The Prodigy (2019)

'The Prodigy' is directed by Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) and stars young Jackson Robert Scott, whom many of you have likely seen from 2017's 'IT'. He plays Miles, a young boy born the same night a psychotic murderer was gunned down by police. As Miles grows, he begins to show high levels of genius intelligence which his parents are thrilled to see. That is until Miles turns 8 years old, and mysterious accidents begin to occur around the young boy as he begins to show more & more disturbing behavior.

'The Prodigy' is a simple film on paper: evil child does evil things. Nobody believes the parents until things escalate into a showdown. This is the biggest problem with 'The Prodigy' because it also presents new ideas that are different from your usual killer kid fare, but they become muddled before even the second act. At first the film acts as if Miles is possessed and it's a demon seed film, then it goes into the more interesting ideas of reincarnation, but then it peaks and becomes a somewhat standard killer kid flick a la 'Orphan'. What really saves this movie I think is the finale, and it is absolutely gut-wrenching and unapologetic about it too. It's a great ending that is simply not seen in a theatrically released horror film very often these days. People seem to forget that horror movies are about that gut reaction and not about happy or satisfying climaxes so to see a wide release like 'The Prodigy' pull off such a brutal ending was awesome to see.

However, that brings me to the film as a whole, which is unfortunately just not good enough to earn such a good payoff. It's average at best, save for the wonderful cinematography and the excellent performance by Scott, who I think has a good horror career ahead of him but the rest really falls to pieces unfortunately. As with many of these kind of films, people stretch the suspension of disbelief to ridiculous levels, even when Miles commits horrible atrocities nobody calls the police, or immediately sends the kid to the hospital. They also have to commit the sin of the father character always being angry, poorly written, and seemingly incapable of caring for a child. This cliche really needs to stop because its not only lazy, but quite insulting.

Don't get me wrong here my dear reader, I don't hate 'The Prodigy' in fact I will go so far to say that I enjoyed it enough to go back and see what I may have missed as it does have much to offer when discussing the various themes it presents. It's just that it's weighed down with too many common tropes of the genre and becomes stale long before that amazing ending.

5/10