Kinderfanger – review

Director: Bridger Nielson

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

I have put the date of this as 2023 but it was, apparently, a web serial in 2020 that has been since cut into this film and, I have to say, for a web serial it is certainly impressive in effects and photography. It isn’t perfect but it does really well.

It also needs saying that this is not your typical vampire film but the Kinderfanger (Dmitrious Bistrevsky) of the title is certainly an energy vampire and his minions/foodstuff do eat human flesh and blood. The film itself uses the Pied Piper legend at its heart.

stood at the door

It starts with a kid (Jagger Woolstenhulme) leaving a tunnel and walking down the street to a apartment building in a rough part of town. He walks to a door, the name on the door is Campbell, the same name on his dirty, torn sports shirt. He rings over and over until the door opens and we hear a man ask where the Hell he’s been. The kid’s eyes glow yellow as he leaps and we see blood seep into the corridor. As we see him walking the street again he sees a missing poster with himself on it and smiles. He has stepped on something sharp and it does not seem to phase him, he doesn’t really notice.

Angel Theory as Olivia

Olivia (Angel Theory) works as a music teacher and has taken a special interest in Marcus (Aiden Burkett) – a young child who, like her, has hearing difficulties but he has not arrived for his lesson and she’s worried. Her boss, Tracy (Joni Mann), tries to suggest that it is one of those things as students sometimes fail to arrive – their conversation in sign – but Olivia isn’t so sure. That said, she knows that it is too soon to go to the cops and that they do very little for missing children from that neighbourhood (and there are a lot of missing posters).

Aiden Burkett as Marcus

Olivia lives with her mother (Andi Chapman) and from early on the viewer knows that it is an abusive relationship. The story that comes out is that Olivia was abused by her grandfather (Lonzo Liggins), both physically and apparently sexually, but her mother would hear nothing of it. Further, when the girl struck fatally back it is apparent that her mother covered it up, but still blames the ‘intrinsically evil’ young woman. In one of his attacks, he struck her in such a way that she lost her hearing.

encounter in the park

Olivia sneaks out of the house to try and find Marcus (we have seen a girl with yellow eyes watching her from outside her window) and ends up at a playground but sees a giant, cloaked creature. She manages to hide. This is, of course, the Kinderfanger. The next day she and Tracy put out fliers but she finds the music school broken into and discovers a young man, Wallace (Alexander Neher), checking their security camera – he has seen the bloody footprint left by the boy from the beginning and the camera gives him a view of the boy. He leaves but she lifts a book from him.

Wallace's book

Wallace is essentially the Van Helsing character and the book the typical book of lore. It details the legend of the Kinderfanger, or piper, who uses a pipe to play music that only unwanted (and, I read it as, abused) children hear. It becomes apparent that, whilst now an adult, Olivia can hear the pipe (though it doesn’t entrance her like the children), which is a product of her abuse and, I suspect, her hearing damage. She is also able to instruct at least one of the children and, later, break through Marcus’ entrancement.

drawing energy

The piper can control the children and they cannot leave him. He feeds on their negative emotions and makes them attack and kill their parents. We see him draw a smoke like essence from a child (presumably him feeding) but also putting such an essence into the child (so possessing them or the smoke acts as a conduit for feeding potentially). Later, after they try and save Marcus’ parents, there is comment that Marcus tried to eat Wallace – and this suggests what they do to the parents. The kids also become stuck in their age (we do see Wallace’s unaged brother, took 15 years before). The whole children aspect reminds me of Nos4A2.

staked

The piper can turn fully to smoke, as well as manipulate the smoke as a weapon, vanish and reappear and has a bone pipe that he pulls out or off his body at the sternum and the attempt to kill him involves stabbing him in the chest (read heart) with the pipe. There is evidence that the piper was once human but looks like a giant cadaverous/skull faced entity. Nevertheless, he is feeding from the children and that makes him an energy vampire.

kids

I was impressed with the quality of this, especially discovering it was a web serial. It isn’t perfect, aspects of the story were narratively shaky – the abuse story was really important but what happened to the Grandfather (in terms of the apparent cover up) seemed far-fetched, the idea that Olivia could secretly arrange guardianship of Marcus (when he apparently still had parents, no matter how abusive they were) seemed off. But these did draw important connection points. I quite liked this. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK