Joshua: El hijo del mal

This is a smart psychological horror film. An upscale NYC couple bring home their new baby and their older child -- a nine-year-old boy prodigy -- starts acting extremely creepy as suspicious accidents and odd behavior increase. Director George Ratliff creeps you out without any significant blood or gore, making this movie a lot more like Rosemary's Baby than, say, The Omen. With a smart script and great performances by everyone, including Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga and the kid playing Joshua, the only downside to this movie is a rushed "and-then-it-ends" anti-climax that I found unsatisfying. Still, this is worth a look if you like scary movies.

This film has a quiet power to it and it is not like all the gore and torture porn that has been out there lately making money at the box office. Look, the masses want to be led like a toddler through most movies - lookee here - point A to point B to point C - get it? He's good, he's bad. Wow - watch that head explode. Yawn. I like gore too but I also love intelligent films that leave it to an audience that WANTS to think - that wants to be challenged and has to try and figure out what is true and what isn't. Sam Rockwell, Vera F (as the wife), Dallas Roberst as the uncle and the young kid as Joshua all give excellent performances. This is not a HORROR film in the sense of gore and supernatural crap. This is about a family swirling out of control with post partum depression, work pressure, meddling relatives, a disturbed child and a crying infant - and it is left up to us to decide what really happened. Slow, steady and ultimately, powerful. If you have patience and love well made, intense dramas - JOSHUA is for you.

completely mis-marketed as an Omen-type horror film, there's a lot more going on in this one than in most of the recent similar scary fare. first things first: there's no supernatural hoo-hah. (ah, so refreshing.) it's an unsettling, strangely plausible horror film... seemingly made especially for parents. a few plot elements bothered me, and i felt there was one misstep (involving a Dave Matthews song, btw!), but overall it was an effective chiller. Vera Farmiga as the increasingly imbalanced mother and Celia Weston as the holy-rolling but genuinely concerned mother-in-law are both excellent, and Sam Rockwell delivers another compelling and subtly idiosyncratic performance. George Ratliff, who directed the engrossing and discomfiting 2001 documentary, Hell House, shows promise as a narrative filmmaker.

Obviously, this film was made with some other in mind. The homage it represents for films where kids played a key role in their unsettling plot is, to say the least, outstanding.

You'll find out how deeply involved with "Rosemary's Baby" it is. Or with "The Omen". I won't spill the beans here. You have to watch it. It's a horrific tale. Not a horror film with all the usual gore some want to associate the genre with. This film is horrifying in many senses. And when a film really grabs you, making you think about some personal possibilities, it has accomplished it's goal.

Joshua is a film dealing with so many things it won't disappoint. Crude, raw and cruel, but really telling. Good remake and mix of great horror films, and a new species on its own.

Performances are pretty good. Vera Farmiga is surprisingly good, as Sam Rockwell is, too. Jacob Kogan, apart from being a very good piano player, is a believable and fearsome Joshua.

Pinpoint cinematography, good plot and a very suitable script that keeps the story rolling in ways you could expect and in some others you wouldn't.

I can't believe why some people walked out theatres! There's a catch with this film for American viewers: it's eons away from American traditional movie-making. This film resembles the character exploration of Swedish and French films. So, don't expect a fast paced- spectacular glossy film. It will be a slooooow film for people who just want to have some time off with a popcorn film.

"Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces." Robert Louis Stevenson

If you're thinking of starting a family, don't see Joshua. If you think your stockbroker spouse is a stable breadwinner capable of providing you a view of Central Park, don't see Joshua. If you think all your children will be lovable, don't see Joshua.

However, if you want the bejesus scared out of you by a kid so bright he could skip two grades and play Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 12 at recess, director George Ratliff, whose Hell House could have entitled this expert psychological thriller, has fashioned a hell of a cautionary tale about appearances and reality, unlovable kids and their clueless parents. The slow disintegration of an upper-middle class family is so carefully drawn that the first third of the film seems like a walk in the park with a few scrapes from some errant shrubbery. When, however, nine-year old Joshua Cairn (Jacob Kogan) begins missing his parents' affection, displaced to his crybaby newborn sister, strange but not too strange things happen, not easily ascribable to him.

As in most successful thrillers involving miscreant kids, even to the end is a doubt that they could be the source of the growing terror. Although comparisons to The Bad Seed and Rosemary's Baby seem fair, Kogan bears a strong resemblance to Buddy Swan, who played the young Charles Foster Kane with chilling deadpan. Kane's lifelong hang up over being separated from his family is an appropriate allusion to clarify the psychological ramifications in this film.

Although I was quite pleased with the slow exposition, because I think things unravel slowly in privileged families, the payoff ending came too quickly and without the supernatural underpinnings the buildup seemed to promise.

"Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed . . . ." David Elkind, Child Psychologist