User Reviews

The reviews on IMDb for this movie have really got my head spinning. Having seen it in my hometown of Sydney, I checked in to see what other people thought. I can't believe what i'm reading.

Eraser Children is sure zany, but in a throw it all up against the wall and see what sticks sort of way. The story is your usual sci-fi stab at how bad the world now is because all the power is in the hands of one man. And just as predictably you have a underground movement that runs around a lot. Predictable can still work but boring, especially so, so, so boring just doesn't.

But the real problem with eraser children is that its so busy trying to be about big things that it spends half its time standing still looking up at what its created. But there's nothing to look at except absolutely awful acting by an unknown cast and even worse amateur direction by an unknown director.

Some films are really worth the trouble, and you put up with snails pace action and cheap production values. Other films are just snails pace with cheap production values. Like this film called Eraser Children. This film is hilarious, but it's not a comedy. It's funny because it thinks it's being so smart. It tries to be dark and deep by draining everything of color and character and plot and action and everything else that makes a story worth telling. The other question is when oh when did Australia lose its sense of humor? I just don't get it. You can be funny and deep at the same time you know? There is a bit of comedy here and there, but it was like a stand-up comic dying on stage and an audience checking their watches. Polite chuckles and that's about it. But anyway, when mainstream lets you down you turn to under the radar stuff like the underground festival I saw this movie at in Melbourne. I saw three films there this year. One deserved a wider audience, one was just an exercise in parochialism and Eraser Children is an exercise in audiences don't matter. But that's only one of the many boxes it ticks in the how to make a movie in Australia handbook. So yes it's a typical Aussie film. Which is another way of saying make a film in Australia by Australians but not for Australians or anyone else for that matter. That's because no one else really cares.

Remember when "straight to DVD" kind of said it all? Well during ERASER CHILDREN I reckon I thought up a new one. It's called "straight to YOUTUBE". I'll tell you why too.

Hopping on to YOUTUBE is normally all about grabbing bite size pieces or even highlights. Now there aren't too many highlights in ERASER CHILDREN, but there is the occasional sequence that's got cult written all over it. And yes I know cult is a dangerous and easily;y misappropriated word. It normally either means misunderstood and misestimated (is that a word?), or else it means plain it's so bad it's good. That's ERASER CHILDREN. There are scene in this thing where you'll move closer to the monitor and stop chewing on your pop tart for sure.

The story is all about the world ruled by some ideologue nut case who's a mix of every despot nut case you've ever heard of. And yes there's an underground movement, and yes there's technology gone nuts, and yes the world is in ruins (depending on the budget of the scene though).

The real problem with ERASER CHILDREN though is that it takes an ancient chestnut of a story and realizes within ten seconds into the film that it has nothing new to say. So it tries really, really hard to throw up whatever's in the area just to see what sticks. That's how you end up with transvestites as a comic relief. And no i'm not kidding.

I'm a big fan of cult sci-fi, so low budgets are no big deal, but give me a story and give me characters. Real characters. The fakeness in this film has nothing to do with the budget. It's the authenticity of vision. If you want to see future world gone mad, go see 1984 with John Hurt. It's not always pretty, but you'll actually feel something.

One look at the title and my partner and I ran (not walked) to check this one out because of the David Lynch connection we thought was there. Well it's okay that this wasn't Eraserhead revisited I guess. We sort of knew that of course. But it does go to show and prove is that it's not only big dumb Hollywood summer movies that sometimes make films by the numbers.

Eraser children is how to make a safe independent film if you get what I mean. By hey the title gives the game away and so does the stories about a world in the future ruled by a megalomaniac and where everything is subordinate to the greater industrial good and the world is full of soulless drones. So it's 1984 meets THX 118 meets Metropolis. Whats missing is the one thing George Lucas got right, and the film version of 1984 with John Hurt were smart enough to realize too, that you need to give the audience a character we care about.

This is a low budget film obviously, and that's okay. Brazil is the other left field film I'm guessing Eraser children is influenced by. I can talk about that one heaps cos I want to buried with my signed copy! Terry Gilliam is a god! But sure I can understand why some people don't get his films, but no one will argue that what you're getting is a film full of wild images and the images they etch into the mind and just stay there. When you try and do what he does with a low budget like Eraser children the scenes ended up looking like a motley collection of student short films with story potholes along the way, and acting that ranges from can't-act to looking bored. But I can see what Eraser Children is trying to do, and I honestly don't mind that it's not that original, but I have to be honest and just say all I really got was something sort of being poured out of a blender using cheap imitation flavors.

Lots of funny moments in this for me and my friend. Loved the off the wall characters and the ambitious screenplay. I guess people say it is kinda link 1984 or Brazil?? but I don't see it. Just because the world is ruined and backwards, that is about all that's similar. This film is its own style. It would be interesting to see what they would do with a large budget. I know this was made for next to nothing.

I like Maximum Blizzard the most! he is a bit of a sexy chap, even though you find out at the end he isn't really a into woman at all. I'M MAXIMUM BLIZZARD! I'd like to see it again on DVD. It always annoys me that film festivals screen lots of interesting and off the wall films (this is a good thing) but it is always hard to find those films once they stop playing at festivals. I hope this film gets a release of some sort. It has a very cult cinema feel. Thumbs up! Thanks to all the independent film festivals that run different films so we don't always have to watch Hollywood blockbusters.