Children are a lot of things: gross, cruel, kind, quiet, and anything and everything in-between. Those who grew up with a younger sibling likely know this, and those who were the youngest sibling reveled equally in both tormenting and playing with their older brothers and sisters.

Horror movies know this, too, and some know how to precisely taint that wonderful memory and twist it into something more malicious and terrifying. Creepy children are a bona fide movie trope now, but Blumhouse’s upcoming film There’s Something Wrong with the Children looks to put a new spin on the terrifying tikes.

The film will be directed by Roxanne Benjamin, a relatively recent filmmaker whose notable work includes contributions to horror anthologies XX and Southbound, as well as directing a handful of episodes for Creepshow, Riverdale, and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. Benjamin also had a hand in producing the first two V/H/S anthologies as well as producing 2019’s Body on Brighton Rock.

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This is everything we know about There’s Something Wrong with the Children.

There’s Something Wrong with the Children: The Plot

The official plot synopsis for There’s Something Wrong With the Children is as follows.

From both the plot synopsis and the film’s trailer, it looks like the film will lean more toward the supernatural and possibly the paranormal compared to a more practical horror threat. Both children appear to fall down a hole at one point, and a panicked Ben washes his face to calm his nerves in the upstairs bathroom. He panics before turning to see that, miraculously, one of them is standing in the doorway, completely unharmed. A park ranger (Ramona Tyler) also gets tossed around the cabin like a rag doll towards the end of the trailer, with Margaret looking on in blood-stained horror.

“When Margaret (Wainwright) and Ben (Gilford) take a weekend trip with longtime friends Ellie (Crew) and Thomas (Santos) and their two young children (Guiza and Mattle), Ben begins to suspect something supernatural is occurring when the kids behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight.”

Seeing as how the weekend house is placed in the middle of the woods, we’re bound to see some typical horror tropes as well: a lack of cell phone reception, no easy way to vacate themselves from the house, broken down cars, friends turning on each other amidst the chaos, and so on.

Interestingly, Margaret and Ben get much more of a focus in the film’s trailer compared to the actual parents of the titular children. Whether the film will tackle potential themes of parenthood or guardianship remains to be seen.

There’s Something Wrong with the Children: The Cast

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Making up the eponymous “children that have something wrong with them” are Briella Guiza (Lucy) and David Mattle (Spencer). Both Guiza and Mattle are up-and-coming actors with only a handful of roles between them. Guiza was in Michael Bay’s Ambulance film as well as the Prime Video series The Terminal List for a single episode, while Mattle is set to be in Four Souls of Coyote in 2023.

The rest of the cast is rounded out with Zach Gilford (Ben), Amanda Crew (Ellie), Alisha Wainwright (Margaret), and Carlos Santos (Thomas). Gilford has been in a handful of popular horror series, from Netflix’s Midnight Mass to Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club. He also held a prominent role in Friday Night Lights, as well as having roles in films like Super, The Purge: Anarchy, and Answers to Nothing.

Crew, meanwhile, starred in The Haunting in Connecticut as Wendy and Final Destination 3 as Julie Christensen. She also appeared in Chokeslam and Freaks.

Wainwright is most well known for her work on Raising Dion, a superhero-themed Netflix series that lasted from 2019 to 2022. She initially performed on the internet sketch series Smosh before moving on to other television productions, including brief appearances on Switched at Birth and General Hospital, as well as appearing in multiple episodes of Freeform’s Shadowhunters.

Lastly, Santos has been in a variety of roles in the past, briefly hosting the internet comedy series Equals Three along with roles in shows like Prime Video’s Undone, Border Patrol, and The Last Man on Earth.

Release Date

There’s Something Wrong With the Children is set to release digitally on January 17th, 2023, according to SyFy. An MGM+ release will also follow three months later on March 17th, 2023.

Everything Else

There’s Something Wrong with the Children will mark Blumhouse’s second major film release in 2023, following the release of their collaboration with James Wan’s Atomic Monster, M3GAN.

The film will also be written by T.J. Cimfel and David White, the same duo responsible for writing 2015’s Intruders as well as the V/H/S Viral segment “Vicious Circles.”