Review: Citadel (2012)

My viewing of Citadel was yet another Netflix random pick.  I saw the description - something about a woman being attacked by a group of feral children - and figured “That’s unique enough to watch.”  And while it certainly turned out to be unique in the story it presented, the way it was put together felt a bit stale.  The end result was less than satisfying, as much as I wanted to feel otherwise.

The story begins with a couple living in a crappy tenement.  While moving out (or something like that), the pregnant girl of the pair gets attacked by some crazy kids that beat her up and jab a drug needle in her belly.  The baby ends up surviving, but the girl does not.  This leads to the man, Tommy, developing agoraphobia coupled with a slight fear of children.

When Tommy heads to the funeral of his former wife, a crazy priest warns him that someone is going to come looking for his baby daughter.  So Tommy decides to leave his ghetto residence.  Unfortunately, a missed bus and a strong bout of his mental issue leave him stranded in his home.  The children come back looking for the baby more than once, but Tommy always manages to get away.

This eventually leads Tommy back to the priest (leaving a trail of dead extras along the way).  At first he doesn’t believe the tales that the priest relates about the non-human children living in the building, but after his daughter is taken he and the priest team up to go burn the building down and retrieve the child.

The movie presents an interesting premise, but there are too many unexplained elements for the story to be believable.  The feral children that are the antagonist of the film are physically blind and can only detect someone through fear.  Yet somehow they found and attacked Tommy’s wife.  They also seem to keep missing Tommy and his daughter, despite the fact that the man is always afraid.  Other, random people get attacked and killed regardless of whether they are afraid or not.  I have to wonder if the fear thing was supposed to be false or not.

The underlying message is somewhat political, giving a bit of insight into the problem of homeless and forgotten children and the creatures they become because of abandonment and drugs.  But in the end, Tommy has no problem burning down the “Citadel” with all the children in it and the audience is given the impression that this is the best ending.  There’s no ambiguity to the question of what’s right or wrong.  The children, though created by society, are evil and must be destroyed.

And finally, the movie is carried by a character that is almost entirely unlikeable and non-productive.  All the work is done by the secondary characters up until the very end.  He feels like a catalyst to the story and not the protagonist at all.

The movie isn’t all bad and there are some truly creepy moments in it (a basement full of mutant drug-babies, for example).  If it would have been kept as a horror film about demon children and left all the political pretense behind, it might have turned out much better.  As it stands, it’s only worth watching for its novelty and you’d best be one of those people that doesn’t mind slow-moving movies to enjoy it.  The folks at Rotten Tomatoes didn’t have too many good things to say about it (with a 53/33 score) and I’d recommend staying away from this one myself.

Citadel poster courtesy of dailydead.com