IGN: How would you describe The Children?
Tom Shankland: It's a nice little family drama with some sweet middle-class English people who maybe have a few issues. Perhaps the way that their children deal with their issues is more extreme than your average family. But wouldn't we all like to sort our problems out with sharp pencils and stuff like that? It's just a family drama that goes awry - a New Years Eve party that goes a little bit wrong.
IGN: You've adapted Paul Andrew Williams' original story, so what have you changed?
Shankland: The script I first read was very much a zombie film from about page ten. You knew that kids turned into zombies and started killing their parents and it was all motivated by a comet that was flagged up at the beginning. I loved the idea of kids vs their parents. That seems like a really universal theme that everyone can get their head around. It's sort of about everyone's subconscious anger against everyone that has power over them, being expressed in all these vile ways. And I love the idea of adults being faced with this extreme Sophie's Choice type thing of 'do I save that child but if I do I've got to kill that child'. I emotionally loved all that. So one thing that I changed straight away was that in all good zombie movies if you kill them they come back to life. So I actually didn't like that for this because I felt like it would be much more emotionally and psychologically interesting if you killed your child and they didn't come back to life. How are you going to cope with that? How does that change everybody's strategy? But I also wanted to play this game that the last thing that you ever think as a parent is that there's anything wrong with your kid. So you'll choose anything rather than what's staring you in the face. So it's that theme of 'love is blind'.
IGN: Has Paul been involved since handing over the story?
Shankland: Paul is totally in the loop, but he chose not to read my script. He made a decision that he just wanted to see the film. It's been a very good relationship - we had a very good meeting when he handed it over to me, I told him what I wanted to do with it, and he was very happy for me to push it in that way, but it would still remain a concept that he had signed up to.
IGN: How will The Children differ to WAZ?
Shankland: What I love about this is that it's such a confined story. I'm doing the first day of the apocalypse in a tiny little corner of the world. WAZ, from a literal and practical point of view, was on two continents, and it's a serial killer film about clues and you've got to go round the houses to track them down. I loved this slightly more enclosed thing that you've got two families, one location, and all the horror and tension are about tiny distances. Like 'oh my god, I've got to get from the climbing frame to the tent'. I was watching Rear Window yesterday and thinking what a genius Hitchcock was at creating epic amounts of suspense out of five metres of floor. So I loved that difference. But emotionally, I'm still in a zone that I enjoy, giving people these extreme choices and watching them suffer.
IGN: How is the film going to look?
Shankland: Stylistically I wanted to do something very beautiful, where this world would feel a bit like The Innocents - something which is very beautiful look to it, but within that, there's all these nasty things happening.
IGN: How did you go about casting the film?
Tom Shankland: I didn't want a hierarchy star thing with people thinking certain actors would die first. I very much want an even playing field, which should throw a lot of attention on the kids, who are the real ticking time bombs.
IGN: What were you looking for in the kids then?
Shankland: I was looking for many things. Obviously they have different characters. I wanted the slightly awkward, possibly mildly autistic kid, I wanted the family who had the perfect kids - the boisterous boy and the beautiful girl with the big eyes. I wanted that slightly devious 11-year-old girl, but generally I just wanted kids with amazing eyes, because I think kids work either in wide shots, where you watch a tiny kid running through woods, sort of Red Riding Hood-style, or they happen very close and you go into their eyes. So you'll see they've all got amazing eyes.
IGN: How are you getting the kids to commit these unspeakable acts?
Shankland: We did so many auditions, and were very clear and candid about what we wanted. We had rehearsals building up to these ideas of murdering your parents. We played a lot of Wink Murder where we had the kids playing the game, and when the adults died, I got the adult actors to give epic, hysterical deaths so they could get used to the idea. I wanted to get them used to being with grown-ups and doing distressed acting. Then of course when we cast them we took them all to [special make-up effects designer] Paul Hyett's workshop and he gave a great talk saying "This is an eye, take that pencil, stab, blood spurts out, it's all a laugh." And they very quickly got used to it. The boys loved it, but the adults were more disturbed.
IGN: Will the film be particularly gory?
Shankland: No, I'm being very 'less is more'. We'll definitely know we are in a horror film in the last 20 minutes, but before then, I'm dialling it down.
IGN: Have you got all today's scenes set in your mind or can they change?
Shankland: I can adapt because we're trying to do a seven week film in five weeks. I have storyboarded everything - the big greenhouse scene - we photographed every frame of that with stand-ins, so that when people came in, it was easier. So it's totally different to WAZ in that respect, but I knew that I wanted this to be much more composed and precise.
IGN: So you won't be repeating the shaky-cam technique from WAZ?
Shankland: Not at all. I've been looking at things like The Shining. I want it to be much more classical, so you'd never be aware of the camera, you would just be in images that are just pleasing to the eye. I didn't want to be a third eye on this. I want the camera to know what is going to happen in a Hitchcock kind of way.
The Children is released in the UK on Friday, December 5.