While not Arnold's best film, IMHO (I find it a bit preachy and badly hampered by the rubbery silliness of the Big Alien Brain), this is still a memorable film. Though set in a beachfront area it happens mostly at night, using Arnold's typically haunting black-and-white compositions to set an appropriate tone of strangeness and isolation. The children, alienated from their preoccupied and overworked parents, are almost adopted by the space creature, which takes them under its protection (a drunken and abusive father is disposed of soon after the brain's arrival) even as it enlists them in its pacifist mission. At first fairly typical kids, they quickly develop an air of gravity and wisdom that remains after the alien departs, suggesting a lasting, even evolutionary effect. The film's title is perfect: the kids do become Space Children, more in tune with alien than human thought.
Review of The Space Children
