The Prodigy

The Prodigy

Starring Jackson Robert Scott, Taylor Schilling, Paul Fauteux, Peter Mooney

Directed by Nicholas McCarthy

The Story:
In Ohio, serial killer Edward Scarka (Paul Fauteux) is killed by police, and a few minutes later in Pennsylvania, young couple Sarah (Taylor Schilling) and John (Peter Mooney) give birth to a son.  Almost as soon as the child is born, he begins exhibiting extraordinary intelligence, and by the time he turns eight, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) is a bonafide genius.  Yet with this genius comes odd behavior, as Miles seems to exhibit a dark side that takes effect when he turns on people around him.

Sarah goes to a local doctor, who talks to Sarah about the prospects that Miles might be inhabited by the soul of someone who's died, who's been reincarnated into Miles' body.  At first she finds the idea preposterous, but as more events unfold, she begins to think that maybe the soul of someone evil is in Miles, and she has to find out how to stop it before it takes over Miles forever.

The Synopsis:
"What's wrong with Miles?"  This question is asked as the tagline for the movie's theatrical poster, but I instead pose a different, more pertinent, question - "What's wrong with this horror subgenre?"  Ever since films like "The Omen" made us afraid of children, there's been films dealing with the possibility of evil children who are either inhabited by evil spirits, just born evil, or have some event in their life cause them to become evil - and most of them have the same outcome, and the same formula to get there.  Basically the pattern is like a chemistry set for an eight year old - simple, mundane, and ultimately doesn't offer anything exciting.  Thus "The Prodigy" continues the long tradition of such forgettable, formulaic horror films.

You can sleep your way through this snooze fest and still be able to find out where you're at when you wake up sporadically, because the formula is so overused it's now silly in its premise: evil child is born, doctors notice something is wrong, mother (99% of the time it's the mother in the story) doesn't think there's anything wrong, evil child ups his evil intentions, but mother is still oblivious, there's a religious experience where the mother is told that her child is harboring an evil spirit (or Satan himself), but she doesn't believe them either, more bad things happen to make mother realize something really is wrong and sets out herself to save her child, who may or may not already be too late to be saved.   What's good about this formula is that you know exactly where you're at in the film, and approximately how much longer you have to sit through.

In this film - which I'm now calling "Generic Evil Kid Movie Part 99" - we get a child who's more than likely inhabited by the soul of a serial killer (apparently all the Good Guy dolls have all been used) who is wise beyond his years because, you know, he's really an old man.  The dim-witted parents (that's putting dim-witted parents in a bad light, they're actually worse than that) don't really understand what's happening until it's too late, and even then it's too late for anyone in the audience to particularly care about their safety, or even the outcome overall.  For a scant 82 minutes, it felt like I was sitting through a theatrical version of "War and Peace" set on a loop, as I impatiently waited for the next jump scare or next scene that further advanced the formula to bring the film to its final, yawn-worthy conclusion.

Jackson Robert Scott plays Miles, and he's as bland as you could imagine - he was much more lively in his other horror film "It," even though he was only in it for literally a few minutes.  The kid is inherently creepy looking on his own, but they try to make him even more creepy which turns out to be more comical than anything, and there's absolutely no soul (get it?) to his performance.  Likewise his moronic parents also deliver wood-dry performances that could put them in top billing as the worst parents in horror movies of this ilk ever.  Taylor Schilling plays Sarah as a woman with one half of one half of a brain, who you actually root for Miles to kill mercilessly.  Likewise Peter Mooney plays her husband John as a man who pretty much seemingly never wanted a family, as he pines about the days when he could be drunk and have no responsibilities, and who keeps referring to being abused by his father (why, or how, we never know) and hopes to be a better father than that, but pretty much remains invisible throughout.  This three-point pyramid of acting is more relegated to drawing a pyramid on a piece of paper rather than the Great Pyramids, as they're wholly two-dimensional and bland.

The violence was cool, but even for an R-rating, it felt rather PG-13.  The ending of the film was laugh-out-loud funny in a clearly unintentional way, or maybe it was just my relief that my pain of viewing this was over, and I could begin the arduous task of forgetting every single thing I just saw...wait, what did I just see?

The Summary:
Bland, boring, predictable, and comically inept, "The Prodigy" holds so close to the typical subgenre horror pattern you can sleepwalk your way through the film and always know where you're at - and the only terrifying thing is knowing you've wasted your time on it.

The Score: D-