Kid’s creepiness goes the extra Miles
(out of 4) Starring Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore, Peter Mooney and Brittany Allen. Written by Jeff Buhler. Directed by Nicholas McCarthy. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere. 120 minutes. 14A Somebody needs to write a handbook for parents titled How to Tell if Your Child Is Possessed, or Just Has Colic. The parents in horror film The
Prodigy, a couple of affluent Pennsylvanians named Sarah and John (Taylor Schilling and Peter Mooney), could obviously use the help. They spend much of this made-in-Toronto movie trying to figure out what’s gotten into their son Miles, 8, (played by a damned good Jackson Robert Scott) long after it’s become obvious his mind and body have been hijacked by a demonic presence.
He has been acting strange since birth but Sarah and John choose to doubt even professional evidence, as provided by caregivers, psychologists and a demon wrangler named Arthur (Colm Feore).
Miles isn’t possessed by some garden-variety Satanic entity. His brain and bod are occupied by the soul of an Ohio serial killer named Edward Scarka (Paul Fateux), who romped around in the buff, lived in an extremely messy shack and collected the hands of his victims as grisly trophies.
The kid now does seriously creepy stuff such as attacking classmates and animals with knives, tools and garden implements, speaking in obscure foreign tongues, staring weirdly at people and sprinkling paprika all over his food. That last one is a real tipoff that something’s not right, amirite?
Yet Sarah and John persist in doing all the dumb things that people do in horror movies. They declare that Miles just needs time and love to straighten out.
They run around their house barefoot in the dark — which is a bad idea even in nonpossessed households.
They leave knives and other weapons for Miles to get his hands on. They generally act as if their son is just going through a rough patch, when in fact he is the rough patch.
“We have to do something about Miles!” Sarah finally declares, long after the horse has left the barn, the train has left the station and the sociopath has seriously wreaked havoc.
Could there be a dopier pair of parents?
And John has a habit of dropping out of the picture. He should have been written right out of the movie. Nobody would be the wiser.
Director Nicholas McCarthy and screenwriter Jeff Buhler could pen that aforementioned parental handbook for child demonic possession, since they blithely borrow from innumerable evil kid movies: The Omen, The Exorcist, The Bad Seed, Children of the Corn, and so on.
They don’t bring much new to the party, although they’re good with jump scares.
And they’ve made a real find in young Jackson Robert Scott, who gives good creep. He’s got a stare that could give the willies to Dracula. He’ll need that for the inevitable sequel.