With his controversial 1976 masterpiece, Who Can Kill a Child? (Spanish: ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?), Narciso Ibáñez Serrador not only shocked audiences, but he also established himself as one of the most profoundly strange filmmakers working at the time, with this film cementing his status as someone who prioritizes subversion of common ideals. His most famous film may be The House That Screamed, but there is very little doubt that Who Can Kill a Child? is his magnum opus, a cruel, daring and audacious experience that is as visceral as it is haunting. It is not a film one necessarily enjoys – admiring its boldness is definitely not uncommon, nor is being fascinated by the sheer brute willpower of its story, but it is nothing short of a harrowing experience, a corporeal horror film that is far more terrifying than any more traditional films (and featuring a group of the most horrifying villains ever committed to film) purely because it doesn’t intend to scare – it intends to provoke thought. There are very few films as affecting and impactful as this one, and Serrador pushes the boundaries of cinematic decency in such a way that it stirs conversation and incites a sense of dread through controversial storytelling without ever being vulgar or abandoning any clear morality. Its a film that takes a unique approach to a common story, and presents us with a wildly original, but no less unsettling, horror masterpiece.

An English couple Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) are about to have their third child, so before their lives are plunged into the organized chaos of caring for another baby, they decide to take a vacation. Their destination is the beautiful coast of Spain. They land in Benahavís, which is a vibrant city full of joy and exuberance. However, their final destination is Almazora, a small island a few hours from the mainland, where Tom had previously visited a decade before. Upon arrival, the quaint seaside village is peaceful – a bit too much so. What they initially mistake for rural tranquillity eventually turns into despair as they discover the island is completely void of any adults, with the only inhabitants appearing to be sinister children. Our protagonists soon learn that these youngsters have been on a rampage, murdering every adult they come into contact with as a result of some mental epidemic that has turned these innocent children into deranged, cold-blooded murderers who commit these heinous, violent slayings with a smile on their face and laughter in the air. It becomes clear that this holiday was a mistake for the expectant parents, as escape seems to be almost entirely impossible, and there is something else stopping them from fighting back against these juvenile monsters and getting their own retribution, as posed by the only other adult Tom and Evelyn encounter on the damned island – “who can kill a child?”.

Who Can Kill a Child? is terrifying right from the very first moment – Serrador begins the film by showing the audience footage from different points in history – the Holocaust, the wars in Korea and Vietnam and the civil unrest in Nigeria. He draws these events together under one common theme – the suffering of children, and how their plight is far more significant than that of adults. The director makes a haunting statement – in times of war and social conflict, it isn’t those inciting the wars that suffer the most, but the children, who are innocent to these adult games of machismo and power, yet are the biggest victims of these atrocities. Serrador provokes a fascinating concept – what if children, who have for centuries been the most helpless victims of horrible events, suddenly started fighting back at those who wronged them over the course of history by taking matters into their own hands? Who Can Kill a Child? takes the approach of children somehow getting their revenge through cold-blooded mass murder, which is an interesting idea, but also one that is profoundly and unquestionably disturbing, especially considering how children are almost always represented as paragons of innocence and virtue. Serrador does not hold back at all, fashioning a cruel but compelling story about revenge that may appear to consist of the binary of good and evil, but when the underlying context of this film is taken into account, it just becomes so much more horrifying, because we ultimately don’t know who or what to believe.

