KIDS WITHOUT SCRIPTS: Medieval Torture Methods
2025 · 2m
Directed by Tabs Wekerle
Genres: comedy, documentary
Three 10-year-olds discuss medieval torture methods.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The premise is absurdist gold—kids delivering deadpan historical atrocities like they're reciting lunch orders—and it works *because* it refuses the expected cute angle. Wekerle's committed to the bit in a way that makes you uncomfortable, which is exactly where comedy lives.
A clever inversion of the pedagogical documentary form, though the execution treads familiar ground in children-say-inappropriate-things comedy; the formal restraint is there, but it doesn't quite deepen into anything beyond the initial conceit.
The entire film hinges on maintaining completely flat affect from the kids while describing obscene implements—that single directorial choice, the refusal to wink at the camera, is what transforms a one-liner premise into something that actually lands.