Electrick Children

This is an amazing job for a first feature film by a writer-director who was still in film school. A fine effort by a talented amateur with very little money on hand.

But, seriously, it's not a particularly good film overall. It starts strong--the scenes in the religious country home all ring true. I think that's because this is the part that the writer-director was actually familiar with in real life. Once Racheal gets to Vegas, however, the movie falls apart into random, loosely connected scenes that feature what seems to be very, very poorly improvised dialog. The poor actors just seem to be at a loss as to what they are supposed to be saying or doing. And the effect isn't "natural," it's just the opposite. You are totally aware that these are actors trying to think of what to say and do, not real people who just don't know what to say. Like a bad home movie or a the plot part of a porno. Incongruities abound as Racheal, who was so sheltered that she had never heard pop music, talked on a cell phone, and didn't even know what a tape recorder was all the sudden starts tossing around terms she would never have heard before like "rock and roll" and "cell phone." And the revelatory scene (can't tell you what it is)is implausible beyond belief. It, and many other parts of the Vegas section, was an interesting idea that the filmmaker apparently just didn't have time to work out in a way that worked.

The acting was pretty good, when dialog was scripted. Billy Zane as the religious nut dad was smooth and professional, but seemed way too nice and reasonable to be the relative heavy of the piece; a hint of darkness in dad would have made the whole movie a bit better. The woman who played the mom was very good too, in a limited role.

The guy who played Racheal's newly found boy friend was easily the most accomplished young performer in the movie, even handling his part in the pointless, rambling Vegas scenes as though he actually knew what was going on (I don't think anyone else did).

But I have to say that, when they were given written dialog, the other young performers were for the most part very appealing. The girl who played Racheal was quite charming. She drifted from sheltered religious cult girl to valley girl without warning, but she was very expressive and had a good presence.

But overall, what we have is a very good 20 minute short film about a girl in an isolated Mormon cult who discovers rock and roll. And that is followed by over an hour of what seems like a first draft of a story that the filmmaker hoped would come together as they went along.

And who knows? If she had been afforded the time and resources of even a low budget Hollywood film, maybe she could have brought it together at that. There is obvious talent there!

Electrick Children is the best kind of indie film, about characters unlike any you've probably seen before, experiencing genuine human relationships under intriguingly unusual circumstances. The scenes and characters stay with you in an almost haunting way long after you've watched it. More than just about any other film I've seen, Electrick Children "got" the true essence of a mother-daughter relationship, and there is much more to the story than that. You get the sense that the director genuinely cares about these characters and offers the viewer an honest, almost voyeuristic view of their lives. This film is no slapstick comedy, but it does have humor and warmth.

I watch A LOT of movies. As I watched this movie, I thought that in some sense it reminded me of the movie 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'. I didn't even realize that Julia Garner is in 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'! Every scene in this movie is perfect. The music is perfect. The way they incorporate narration or conversations in each scene is unique but works very well and again, creates a certain mood. Although this is no average plot, by the end of the movie, the characters to the viewer are well-known. It's like a good book; when the book is over you almost miss the characters - and I definitely felt that in this movie. The movie felt very Nostalgic. What a beautiful film!

Electric Children is an interesting debut feature from writer/director Rebecca Thomas focusing on a 15-year-old girl from a fundamentalist Mormon community in Utah, who mysteriously gets pregnant, causing her to launch off on a hastily convened road trip to Las Vegas, in an effort to find "the father" of her unborn child. This somewhat left of centre storyline is made more believable, knowing Thomas herself was raised as a Mormon. Clearly her religious experiences have undeniably strongly influenced the making of this intriguing, but ultimately uneven film.

The first act primarily set in the creepily small, remote Utah hamlet arguably features the best scenes in the movie. I use the word "creepily" deliberately, as despite the rugged attractiveness of the locations, plentiful sunshine and pollution-free natural desert environment and bed-time story sessions, the sect's embrace of biblical studies and accountability, at the expense of a normal education and social upbringing of children is quite unsettling. We can certainly accept that when 15 year old Rachel discovers she is pregnant, she is convinced that she has conceived miraculously, like the Virgin Mary, via an old cassette recorder, owned and hidden away by her mother.

Julia Garner is perfectly cast as the naive, ethereal, but determinately positive teenager, opposed to a hastily arranged shotgun marriage, by her shady father, the leader of this tiny group. Rory Culkin is also surprisingly good and effective as a rebellious teenage skater, come musician runaway, she meets after absconding from her village in a stolen pick-up.

I feel Electrick Children would have been a better film if Thomas had just concentrated on Rachel's story, with greater emphasis on her relationship with her mother, whose influence on the story behind the cassette player and ensuring events is greater than either her or Rachel realise. Instead Rachel's brother Mr Will and his experiences after hiding away in Rachel's getaway truck, is introduced as an unneeded sub-story, which arguably comes to dominate and unbalance the main narrative. On top of all this, the audience is asked to accept a huge contrivance in the third act to deepen the overall story and add more sense to earlier snippets we see of Rachel's dreams/visions. The climax to the film, whilst providing some amusement, also seems a pretty blatant rip-off from more accomplished films such as The Graduate.

Electrick Children is still worthwhile investigating however, if you're interests lie in getting a realistic peek at the type of closed community, whose collective, at times distinctly dubious, ethical actions, many might argue, should face more transparent legal scrutiny in wider mainstream society.

Rebecca Thomas' first feature as writer-director is an interesting character study of a fifteen year old Mormon girl, Rachel, played with a wonderful and understated performance by Julia Garner. It begins with daddy dearest questioning the teen about her devotion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; also known as Mormons. The wide eyed innocent proclaims an unquestioned faith in the teachings to her father. He explains that the interview must be recorded on a cassette player. She later finds the device and pops in a tape with the song "Hanging on the Telephone" on it. While listening to it, she has an epiphany. She believes that the singer is a messenger of God, and that he has chosen her to carry a modern day Baby Jesus. She becomes pregnant; and, of course, mom and dad do not believe her story of an immaculate conception, and a quick marriage to a boy in the Amish looking community is arranged. Rachel has other ideas, and steals the family pick up truck and drives to Las Vegas in search of the singer who has impregnated her via audio tape. She meets a rock band who takes her in and she learns about life outside of her sheltered commune. A few plot twists are included and the ending is rather ambiguous, but I recommend Electrick Children for a very believable Julia Garner; a very promising young actress.