By all accounts, Who Can Kill a Child? is a very simple film – Serrador, as interesting a filmmaker as he was, certainly did not bother with overly complex or convoluted storylines, rather choosing simple but effective concepts and executing them with his distinct style that is grounded very much in reality. This film is a bit of an outlier from a lot of more mainstream horror films, mainly because it takes elements of a number of different sub-genres – the psychological thriller, the slasher film and most notably, the child-focused horror, which is a category that harbours some of the most terrifying horror films ever put on film. Interestingly, Serrador infuses Who Can Kill a Child? with a particular version of childhood that is somewhat different from other similar films featuring killer children, such as Village of the Damned (which is clearly a massive influence on this film, with the alternative English title being Island of the Damned) and the highly successful and equally terrifying Children of the Corn series of novels and films. Here, they aren’t robotic, almost non-human versions of children, but something far more sinister – they retain the childish humour and reckless joy that comes in our younger years, but with an added rabidity, making them act exactly as we’d expect children to. They run around without a care in the world, play in the streets and, on occasion, brutally murder every adult they come into contact with. The only thing more terrifying than children killing with some supernatural intent are children killing just for the fun of it – and the laughter that emanates from these individuals as they line the streets, waiting patiently to pounce, is made all the more harrowing when he realizes they’re acting with full agency. There’s something about positioning children as villains that’s just far too unsettling and makes this and other similar films some of the most chilling cinematic experiences the audience can ever encounter. Sometimes the most terrifying entities are not those from the paranormal realm, but rather our very own.

Who Can Kill a Child? is an extremely simple film, but one with a certain underlying complexity in its themes. The framing device employed at the beginning of the film, whereby we are made aware of the atrocities that have befallen children in the past, don’t justify the actions of the killers here, but rather incite some interesting thought on the role they play in this film. Naturally, by the well-defined structure of a traditional slasher film, there is a clear division between the good and the bad – the good people are those innocent individuals just hoping to enjoy their trip, but unfortunately come into the path of destruction of the forces of evil, here manifested as dozens of murderous children.  There are heroes and villains in most slasher films, but in Who Can Kill a Child? it’s slightly more unclear. As far as he can, Serrador tries to show the killings are not motivated by random urges, but rather through retribution, a form of revenge for years of violence toward these people, who are now taking matters into their own hands through an exodus of the adult population, purging the lives that continually sought to take theirs, whether intentionally or not. Serrador paints the killer children not only as villains, but also as victims themselves, and while this film is distinctly unsentimental to the plight of these children, it also doesn’t completely deride them. The moral question posed in this film, as indicated by the title, is the cornerstone of this film – who can kill a child? This idea drives the film, and while the final few scenes see one of our protagonists, tired and filled with rage, crossing the moral event horizon and actually slaughtering these killers as fast as they come at him, they’re far from triumphant. This is a film with a beautifully complex message at its core, because even as the film ends, where the adults on the island are all dead, and the children set off to the mainland to spread their murderous tendencies further, we can’t feel completely against them – there’s something about them that just defies hatred, and seeing their infectious joy as they dive into the sea and play with the endearing innocence that children are known for, stirs feelings of conflict in the viewer, who should naturally be against them, but just can’t find it within ourselves to do anything other than empathize with them on some level. Who Can Kill a Child? has one of the bleakest endings of any horror film, but its hardly noticeable, because the broader socio-cultural context of this film and its message are far more resonant and profoundly interesting than anything restricted to the direct narrative.

Horror films tend to mainly be mindless fun, but in Who Can Kill a Child?, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador sacrifices entertainment for a far more realistic approach, and it results in one of the most haunting horror films of its era. There aren’t many films that incite quite as visceral a reaction in the viewer as this with, which is a deeply harrowing tale of childhood innocence gone very wrong. The director made one of the most terrifying, provocative horror films of the 1970s, but one that scares through implication rather through what it overtly displays. It is socially-charged cinema, and harbours a lot of complexity in the story it tells, weaving a storyline that is both speculative and grounded within reality. It may not be particularly pleasing to experience, but it is raw, gruesome and ultimately unique cinema that is as powerful as it is haunting. This film leaves an indelible impression, giving us access to a perspective of human existence rarely represented in the media, especially in times of conflict, where we are presented with the idea of good and evil, heroes and villains – and most of the time, the innocent suffer the most. A compelling horror that finds its scares, not with overt terror represented on screen, but rather the harrowing social reality that is far more real and lurking just outside of view all around us.