The Prodigy is the latest evil kid horror flick, following in the tradition of films like The Omen and The Bad Seed. That’s not exactly a fair comparison because one of my favorite things about The Omen and The Bad Seed is that stuff actually happens in them. Actually, a better comparison might be Child’s Play because The Prodigy is basically what would happen if Charles Lee Ray put his soul directly into Andy Barclay and there was no doll involved. But that comparison also falls short because Chucky actually did stuff. This movie is fucking boring, is what I’m trying to say.
The Child’s Play comparison isn’t a spoiler, either. While the trailers make it seem like the evil nature of the kid is a mystery (and the tagline is “What’s Wrong with Miles?”), the film tells us exactly what’s wrong with Miles immediately in the pre-title sequence. Miles is born at the exact moment that a serial killer is gunned down by the police and the killer is reincarnated in the child’s body. No further explanation of the logistics is given. The mother gets the idea that the killer needs to resolve unfinished business by killing the one victim that escaped (which is quite a fucking conclusion to jump to) and that this must happen soon because, as we know from established science, reincarnated serial killers generally assume full control of a new body when the kid is eight years old. I mean, that’s just common sense.
I spent most of this film’s running time wondering if this would join The Darkness as the only horror films that I’ve ever seen in which nobody dies. It does squeak in a kill at the very end, but the kid does fuck-all for most of the running time. His reign of terror amounts to hitting someone with a wrench and threatening to frame a psychiatrist for sexual abuse. Even when he finally attempts to kill his dad, he fails and only manages to send him to the hospital, making him the least competent horror villain that I’ve seen in a while. The film relies on cliché bullshit for scares, such as the kid spouting profanity (though the film’s attempt at this is practically PG-rated compared to similar bits in The Exorcist) and speaking an extremely rare dialect (because the serial killer is the son of incredibly specific Hungarian immigrants). In fact, as far as I can tell, the film’s R-rating is only due to the profanity. This kid’s reign of terror amounts to saying “fuck” and “cock” a couple of times. Fucking terrifying. Oh, and the big jump scare that was the centerpiece of all of the trailers? It’s just a dream sequence. I don’t care if that’s a spoiler, I hate it when movies pull that shit.
The early reveal of the villain doesn’t do the film any favors, either. Any sense of mystery is removed by explaining everything in the opening scene and we are left waiting for the characters to catch up to what we already know. Again, that worked in Child’s Play because stuff was actually happening in the meantime. Interestingly, the mother is incredibly receptive to the notion that her son might be the reincarnation of a serial killer. She even takes him to a psychiatrist whose entire specialty is in such cases, making me wonder just how often this happens that he can keep his practice open. We are expected to take reincarnation in a rather matter-of-fact way, like “oh yeah your kid is a reincarnated serial killer, what else did you think it could be, you dipshit?” There is no further explanation of how the killer knew or expected this would happen, though such expectations could be attributed to the vast Buddhist population in fucking Hungary. Did he have a Plan B? Why this particular kid? Was nobody else born that night? What if nobody had been born in that area?
These are the questions that I ponder when a horror movie gives me nothing of entertainment value. I can overlook plot holes in something like The Omen or Child’s Play because they are actually entertaining films. Boredom makes those plot holes seems a whole lot wider and this is about as vanilla as this kind of movie can get. I know that some parents will say that I don’t get why this is scary because I don’t have kids, which is like saying that I didn’t find Christine scary until I got a car because I didn’t truly understand that cars exist prior to that. Granted, this movie does try to play on parental fears that their child will be a monster, but it does so in such a bland way that I don’t think even the most skittish parents would be bothered by this. But, remember, if your kid is acting aggressively, they are most likely reincarnated serial killers. Don’t waste time by pursuing other possibilities and just accept it.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy_(film)#/media/File:The_Prodigy_poster.jpg
