ever did make it is never revealed. Finally, the woman who lives on the other side of the island initially thinks Francis and Beth are looking for a hotel when they show up but, when she sees they need help, she allows them into her house. She's shown to be kinder than the woman in the original, as she never gets physical with her kids, and also treats the strangers very well. But, like in the original, her death is not seen but heavily implied by the mass of children moving in on her house as Francis and Beth flee.

Not surprisingly, there aren't as many standouts among the kids, save for the counterparts to some of the more memorable ones from the original: the boy with the fishing pole, the girl who visits Beth while she's alone at the bar, the girl who beats the old man with his own cane, and the one man's daughter, all of whom, again, serve the exact same purposes as in the original. In general, these kids tend to act more overtly menacing than in the original. While they do seem normal enough when

Francis and Beth first arrive on the island, their interactions with them tend to be especially off-putting. For instance, the boy fishing down at the dock has a constant evil glare on his face, rather than doing so only when Francis tries to have a look at his bait. Also, Maria, the girl who encounters Beth in the bar, while still being all smiles and cheery like her 70's counterpart, is a tad more uncomfortable in her interest in Beth's pregnancy and the way she touches and puts her ear to her stomach. There are,

indeed, instances of that disturbing motif of the kids acting as though they're playing a fun game while doing the most horrific things, notably when the girl beats the old man and just laughs when Francis stops her and asks her why she did it, and in a truly unsettling montage near the end, where you see them doing things like burying one brutalized corpse in the sand the way you would someone at the beach and a girl making a necklace out of body parts. But, at the same time, when they're attacking, they tend to yell and chant more

than cheer and laugh, again, making them come off as more typically evil. That notion ratchets up during the latter half, when the kids trap Francis and Beth in the jailhouse, the one tries to shoot them through the window (when they see him, he has an expression of pure malice on his face rather than an innocent-looking smile like in the original), and when they confront Francis before pursuing him to the dock and trying to stop him from leaving.

Like in Who Can Kill A Child?, the exact cause of these children's homicidal tendencies is left unexplained, with no suggestion this time of it being payback for adults and their decades of apathy towards children in general. But, again, when Francis and Beth meet the man who tells them of how it suddenly began, he mentions that some children started gasping for air before it happened, subtly hinting at the original novel's explanation of it being through their breathing in a strange pollen.

But, just like in the original film, it's shown to be passed on to other children through sustained eye contact, again suggesting that it is something supernatural. And, also like in the original, once Francis has been gunned down by the Coast Guard, the children murder them when they come ashore and plan to use their boat to reach the mainland and continue spreading their madness.

Among the many hats Makinov wore during production was cinematographer and, for the most part, I think he handles it well. He often alternates between shooting handheld to traditional, stable camerawork and often, rather than cutting when you would typically expect him to, like in a transition from a wide-shot to a close-up, he instead just pans the camera over or zooms in. For instance, during the climax, the camera merely pans from Francis fighting off the kids to the approaching Coast Guard, leading to him getting shot before he knows

what happened. While Makinov does tend to go handheld for the chase and action scenes, it's never so shaky that you can't tell what's going on, which I appreciate. As for the film's actual look, while it has a bit of that washed out color grading and timing that I don't care for, I can deal with it here, as it helps give off the feel that this is taking place on a hot day in Mexico. Makinov does manage to shoot the locations really well during the daytime, making them come off as nicely exotic, and the shots in the open ocean when they first travel to the

island are just as lovely as those in the original. He also definitely knows how to shoot things in an ominous manner and manages to come up with some memorable images all his own, like the ghostly shot of the kids' hands pounding on the glass to get at the Swedish woman, Francis entering the church to see the kids mutilating the woman's body, the kids standing in the shadows, watching the couple, or when you see a distant shot of children advancing on the woman's house. He

does some interesting things with the color palette, as well, with many dark interiors or nighttime exteriors being bathed in a certain color: amber in the opening scene in the streets where the fiesta is happening, green in the bar when Francis meets with Felipe, light-blue or even whitish inside Francis and Beth's hotel room and the abandoned hostel on the island, and a murky, sickly-looking feel to the scene inside the jailhouse. One of my personal favorite interior scenes in terms of its look

is in the house they take shelter in, as it's mostly dark inside but the sunlight coming through the windows and the open front door really make it look cool, with the blue window curtains adding to it. And when Francis burns Beth's body after her death, the glow from the fire on his face accentuates his anguish. But, on a bad note, the dark look of the interiors and the dim exteriors do become a handicap at points, as it's sometimes hard to make out what you're looking at.

