“'Case 39' needs a lot of work” |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2010 09:19 PM PDT  By now -- as sure as we know that DVD release follows theatrical -- we know that children are evil. In fact, demon children are such a movie staple, I get the sense that directors are starting to get bored with them. The quietly released Case 39 is such a lazy take on the "demon seed" motif, it might have gone direct-to-video had The Hangover not happened, turning supporting player Bradley Cooper into a somewhat bankable star. As for putative star Renee Zellweger, with her little girl voice, she is utterly miscast as a social-worker-turned-demon-fighter. Her terrified look needs work. When we meet Emily (Zellweger), she is hopping from dysfunctional family to dysfunctional family at her office cubicle, saying things like "violence, anger ... that's your son's future unless you break the cycle."
Then she hits the 39th case, a little girl named Lilith (Jodelle Ferland), who has become anti-social at school, seen her grades drop from As to Ds, and tells Emily that she's heard her parents say they were going to "send her to Hell." However, she has trouble getting her jaded superiors to believe she has what amounts to a child-care case. That is, until Lilith makes a panicky phone call, and Emily and her cop friend Det. Barron (Ian McShane) interrupt Lilith's parents in the process of burning her alive. Whoops, guess the State almost messed that one up. Now completely engrossed in Lilith's case, Emily offers to take her in as a foster child Thus does Case 39 begin its hamhanded thievery from the plots of evil-kid movies ranging from The Ring (people who receive demon-voiced cellphone calls are doomed) to The Omen (hey, what's with all the supernatural accidents all of a sudden?). The writers actually seem to care little for internal logic, the child's powers ranging from passive to house-shakingly proactive (and don't hold your breath waiting for the scene that explains what corner of Hell we might be dealing with here -- it's just evil, 'kay?). For a social worker, Emily accepts this "Hey, the kid's a demon and must be killed" theory pretty darned quickly (I'm not sure that represents the current approach to deviant child behaviour). The rest consists of trying to convince a whole mess of people, including her psychologist boyfriend Doug (Cooper) and Barron, before something bad happens in cheesy digital FX. For her part, Ferland gives good "scary child," evil smiles and all, and she and Cooper share one table-turning "therapy" scene together that is legitimately chilling enough to hint at how much better this movie could have been. Unfortunately, it's in the script that most of Lilith's interaction is to be with her foster mom Zellweger, who is all over the place dramatically and carries about as much gravitas as a purse. That would frustrate just about any Hellspawn. (This film is rated 14A) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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