Ankle Biters (2021)

Ankle Biters is a pitch black, horror comedy with elements of The Children crossed with Come To Daddy.

This is a comedy horror that plays on childhood innocence and the ignorance of adult actions. When the kids see the kink based sex tape, they don’t see sex they see their mother being “hurt” by someone who is supposed to care for and protect her. Combined with the jealousy and mistrust of someone they see as replacing their father, this makes for a frustrating yet relatable set of antagonists and a potentially all too real scenario that is played up to the extreme.

A solid script and capable direction give the film an easy watch feel, it’s not one that tries to put its audience on edge. When the deaths come, and there are only a small number of them, they are genuinely shocking due to the age of the killers. This is also where there’s a more stylized turn to proceedings, particularly with the first one, that isn’t revisited enough through the rest of the movie.

When the child actors are better than the main leads of a film it normally means you’re in trouble with what you’re watching. Luckily, that’s not the case here, as the four sisters, played by four real life sisters, are so engaging that you easily look past it. All four are genuinely great.

The main lead, Zion Forrest Lee’s Sean, is the primary issue here. Not a great actor by any means, his constant attempts to be charming come across as smug and disingenuous. This occasionally works for his character of a disgraced ice hockey player, but on the whole is an annoyance. Evans is better as the mother, but she still has little development as a character and lurches from cliché to cliché as the love interest come overprotective matriarch; while Colin Mocherie brings a world weary charm and some of the biggest chuckles in a small role as a world weary cop.

It’s a diversion that will provide an amusing hour and a half. As long as you don’t go in expecting a masterpiece, you’ll have fun.