Elaine and Jonah decide to spend their Christmas vacation with Elaine’s sister Chloe and her husband Robbie, who have moved to a house in the mountains. The two families have fun sledding in the snow and having snowball fights, but a strange tension prevails among the two couples and their five children. Then, one fine winter afternoon, the children begin to show disturbing signs of change. The figure of the child who turns menacing through supernatural agency is a subject already treated in Omen (1976) and other movies. But Tom SHANKLAND, who attended PiFan last year with W∆Z, locates the source of terror in ordinary childlike behaviors that nonetheless horrify adults, rather than relying on the supernatural. A child who just won’t stop crying and a little girl who generates frightening sexual tension through her lack of inhibition about her naked body, among other startling instances, are unnerving enough to challenge the social dictum that “children must be protected.” SHANKLAND’s firm yet rhythmical direction, which adroitly incorporates P.O.V. shots, unfolds the movie’s potentially risky premise smoothly within the genre’s formula. The Cottage scribe Paul Andrew Williams wrote the screenplay. (Jin PARK)