I must admit that the setting of Mexico and the island of Punta Hueca is more personally appealing to me than the Spanish location in Who Can Kill A Child?, as I always like tropical locations like this. Like Almanzora in the original, Punta Hueca (which, according to Makinov, was actually Holbox Island in Quintana Roo, Mexico) is an isolated place with a small, nondescript, simple village that does contain a handful of modern conveniences, like an air-conditioned bar, a small grocery store, a radio control station, a nice hostel

with a lovely, interior courtyard and comfortable rooms, and even an arcade with pinball machines and fussball tables. There's also a jailhouse, this one with radios making it possible to contact the mainland or Coast Guard, and an old church which, again, is the site of one of the children's horrific acts. The main difference is that the place has that overtly tropical feel you get in places in this part of the world, be it around Florida, the southernmost United States, or in Central and South America. You have sandy beaches, palm trees, dirt roads,

less of a sense of claustrophobia in the spaces between the village's buildings, and much simpler designs for them, with many being made out of straw and leaves. Also, like the original, the opposite side of the island is dotted here and there with small, wooden shacks and houses inhabited by fishermen and their families. Finally, as Narciso Ibanez Serrador did in the 70's, Makinov is able to create an eerie atmosphere during the first act when they arrive on the island and find it seemingly

deserted, save for the children, before slowly learning what's going on. Then, late in the movie, he goes a step further and gives us a montage of the abandoned village at night, as the children do absolutely horrific things with the remains of their victims, as if pulling back the curtain to show us what was going on behind closed doors when Francis and Beth first arrived and were wandering around.

When we get to the scene where the girl beats the old man with his cane, it's done in the same implied manner as Who Can Kill A Child?, as the actual blows are obscured by the wall the man hides behind and we only see the aftermath when the girl runs away. However, when she hits him, we do hear the man grunting and then gasping for air afterward, a prelude to the more visceral and blunt approach Makinov takes with the violence. This time, the old man is badly beaten but doesn't die right away. That comes when Francis goes to grab

some alcohol and other supplies to mend his wounds, only to return and find his body has been taken. Rather than turning him into a human pinata, the children drag him by his feet into a secluded spot and stab him repeatedly in the torso with knives and garden tools, finishing him off by dropping a big rock onto his head. Though the impact of the latter is only heard, it's far more visceral and grisly than the already unsettling human pinata scene from the original. After seeing this, Francis runs back to the hostel and, telling

Beth what happened, investigates a noise upstairs. Checking one room, he finds the bodies of two murdered guests in there, but it's the death of the Swedish woman where the movie really ups the ante in terms of sheer brutality. Failing to find her at the radio control station, Francis runs to a nearby church when he hears the bell tolling and, inside, near a fallen statue of a crucified Christ, he sees some boys playing around with the woman's body. Here, rather than just desecrating her corpse by

removing her clothes, they've also completely mutilated her by splitting open her torso, removing her organs, and slicing off almost all of the flesh around her mouth. We also see the death of the man they meet at the hostel, although it's not as gruesome as some of the others, as he merely gets kicked by the kids and dragged away.

The death of the boy who tries to shoot Francis and Beth through the cell window isn't that much more gruesome than in the original (in fact, I think it's actually slightly less so), but shortly afterward, we get into the disturbing montage of the kids playing around with their victims' corpses and body parts throughout the village. A boy fiddles around with an eyeball lying on the floor of an arcade, a girl paints the toenails on a severed foot, another girl saws off a hand, some boys half-bury a body in the sand on the beach, another kid drags a severed

head through a hallway on a leash, a group are seen playing around with another severed head, which they scoot back and forth across a table, and one last girl makes a necklace out of various body parts and extremities. As expected, the results of Beth's baby killing her on the inside are much bloodier and more realistic than before, and it's given an added touch of grisliness when Francis burns her body afterward. And the climax takes what was already pretty violent and bloody before and cranks

it up tenfold. While his shooting down some of the kids is actually not bloody at all, when he runs out to the dock and has to defend himself, he goes postal on these kids. He punches and kicks them hard, bashes them in the head with an oar, and then makes sure they're dead by smashing their heads in with it, while he's getting beaten on and stabbed himself. He not only does this to a boy but, when Maria comes at him with a hammer, he knocks her into the boat and then finishes her off in that gruesome manner, stabbing her in the head repeatedly. This is what the Coast Guard sees when they come in, shooting Francis and killing him without any warning.

