Children of the Pines (2023) Review
Over her winter break, Riley, a college junior, is persuaded by her estranged parents, Kathy, and John, to visit home to fix their fractured relationship. As Riley settles in, she discovers that her parents have developed an unsettling friendship with her high school ex, Gordon, and that mysterious children are now living in the house. A series of disturbing flashbacks reveal Kathy and John’s time at an eerie, unconventional couples therapy retreat that promised to heal their problems through supernatural means. As the day progresses, Riley starts to uncover the dark and twisted truth of her parents’ desperate attempts to mend the deep issues plaguing their family.
Winner of BEST FEATURE at Ice CineFest, BEST THRILLER at Indo-French Film Festival as well as an audience award at Gasparilla International Film Festival, CHILDREN OF THE PINES, is the Directorial feature debut from Director and Screenwriter Joshua Morgan. The film also features a standout Original Score from Sune Rose Wagner (The Raveonettes) who also composed the score for the 2015 Oscar nominated movie A WAR.
Joshua Morgan’s CHILDREN OF THE PINES is an ambitious but not wholly successful feature film. Slowly paced this flick is essentially a stream of dialogue heavy scenes with little visually, or aurally, to engage the viewer. This is unfortunate as it offered little of interest to hook me in. It felt flat and mundane, and I found my attention wandering elsewhere.
Director Joshua Morgan is quoted in the marketing blurb as saying that his film “hopefully offer a refreshingly thoughtful, disturbing, and eerie thriller.” The film’s producer Lucas A. Ferrara goes on to say that “CHILDREN OF THE PINES is a different kind of horror film that refuses to follow formula.” That is true, it does not follow formula, and I am all for that, not enough filmmakers stray from the path so when they do, I applaud it. Would it have hurt to have made it interesting also?
Perhaps I am in the minority here with my opinion of CHILDREN OF THE PINES as it currently has an impressive 8/10 scoring on IMDB which puts it in the same bracket as classics such THE EXORCIST (currently 8.1/10) and THE SHINING (currently 8.4). Could one therefore reason that this rating has been buoyed up by reviews submitted to help boost its score? It would make sense as there is simply no way that Morgan’s film ranks along such all-time classics.
CHILDREN OF THE PINES will be coming to Digital platforms globally from 18th October