| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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What if you hated your own child?
by Not O (movies profile)
Jul 29, 2007
15
of
15 people found this review helpful
Watching Joshua's parents suffer will you want to pull out your own hair as much as they want to pull out theirs.
Joshua is the best-crafted horror film since The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. While most horror films get their scares from surprise or gore, Joshua puts you on edge -- and never lets you relax -- with an ingenious script, excellent acting, and direction that enervates you, one neuron at a time.
At one point in the film my date whispered, "This is creepy on so many different levels." Afterwards...two days later, I should add...she was still asking, "Is it possible to have a kid like that?" I reassured her, "No, no."
I hope I'm right.
The premise of the film is that normal (if not better-than-normal) parents might bear and raise a boy who is brilliant, unloving (if not flatly hateful), and bent on ruining everyone's lives, beginning with that of his newborn sister. Layered into the script are work pressures, postpartum depression and religious fanatic in-laws...insanity looming from every direction.
The directing and acting are every bit as good as the script. Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga deliver convincing performances as parents Brad and Abby Cairn. Farmiga's performance, in particular, would make any childless woman think twice...or thrice...before traveling the path of momhood. Michael McKean (as Brad's boss, Chester) provides off-beat levity, and Celia Weston (as the Tammy Faye Bakker-alike mother-in-law) is maddening. And then there's Jacob Kogan as Joshua. You haven't met a harder-hearted, more conniving, or more malevolent baddie since Payton Flanders (Rebecca De Mornay) as the nanny out to destroy a family in "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle." If that film creeped you out, Joshua will, too.
Joshua will likely leave many audience members piecing together elements of the story and questioning preconceptions about parent-child bonds long after leaving the theater. If you fear your child enough, could you hate him? And if you hate him enough, could you kill him?
Right up to the lyrics of the final song (by Dave Matthews, no less), the film is a brilliant, calculated and disturbing work. Just as it should be. |
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