CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (aka LIMBO, 2014)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Iván Noel
Starring Ana María Giunta, Toto Muñoz, Sabrina Ramos, Lauro Veron

While definitely low budget, CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT is filled with new and original ideas centering on vampire basics and makes for a wholly unique horror film that many won’t be able to make it through due to some complex themes at play.

Investigative reporter Alicia (Sabrina Ramos) hears about an orphanage housing children with a special illness and sets out to write up a story on them. Upon arrival she meets the matronly Erda (Ana María Giunta), who takes care of her wards who sleep by day and become active and lively when the sun goes down. Alicia realizes that the children of the community known as Limbo are vampires when she recognizes a young boy who appears not to have aged a day from her childhood. This boy, Siegfried (Toto Muñoz), still has love for the now adult Alicia, and the two begin an innocent but suggestive romance of sorts while the great grandson of Dracula, El Conde (translated to The Count and played by the equally cute and devilish-looking Lauro Veron), prepares the children for an all-out attack by vampire hunters who worship Bram Stoker, a traitor to the vampire race after he wrote a true tell-all novel about the king of the vamps.

Filled with fun ideas, there are those who will immediately go on a tirade about this Argentinian film due to the suggested relationship between Alicia and the forever 12 year old Siegfried. While for some reason the idea of an adult woman in a relationship with a pre-teen boy is slightly more stomachable than if the genders were reversed, it is still the creepiest aspect of this film. That said, there is no overt physical relationship here between the two (though Siegfried does ask Alicia if he could penetrate her, meaning bite her, but suggesting something a bit more sexual) and the relationship is played as a strong friendship more than anything else. Still, the suggestion is there and it will creep the hell out of a lot of folks.

The more interesting aspects of this film involve the backstory between Bram Stoker and Dracula and how these children came to be. The notion of ageless youth is definitely something often explored in vampire films, but this one really goes deeper than any Kirsten Dunst performance. Here there is a wicked juxtaposition between the childish energy the little vamps exude and the ultragore and heinous deeds they unleash which is pretty powerful. The final rumble between the white pajama-wearing bloodsuckers and the vamp hunters all decked in black is visually stunning, as the kids play soccer with severed heads and hopscotch with their innards. It’s definitely a gorefest of the highest proportion, and the kids seem like they had a blast.

All around the performances here are pretty stellar, especially the demonically cherubic performance by Lauro Veron as El Conde. His wide face and hollow eyes are pretty terrifying, but the way he coldly orders the kids around makes Vernon look powerful beyond his years. The film does have a hi def, shot on video quality that indicates that this isn’t the highest of budgets, but the infectious energy of the vampire attacks and the ambiguous and morally challenging themes make CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT a hard film to look away from.