Maitland Favorites: Who Can Kill a Child?
Second in an occasional series recommending lesser-known, kick-you-in-the-gut classics.
First, kudos for the title, a literal translation of that of the 1976 Spanish suspense-thriller Quien Puede Mara un Niño? Killing children... that’s heavy, which is probably why so many bad-kids movies posit them as inhuman aliens or literal hellspawn, from Children of the Damned (1964) to The Omen franchise (1976- 2024 and probably beyond). So it takes serious cojones to portray preteens as capable of shocking violence not because they’re necessarily possessed but just because they’re stuck betwixt and between “I want” impulsiveness and the brakes of adult understanding that you can’t just take anything you want and smash everything that pisses you off. They’re works in progress who need a firm hand on the reins. That’s why child-rearing is a job. And from the hard-to-watch opening montage of documentary footage showing children suffering from war, in refugee camps and worse — much worse — the filmmakers make clear it’s a job at which humanity too often fails.
Cut to a bunch of shiny, happy people enjoying themselves on a Spanish white-sand beach until a dead woman is washed up by the surf. An ambulance whisks away the corpse because dead bodies are bad for an economy that relies heavily on foreign tourists — like attractive young British couple Tom (Lewis Fiander) and very-pregnant Evelyn (Prunella Ransome). They’re en route to Benevite, a popular seaside destination, and arrive in time for an annual fiesta with fireworks, parades, street music and giant puppets, including a fire-belching dragon — the sparks emerge from its rear as through it’s farting flames on the unwary.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Maitland on Movies to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.