 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Children of Sin • Year: 2022 • Country: USA • Director: Christopher Wesley Moore • Main cast: Meredith Mohler, Lewis Hines, Jo-Ann Robinson, Ana-Claire Henley, Cami Roebuck, Christopher Wesley Moore • Runtime: 95 minutes • Production company: CWM Entertainment • TRAILER |
We live in a fast world. We’ve become creatures with a very low sense of attention and very little patience. Experts would say that is because of the social media, the constant exposition to content, videos that must catch the audience within the first 2 seconds, and fingers that scroll the walls of the app so fast that it’s almost impossible to absorb all the information shared. And that also gets reflected in our attention when it comes the time to enjoy a movie. Not only do we judge a book by its cover, but we also condemn the whole watching because of those very first impressions. It happens to me, who I have seen many many movies in my years, but I’m pretty sure it happens to most of us all.
Children of Sin (2022) is a low-budget movie with a script that might not be the most original ever, weak acting performances, and a direction and execution that at moments can feel pretty amateur. But that doesn’t mean it is a movie that we must ditch. It has a few hidden surprises and some moments that any horror lover can enjoy.
In the first steps of the movie, we are exposed to two of the most used cliches when it comes to family and generation conflicts: Religious fanatism and the rebellion of a teenager. Because a single mother of two teenagers has found a new man, a man with a home and economic stability, that can provide a ceiling to her family. But that man is a religious freak, a follower of a sect called Children of Abraham (can the name be more disgusting and scarier?), and won’t tolerate any misconduct or unfollowing of his strict and senseless rules. The mother obliges and accepts with suspicious happiness, since she’s found the financial and sentimental comfort she was craving, and the brother also succumbs to the new authoritarian situation for finally he has found a father figure, but the sister won’t accept it. And when under the eyes of the devout parents the teenager siblings start to sin, they are sent to the house of the sect to be reprogrammed and/or punished for those so-called sins.
What happens after follows most of the events we have seen in many other movies of the sort, with the sect leaders being even crazier than what you could expect, opening the doors to other kinds of horrors besides religious crap, and leading to a survival situation. Most of the things happening in the movie are taken to an extreme. It is true that living in such a religious environment can be desperate and terrifying enough, but what happens in Children of Sin (2022) goes beyond reality. This is what one can expect in a movie of these characteristics, obviously.
Writer and director Christopher Wesley Moore is aware of his limitations in most aspects when it comes to filmmaking. Therefore, he pushes the limits of the story to make it as sordid and shocking as possible. The result is a film that is never credible, but it still has a few moments that due to the gruesome and surreal of the actions can become a fun experience.
Despite its background story, Children of Sin (2022) never stands in the terrains of drama and forces itself to be dressed up as a dark thriller with a high dosage of horror. That steals credibility to the movie, but also adds the gory spice it needs to not become a dull watch. A movie that easily will fall into oblivion by its viewers, but it can still be enjoyable.
RATE: 4/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14926864
