|
|
THE PRODIGY
Director: Nicholas McCarthy Cast: Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore, Peter Mooney, Paula Boudreau, Brittany Allen, Paul Fauteux, Elisa Moolecherry, Olunike Adeliyi MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:32 Release Date: 2/8/19 |
|
Review by Mark Dujsik | February 8, 2019 The answer to every mystery in The Prodigy is either telegraphed or completely obvious. Actually, there might only be one mystery in Jeff Buhler's screenplay or at least in the way this tale has been brought to the screen. The prologue gives away the game almost entirely, and then it's simply a matter of waiting around for the characters to figure out what we already know. It takes a long time. In the meantime, though, not much else happens. The story is about a boy whose far-above-average intelligence is apparent before he's a year old, when he's able to speak. The kid just keeps getting smarter as the years pass in a montage. At the age of 8, he also starts showing some other, less desirable traits, such as playing hide-and-seek with his babysitter in order to lure her to the basement, where he has left a broken glass on the steps. One could imagine a version of this story in which the nature of the boy's odd behavior and tendency toward violence would be an uncertainty. Is he mentally ill, or are his actions the result of some inherent boredom with the world, given how extraordinarily smart he is? Could it be something else—something supernatural? For some reason, though, Buhler and director Nicholas McCarthy give us the answer within the first five minutes, when the birth of this boy is intercut with the death of an insane and vicious serial killer, whose last victim has escaped and led the police to his hideout. There are, of course, a couple of variables to the relationship between the two events, but in the end, they're mostly matters of semantics. From the start, with the bluntness of the visual language, we get the idea: The serial killer's mind or soul or essence has become part of this child. Look, it's a fine-enough premise for what turns out to be a pretty cold and mostly lifeless variation of the evil-kid horror tale. The requisite story points are here, with the kid's parents, the desperately concerned Sarah (Taylor Schilling) and the near-hilariously nonchalant John (Peter Mooney), figuring out at a glacial pace that their gifted son Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) has some deep, dark problems. There's the incident with the babysitter. The kid repeatedly whacks a classmate with a wrench, and then there's the matter of the disappearing family dog. Just so we're clear as to how unaware the parents are of things, Sarah only figures out the dog is dead and rotting in the basement when the entire house becomes filled with flies. Maybe the parents had been congested the whole time, not to notice what must have been a rancid stench. Anyway, the kid also speaks a rare dialect of Hungarian in his sleep, which makes Arthur Jacobson (a courageously straight-faced Colm Feore), a researcher of reincarnation, think that, maybe, the soul of some deceased dastardly person is sharing Miles' body. The parents debate the possibility, giving Miles more time to act creepily in the night. Eventually, Arthur reveals that the soul of the killer must want to finish something that he wasn't able to complete in his previous life. When it's finished, in theory, the killer's soul will leave the boy's body. At a certain point, though, the evil soul will completely overtake the kid's. At this point, the unfinished task should be obvious, but that's left to be the great mystery of the final parts of the second act (One imagines the filmmakers hope we don't recall a thing about the prologue). Now, if one has caught on to what must be done to save Miles' very being, one might also be thinking that this is a pretty demented semi-twist to what has, up until then, been a drag of spoiled tension and mystery. That sudden intrigue is the case while the thought is still a theory in the movie's mind—that not-Miles or someone who really cares about the boy's existence must go beyond a nasty trick on a babysitter, a brutal assault on a child, and the killing of a poor pup. The movie does indeed follow through on it, and as is so often the case, the tasteless reality of a twisted idea can often put a damper on the hypothetical thrill of that idea. It's the climactic sequence that turns this repetitive and dreary horror movie into something rather sickening. It's not just creating suspense out of a victimized woman's further victimization. It's also in how McCarthy wallows in the violence of the inevitable outcome. For the most part, The Prodigy is a dull experience, but its final five-or-so minutes are unnecessarily cruel. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)
|
(for violence, disturbing and bloody images, a sexual references and
brief graphic nudity)
