There’s terrifying, and then there’s just tasteless. It’s a fine line, especially if we’re talking evil-child movies. 46 years ago, The Exorcist was touted (with some reason) as the scariest film ever made, yet it offered very few jump scares; instead, it took a deeply disturbing concept – a child turning into a monster – and rendered it onscreen with no details spared. That’s the lineage being claimed by The Prodigy, a gripping (but flawed) evil-child film that takes much the same literal approach, adds a handful of jump scares – and crosses the line into tastelessness.
The premise is simple enough – and signalled by the film early on, so I’m not spoiling any big twists. With hindsight, Miles’ parents should probably have known something was wrong when eight-year-old Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) asked for paprika with his dinner – but how were Sarah (Taylor Schilling) and her husband to know that their gifted son was actually possessed by the soul of an ethnic-Hungarian serial killer? (It’s a wonder the kid didn’t ask for a whole beef goulash with dumplings.) We’ve already seen a terrified woman breaking out of a farmhouse in Ohio, holding up a bloody stump – “He took my hand!” – and we’ve seen the perpetrator being shot by police just as Sarah is giving birth to Miles in the prologue (the film cross-cutting between the two), so the meaning is clear. As professor Jacobson (Colm Feore) explains: “In most of the world, reincarnation is an accepted part of life”.
That line, and the film’s tone in general – which is sleek and rather wintry, with muted colours – suggests it’s trying for classy psychological horror. That silly paprika detail, on the other hand, suggests a much cheesier movie – and it’s not just the details, the whole thing is vulgar and a bit distasteful. As in The Exorcist, much of the impact comes from an innocent child behaving in ugly ways. “Go f**k yourself!” little Miles (or the killer inside him) tells his mum, just like the foul-mouthed demon who possessed Regan in The Exorcist – but Regan, crucially, didn’t keep see-sawing between innocent child and disgusting demon, nor was she vividly aware of the battle being waged inside her. “Mummy, what’s wrong with me?” asks Miles, seeking comfort like any little boy. “It was my fault,” he says, helpless and distraught, after the killer’s latest atrocity.
The Prodigy actually recalls one of those made-for-TV family dramas where a kid has a mystery illness. Miles is sick; he knows it, and it’s tearing him apart; an expert finally explains what’s going on, and the parents try to find a solution. It’s a rich dynamic for a horror movie – but it needs very delicate handling, otherwise the kid’s pain gets in the way of the horror. Evil-child films always have to take care with the child. In The Omen (1976) – whose title-font is echoed in the font used here – Satan-spawned Damien was just a bad kid, so we could enjoy his nefariousness with a clear conscience. Orphan (2009) dealt in the same creepy concept, a child behaving like an adult (seen most vividly in The Prodigy in a scene where Miles gets into bed with Sarah), but the final twist made up for everything. This film also has a good twist, setting up what looks like a thorny moral dilemma – but the twist is wasted, and meanwhile we also have to spend 90 minutes watching a child’s soul being eaten away from the inside. It’s not much fun.
When a genre film is working, you forgive everything (that paprika thing, for instance); when it’s not, all its faults become magnified. The child-prodigy angle is increasingly irrelevant here, nor does it really make sense; much the same film could’ve been made about an ordinary non-prodigy (and why does Miles have such trouble making friends, when half of him is still a sweet little boy?). Talk of an abusive grandpa is a total red herring, so much so that you wonder if the script got changed in development (the dad, played by Peter Mooney, is an oddly tangential character). Even the jump-out-of-your-seat moments are a bit tacky – though they do make you jump, especially a grotesque effect when the killer’s face actually appears on the child’s body. The Prodigy deals in a genre that’s inherently tense and disturbing (there’s a reason why it took till the 1970s for Hollywood to depict evil kids, The Bad Seed excepted) – but it’s torn between making Miles creepy and making him poignant, the former aspect turning out one-dimensional while the latter is tasteless, then the climax is sadistically plotted and seems even more tasteless. I was gripped by this movie, but I can’t say I like it much. It’s a fine line.
DIRECTED BY Nicholas McCarthy
STARRING Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore
HORROR THRILLER
US 2019 92 mins
