Children of the Pines

Children of the Pines (2024)
Directed by: Joshua Morgan
Written by: Joshua Morgan
Starring: Danielle J. Bowman, Donna Rae Allen, Kelly Tappan, Richard Cohn-Lee, Vas Provatakis

Tagline: “Real terror will always find its way through the cracks!”

Indeed.

Let’s jump right in. Children of the Pines is an interesting film. It is not scary, heart pounding or sweat inducing … but it is interesting. The slow pace allows the ambience to develop, to fester, to “breathe”. There is almost no non-diegetic music, possibly for budgetary reasons, but it adds to the movies cold, bleak atmosphere.  A large ingredient of this films interest come from the dynamics; parent – daughter, ex-boyfriends and cult members. It’s very clear, early on, this is a well thought out film.

I feel it is impossible to review this film without using the word cult. So expect to see that word a lot.

We open on an argument, dad is unhappy and the mother and child are hiding in a closet. “Don’t make a peep. Do you know what a ‘peep’ is?”

The father – ‘John’ whose name we see as an addressee heading a handwritten letter, is offloading some anger, some rage at his own family. The closet door swings open and both mother and daughter look up in fear.

We then cut to the opening and our main character, Riley, portrayed brilliantly by Kelly Tappan, a college junior on her winter break, poetically narrating her life. There is some good writing in this film. The dialogue is beautiful, chorus and verse, throughout. “the air feels dense”, “a weightlessness to reality”.

Riley is visiting her parents and she want to make amends. Little does she know that they’ve been recruited into a cult.

We see Riley’s mother, Kathy, played by Danielle J.Bowman, in search of guidance and meeting cult matriarch Lorelei, played by Donna Rae Allen who gives an eerily false performance and by that I mean her acting is fine, rather she is playing a character who themselves is portraying an affected performance. She is all smiles and cheer and ropes Kathy into an interview. We see Lorelei’s true sternness of character when she addresses her subordinate. The interview is inappropriate, it pry’s into the family life and adds layers of manipulation on Kathy. Lorelei does not drop her mask, her grin is never ending and her laughs are rehearsed, like what you’d hear in a daytime TV commercial. A very telling sequence is when Lorelei cajoles Kathy, through passive suggestion, to indulge in a role-play phone call where Kathy pretends to be her daughter (more on that later) and Lorelei pretends to be Kathy’s husband. In an unusual twist, it has been the father who has been communicating solely with Riley, and not the mother. “Triangulation” springs to mind. When the interview concludes, the room rumbles and the lights flicker. “It all starts with a leap of faith.”

Riley arrives in town and stops by a diner. Here she “accidentally” bumps into an old childhood flame, Gordon, played by Vas Provatakis. He seems pleasant enough, but as a server at the diner, he really shouldn’t be sitting down with customers, much less helping himself to their food! I want to take this opportunity here and refer to Pixars 19^th rule of storytelling: coincidences that get characters into trouble are great, but coincidences that get them out of it are cheating. This “chance” encounter at the diner will at first appear to be cheating, but trust me, this only adds to our heroine’s trouble. We learn key pieces of information; Riley is not all that happy to see her ex (well, who is?) and she is more than a little put out by the fact that not only is Gordon now working for her father – which he did not tell her about – but that he actually refers to Riley’s own parents as Mum and Dad! The dialogue is restrained, there are things Riley wants to say, she is reacting to impositions and boundary-violations, yet attempts to keep things amiable with Gordon.

The boundary violation not only comes from Gordon here, but also the father, with whom she has been having sole contact with the family, and who has clearly decided to withhold these pieces of information from her. When someone does not tell you something, always ask yourself, “why”?

When Riley finally arrives home, daughter and mother embrace, and Kathy asks Riley, “how was the drive up”, to which Riley replies, “Smooth sailing”. A mixed metaphor, but I like it. We are all ships at sea, and choppy waters are closing in. Mother and daughter exchange pleasantries, but they don’t hold up well for long.

When Riley meets her father, things do not get better. She offers to help with the shopping and he rebuffs her, “All done”. They share a very awkward embrace and he turns out to be even more manipulative than the mother. “You do what you feel is right” he says when Riley chooses to exercise her agency. The manner in which it is said implies that she’ll get no support from him in her decision.

Gordon arrives and he and John share a very happy hug together in full view of an unimpressed Riley.

But here’s where things to mad. John and Kathy bring Riley to another room to meet their “children”. Riley is stunned. No one has mentioned this to her before. And get this, John and Kathy do not even introduce their children, they ask Riley to ask them their names. Why is the social chore of introduction thrown onto Riley’s shoulders? She has questions, she has questions aplenty, and their names are far down that list. Where are their parents, what are they doing here and why did they not tell her?

The children are called John and Kathy by the way – and yes, that’s the same names as the parents. The children are their parents. They are copies.

They then unleash more madness on the Riley by performing a hair-plucking ritual and then more children appear, a boy called Gordon and a girl called Riley.

“They are us, they are you,” Riley is told.

Enough! Time to fight back and get out of there.

The arguments are great; they feel natural and develop effortlessly. And we have to agree with Riley in these altercations, she has not been given the full picture and presented with situations whereby she has had no time to prepare and her parents are demanding the answer they wants, but not the answer she wants to give. No one enjoys interacting with someone who’s trying to micro-manage your half of the conversation. Where’s the fun in that? A conversational dictator may as well talk to themselves if they only want to hear what they want to hear. They are denying her truth. My only complaint is that once there are five or more characters together in the room, and only one is talking, the blocking is a little awkward. Gordon is stood with his hands on the shoulders of young Gordon and young Riley, they face grown-up Riley, but once Riley starts scolding young John, they are looking at her with their heads turned as they remain stood facing half away from her. Actors waiting for their “turn” has punctured many a good scene.

This film is not really about the supernatural elements, but that of toxic family dynamics. And this is an ill family. Riley herself admits she doesn’t want to go back. She feels like she’s drenched herself in gasoline and stepping back into the fire. And she’s right – an instinct that should have been headed.

As soon as Riley gets home, the rest of the story takes place inside a 24 hr timeframe. And a lot happens in that time. So much so, that the final narration is from the point of view of young Riley. One can only hope it is not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Some great drone shots early on really open the film up, which could otherwise feel like a stage play. There is almost no music in the film adding to a sense of grounded “realism” which the film needs. There are some solid performances on display here and I’d like to see these actors in other movies. The cult scenes are a little clunky, but then nobody wants to method act a character who’s spent too much time sniffing their own farts. The pace is slow, and with the excision of a few scenes (the interview and ritual spring to mind), this could be a lean 45 min episode – but then it wouldn’t be a feature length movie.

“Children of the Pines” is a creepy title, I wish the film lived up to the promise of the premise. The eponymous children have precious little screen time, and even less to do aside from young John, who at the height of his rudeness calls Riley a “pussy”. The children are themselves, for the most part, polite and well behaved. The horror is in their very existence rather than anything they have done. In a film that has preoccupied itself with the daughter, Riley’s agency, it gives the actual children none. But “Children” makes for a better title than “Adult’s of the Pines”.

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