Beware! Children at play

Beware! Children at Play (1989) Troma

Beware! this is not your typical Troma Movie.The story begins inocently enough with a father and son camping trip,where we see the father and son playing hide and go seek of sorts with the father pretending to be a canibal/demon chasing after his son.All is in fun and games until the father gets his leg trapped in a Bear trap,with no help in sight the son stays by his dads side for a few days until he finally passes.the father tells his offspring to eat his dead body to survive for the time being until he can find rescue or other food I suppose.After this we get flashed forward ten years and we meet a writer and his wife and daughter.They are on there way to the writers brothers house who is the sheriff in a small townand turns out several children have been disappearing into the woods and no one knows who or what is responsible for this epidemic.The writer and sheriff set forth to investigate this and with little to no help from the religous nut townsfolk.
The locals are hesitant to trust in the sheriffs brothers beliefs since he is a author of some questionable books on science fiction and witchcraft things of a supernatural nature he says are all based on fact,they also call in the help of a psychic friend of the writer to help as well.The children that still remain in the town talk of "the woodies" a group of lost children who roam the woods unseen by adults.That is until the psychic is approached by one of the sheriffs missing daughters and led into the woods by her only to be killed and eaten by the group of children,a nearby couple sees this and reports back to the duo of investigators.After recieving this news the two and a doctor friend of theres as well start researching missing persons reports and old "anglo-saxon" folklore (a subplot I will not get into here because well,it is rather long and stupid).They lear Glenn Randall the child who went camping with his father 10 years ago and was never seen or heard from again.Turns out it is Glenn that has been taking over these childrens minds convincing them that he is grendel the demon leader of the lost.The writer finds the children and tries to straighten them out to no avail,then he goes to tell the townies about his discovery but for some reason they have there hearts set on killing all of the missing children,evethough they were looking so hard to rescue them days before.Another small sub plot has to do with the town being founded by a religious cult and it seems they have now went back to their roots.The writer goes to the Childrens hideout and faces off with their leader in a fist figh and saves his daughter who had been kidnapped when they arrived in the town,but then things take a turn for the worst.The townsfolk show up wielding guns and weapons of all sorts looking to end the childrens reign of terror and this sets the stage for a very disturbing scene of child slaughter.This film got alot of flack from the ratings board and movie goers in general after the trailer was shown at limited theatres,as the trailer shows alot of the end scenes where the children are killed,Making it look like that is what the film was about,truly it is not.It is kind of like Lords of the flies meets sleepaway camp,minus the tranny.
This is a nice little film but forgetable in exception to the closing few minutes.They really tried to cram too much back story into a simple movie.It is worth a watch if you are in the mood for cheesy horror but want to stray from the typical slasher routine.Other than the fact it was produced and distributed by troma i would have never have guessed it was a troma film at all.
2.5 out of 5