The City of Children 2012

Krank is an exceptionally intelligent yet deeply malevolent being, the product of a vanished scientist. He cannot dream, and that inability ages him prematurely, twisting his mind and body as the years pass. His lair sits aboard an abandoned oil rig, a grim fortress shared with the scientist’s other creations: six childish clones, a dwarf named Martha, and a brain in a vat named Irvin. In this hollow, mechanized world, Krank wields a powerful dream-extracting device to siphon dreams from sleeping children. The kidnapped youngsters are spirited away from a nearby port city by a cyborg cult known as the Cyclops, a pact in which Krank supplies them with mechanical eyes and ears in exchange for the dreams that fuel his own strange vitality.

Among those taken is Denrée, the adopted little brother of carnival strongman One, a man whose presence shadows much of the story. A violent incident at the carnival—when the manager is stabbed by a mugger—draws One into the orbit of a criminal gang of orphans led by conjoined twins who call themselves the Octopus. They hire One to help steal a safe, a plan that succeeds only to falter when One loses track of the safe in the harbor after glimpsing Denrée’s abductors. He and a young accomplice, a girl named Miette, trail the Cyclops to their headquarters, but the mission ends with capture and a death sentence. The Octopus, eager to reclaim their prize, orders circus performer Marcello to bring One back; Marcello resorts to his trained fleas, which inject a poison that ignites mindless aggression, turning the Cyclops guards against each other. In the ensuing chaos, Marcello rescues One, while Miette slips into the harbor and seems to drown—only to be saved later by an amnesiac diver living beneath the waves.

Miette returns to surface life and finds One and Marcello nursing their sorrows in a bar. When she reappears alive, the remorseful Marcello helps One escape with her. Yet the Octopus confronts them on the pier, and the fleas are once again unleashed—this time to turn One against Miette. A dramatic sequence unfolds when One teeters on the edge of violence as a tear from Miette triggers a chain of events that culminates in a ship slamming into the pier. Marcello intervenes, disperses the fleas on the Octopus, and One and Miette finally slip away to press on with their mission to locate Denrée.

Back on Krank’s oil rig, Irvin engineers a delayed, whispered plea for help through a bottled dream released by one of the clones. The message finds its way to One, Miette, and the diver, who suddenly recalls his true identity as the scientist who created them. The diver’s memory reignites their shared purpose: destroy Krank and Martha and reclaim the rig. They converge on the rig, and the diver vows to end the terror once and for all. Miette and One push forward toward Denrée, while the diver prepares action to topple Krank’s operation.

Martha nearly meets a lethal end at the diver’s hands, a death he plans to assay with iron as a key weakness, and she is harpooned to death in a desperate moment. Miette finds Denrée sleeping inside Krank’s dream-extracting machine, and Irvin explains that the boy can be freed only if Miette steps into the dream herself. In the dream world, Krank appears and tries to negotiate, fearing a trap even as he pretends to be in control. Miette uses her imagination to bend the dream to her will, turning it into an infinite loop that destroys Krank’s mind from within. With Krank undone, One and Miette rescue all the children, including Denrée, and the diver—once the scientist—re-commits to saving everyone by detonating the rig.

As the final confrontation resolves, the diver equips the rig with dynamite and latches himself to a leg, hoping to ensure its destruction. He regains his senses just as everyone rows away, and a seabird lands on the blasting handle, triggering the explosion that ultimately destroys the rig and ends Krank’s malevolent hold. The story closes with the remaining survivors reuniting the children and reclaiming their lives, even as the sea claims the rig and the danger it once housed. In the wake of the catastrophe, the bond between One, Miette, and the rescued Denrée remains; their perseverance frames a hard-won hope for a future free of the dream-robbed nightmare that began on the oil rig.