I apologize if it feels like you've been reading the exact same post as yesterday but that's the thing about Come Out and Play: it is virtually the same film as Who Can Kill A Child? Save for the movie wasting no time in getting to the island, its being grittier and gnarlier, and some other minor differences here and there, the story plays out exactly the same way, beat for beat. It's so similar, in fact, that if you've already seen one of these films, I wouldn't even bother with the other. And,

for that reason, I have to say that, for all of the things he does get right here, I think Makinov is a total pretentious douchebag. The guy goes through these elaborate and, I'm sure for those involved with the movie's production, rather inconvenient measures to keep his identity unknown, including relaying his directions through a radio instead of actually being on set and complaining while looking through the camera lens that he can't see well because of the masks eye-holes, makes all 

these unsettling and pretentious remarks about modern life and technology (never mind that he had to use said technology to make the movie in the first place), and gives his "deep" philosophical reasons for making the movie in those manifestos... and then does little more than create a virtual xerox of a movie that already exists and, while fair enough, was far from accomplished in its own right. He could've done so much more with this story and concept but decided to almost go the Gus

Van Sant Psycho route while putting in more gore, brutality, and sheer unpleasant imagery (when the guy is telling Francis and Beth what happened with the kids, snot drips out of his nose; charming). That really irks me and makes me want to tell him to piss off. It's small wonder why he hasn't done anything since then, probably because no one wants to deal with him.

And for someone who claimed he didn't want to promote himself, Makinov put his name in big bold letters on both the front and ending of the movie, eschewing just about everyone else involved with it (I know he was the creative force behind many aspects of it, but it's not like he did every single thing). The opening credits consist only of Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw's names, as well as mention the original novel, while Makinov's name is above the title, as if he's on the level of Alfred Hitchcock or John Carpenter. The ending

credits are virtually non-existent, first declaring, "MADE BY MAKINOV," listing three more of the actors, thanking the people of Holbox Island for their support, listing several of the production and distribution companies, and finishing on a card that reads, "TO THE MARTYRS OF STALINGRAD." Other than Makinov's supposedly being born in Belarus, I have no idea what the significance of that last bit is.

I will give some credit to the music score, also supposedly the work of Makinov. While it decides to go for a constant atmosphere of pure dread rather than Who Can Kill A Child?'s eerie juxtaposition of a childlike melody with horrific murders caused by kids, it is pretty effective. The most memorable part is this very eerie, high-pitched, electronic theme, which sounds almost like a really small whistle and plays during Francis and Beth's traveling to the island and during the closing moments. The music is electronic for the most part and, again, just creates a feeling of constant dread throughout, with low drones and rumblings, as well as an occasional use of a tribal-sounding drum piece for some of the more intense sequences which kind of fits with the mindset of the kids and how they operate. Although it doesn't offer much in terms of variety, the score, again, serves its purpose well.

I guess if Who Can Kill A Child? was too slow and not gory enough for you, you may want to give Come Out and Play a shot, but for me, this flick could've been so much more than what it is. While the mysterious Makinov does a good job in the movie's look, shooting the locations, creating an atmosphere of dread, getting some instances of great acting out of the leads, and scoring the movie, in the end, he does little more than copy the original film almost beat for beat. The characters are all the same and serve the same purpose, the two protagonists aren't even as developed as they were before, and if you've seen the original, save for some little differences here and there, you can predict the entire story, and that's not a good thing. All Makinov truly did different was make the kids more overtly evil and crank up the gore and visceral nature of the story, to the point where it seems like he's reveling in it, making me annoyed at his very pretentious and self-important nature. Like with the original, I would advise giving Come Out and Play a shot, if for no reason than to see which direction you prefer, but for me, if you're going to make yourself out to be a profound, reclusive artist, you'd deliver more than a virtual xerox or you're going to come off like a hack.