“Something Is Killing the Children” finally has a director

After years of adaptation talk, “Something Is Killing the Children” has taken another serious step toward the screen.

Craig Zobel will direct the feature adaptation of James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera’s horror comic for Blumhouse Atomic Monster.

The comic begins in the small town of Archer’s Peak, where children are disappearing. Some return with stories about monsters that adults cannot see. Then Erica Slaughter arrives.

If you have read the series, you already know why Erica became such a horror-comic favorite. She belongs to the House of Slaughter, an organization that hunts the creatures preying on children, and she enters Archer’s Peak looking less like a superhero than somebody who has already seen entirely too much.

Zobel is an interesting choice. He directed “The Hunt” and episodes of “Mare of Easttown,” and he knows how to let violence arrive abruptly instead of announcing itself fifteen minutes early with ominous music.

The comic has been a huge success since Boom! Studios launched it in 2019, and Hollywood has been circling an adaptation for years. Netflix previously developed a television version before that project fell apart. A feature film now puts the property on a different track.

Casting will be the big one.

Erica Slaughter has a very specific presence on the page. Blonde hair, black face covering, those enormous eyes and an attitude suggesting she would rather kill the monster herself than spend ten minutes explaining it to you.

Get Erica right and half the battle is already won.