Offspring is a movie that I had watched when it came out on DVD years ago. Honestly, I hated it. It was dull in its shock value, while also looking like a turd. But now, years have passed, and I am a more refined and mature person. So, I decided to give it another chance, and you know what? I liked it a little more than before. It's still dull in its shock value and looks like a turd, but I guess maturity is all about finding the goodness in turds.
I also had no idea about Jack Ketchum back then, nor now. Because although I love the horror genre as a film medium, I don't often delve into it in the written medium. After some very light internet-based research I found that Offspring is the second novel in the series about cannibal children who eat vacationers. The first one seems to have laid most of the groundwork of the cannibals and what they're about. It probably would have been the better movie to make.
As for the movie itself. Well...
At best, it goes skin deep into the community of these children of the people-eating persuasion. Sure, they have their language, but it's subtitled grunts. The older ones have light personalities, although they are just them acting on our base desires. You know, sex, being nude, showing off yourself nude, and sex...oh yeah and babies. The baby obsession in this movie is high. Making babies, stealing babies, sacrificing babies, eating babies. The whole gamut of a baby based economy is shown off in fine detail here. With that, the gore, as well as the sex and nudity, the movie is trying its hardest to make you uncomfortable. But it is done so clumsily that it left me with a detached feeling from the film instead. A feeling like the writing team had one 15-year-old kid on it who kept saying things like, "Then they eat the baby!", "She should be naked, and touching that guy's dick!" or "Where's my Mountain Dew Code Red!"
Now, if you are into shock value for the sake of shock value, you will find a lot to like in this movie. If you can get past the boring muddy dark-tinged look of the film, then that will help in that enjoyment. Sadly, for me, I could not look past either of those things and more. So, while I can say I enjoyed this more on the second watch, I still didn't really like it.