The idea of a story in which a lethal virus unleashes all the suppressed aggression that children feel against their doting, confused parents was just too appealing to me. Adults' fear of children is actually a psychological condition called paedophobia and it haunts great films like The Exorcist, The Omen and The Innocents. This was the primal fear that I wanted to stoke up with The Children. Or maybe it was just revenge on my parent-friends for letting their kids run riot on various holidays and do grievous harm to my hangovers in the process...

When I'm thinking about a film - particularly a horror film - I need to feel that there's a theme in the material that can churn up some primal fears both in the audience and me. The idea that our kids might actually be psychopathic monsters and not the cute, defenceless little angels we wish they were is probably a universal fear.