The Prodigy

Starring: Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Peter Mooney, Colm Feore, Paul Fauteux, Brittany Allen
Directed by: Nicholas McCarthy
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Thriller
2019

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A mother (Taylor Schilling) becomes increasing concerned about the behavior of her son (Jackson Robert Scott). When she runs out of rational explanations, she soon begins to suspect something supernatural is plaguing him.

Review:

Tim: I suppose The Prodigy is fine. I guess that's the highest compliment I can give it. It's not a terrible horror movie. It's simply a thoroughly generic one. It felt like every single thing this movie throws at us is something we've seen countless times before. And seeing it here, for the umpteenth time, doesn't make it any more interesting. In the end, this is an okay film, but its a redundant one that offers nothing new.

The story has been done numerous times before. A boy starts showing signs of strange behavior and eventually the cause is supernatural. When I think about all the times I've seen movies about possession or whatever you want to call it, everything here just feels lackluster. It doesn't do anything better than at least a dozen other movies. That puts a damper on this entire film. The story is fine, but it's eminently predicable. There was one scene in the basement where the protagonist is slowly walking to this little drawer and there's flies buzzing all around. The scene takes forever for her to get there as it's building the suspense. But literally minutes ago, it let us know exactly what she would find. I thought for a moment what a wonderful opportunity this would have been to subvert our expectations and show us something really shocking. And of course, the film shows us exactly what it told us would be there. Yet, it wanted us to be surprised? Shocked? This was one example of why this film was so bland and generic.

I don't know Taylor Shilling, but I understand she has quite a following from her television series role. I didn't see much here to suggest she's someone I should stay close to. She gives a fairly forgettable horror movie performance. I didn't feel anything especially for her character. Her acting was fine, but never impressive. I honestly left this film scratching my head about her. It might be poor direction, but Shilling didn't come out of this film looking all that good. Jackson Robert Scott wasn't any better. If you go down the list of great creepy child performances in horror movies, there have been some remarkable ones. Scott is nowhere near that list. Is he truly creepy and does his performance induce fear? Not really. I've seen horror movies that made me fear ALL children because, who knows? That wasn't the case here. Scott was decent, but his performance was far too forgettable. I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about Peter Mooney's performance. He was there, but he made no lasting impact. It was fun seeing Colm Feore and he actually did a good job, but of course, his performance was too small to make a big difference.

I'm pretty negative about this movie simply because it felt like it continually took the easy way out. To be fair, there's nothing terrible about this film. I've seen many awful horror movies and The Prodigy is not one of them. The issues I have are the fact that this film feels completely comfortable just giving us things we've seen ad nauseam without any hint that effort was put in to make this more than your average horror movie. It's not a surprise that the box office was minuscule- there's nothing special here at all. Hardcore horror fans may get a few kicks from watching this, but for most people, it'll be a waste of time.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6



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