Rubber Monster Reviews Chews On: Please Don't Feed the Children
Plus: Web Site Sale Extended, Bombshell & Atomica #3, & Monster Girl Beach Party: The '80s!
Hello all you beautiful Bad Bugs! Are you ready for your crazy uncle John to tell you more tales from the Tubiverse? Good, then let’s jump right in!
PLEASE DON’T FEED THE CHILDREN (2024)
I’m actually kinda glad I didn’t see the Spielberg name on this till after I watched it. Knowing that this flick was the feature directorial debut of Destry Allyn Spielberg (daughter of Steven Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw), while carrying the “Tubi Original” branding? Yeah, that might’ve made my head implode.
But if you know my tastes by now, you’ll realize that being a Tubi Original is far from enough to turn me away! And right off the bat, it passes my first rule of staying close to the 90-minute mark (94, to be exact). It wastes no time bringing us up to speed, with a newscast playing in the background that reveals that a virus has ravaged this world, turning people into cannibals. No cure, no coming back. But kids under 18 are generally asymptomatic, so they’ve been rounded up into camps, and harboring minors is a punishable offense. The voiceover then switches to our main character, the teenage Mary (played by Zoe Colletti - Fear The Walking Dead, Only Murders In The Building), who has freshly escaped from one of the aforementioned camps and is hoping to escape to another country.
Mary meets Jeffy (Dean Scott Vazquez - Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Theater Camp) as she’s about to get caught, and he gets her to the safety of an abandoned community center, where the rest of Jeffy’s crew are hiding out. But there’s not much time to get to know the rest, since a scanner alerts the six teens that they’re about to get busted.
The kids quickly find themselves in trouble, and end up at an isolated farmhouse after dark. The homeowner, Clara (played by Michelle Dockery - Downton Abbey, Boy Kills World), is a nurse, and hesitantly offers to patch up one of the injured kids. Which makes you wonder: in a world full of crazy, is this lady cuckoo-bananapants? Oh yeah, you betcha!
Things go off the rails from here, with Clara trapping most of the kids in the attic, while trying to force Mary to replace her dead daughter. And there’s something in the basement. And Giancarlo Esposito plays a lawman who drops by as he’s searching for the kids. And, did I mention the basement?
I won’t give away too much more, but the film’s biggest issue is an identity crisis. It wants to be a cannibal/zombie flick, but it spends 90% of the movie ignoring that premise and focusing on the claustrophobic trapped-in-a-house aspect. Which isn’t to say that the six kids in this didn’t give amazing performances, and Jeffy’s sister Vicky (played by Regan Aliyah - Ironheart) definitely deserves a shout-out. But great acting only goes so far, and the final act felt out of place. (*Minor spoiler below.)
That said, I’d give it about a 3/5 Bugs. We’ll call that the Stink Bug rating.
Our sale has been extended through Friday! Click the image above to be taken to our site.
BOMBSHELL & ATOMICA #3 - The superpowered WWII love story returns today! Written by Kat Calamia and Phil Falco, with art by Joel Souza. Check that graphic above for early backer rewards, available for the first 72 hours!
MONSTER GIRL BEACH PARTY: THE 80s - Another amazing collection of Monster Girl pin-ups from Jason Pell and a monstrous medley of artists!
That’s all for this time, folks!
Bugs and Kisses,
John and the Bad Bug crew
