Kid-Thing

Annie is a young girl with no parental supervision, no destined path in life, and is almost morally absent. Her days involve lumbering around her broken, decrepit town either shoplifting, eating, or just riding her bike in solitude. One day, she hears a voice call out helplessly from the bottom of a deep, dark well. It's sounds as if it belongs to an elderly woman who fell down the well and is hungry, desperate, and possibly injured. Annie is now at a quandary; this is likely the most responsibility in terms of choice and decision this girl has ever had and needs to take some position of action before it's too late.

David Zellner's Kid-Thing is an interesting film, solely for the purpose of its protagonist being so unpredictable, reckless, and, yet, so human that it's hard to turn your attention away from her. She is played by Sydney Aguirre, a young newcomer who handles the incredibly difficult role of playing a youth with crippled emotion stunningly. The camera is fixated on her for about seventy-five minutes out of the eighty-three minute affair, and she is never seen smiling or abandoning her default smug expression she has seemingly held forever. We can see quite clearly this is a fault of the broken environment she has inhabited for so long. It's a place - in the backwoods of Texas - that seems to have robbed little Annie of all emotional resonance and empathy.

Kid-Thing reminds me, most of all, of a film that popular trash director Harmony Korine or even transgressive auteur John Waters would make in their heydays. Korine, whose films Gummo and Julien-Donkey Boy are some of the best of the nineties, specializes in the commentary of broken, dismantled youths thanks to hopeless home-lives or community brokenness. His artistic vision would've greatly benefited an already gripping topic. Waters would've likely turned the subject into a short with more grittiness to the material, but no doubt both men would utilize shock-elements in their stories to amplify them to great effects.

Zellner uses the minimalist approach to tell this story, not looking to shock or appall, but to simply amuse, fascinate, and occasional mesmerize us with his talent for making the smaller moments beautiful and the entire picture elegant in its moral-emptiness. Making this material even remotely attractive, let alone watchable, is an achievement in its own right, and Zellner never seems to employ cheap glorification techniques on a story that is fragile and delicate. He, along with his brother, directed and starred in Goliath, another micro-budget independent film that generated much discussion.

Kid-Thing is a peaceful film dealing with subject matter, such as a broken adolescence, loss of innocence, and emotional vapidness, that is often loud and noticeable. This film takes time to build up scenes, many of them in particular, lack a payoff, which isn't always a bad thing. Pay close attention to the facial expressions of characters and the way they recite their lines; this is the first film ever where I don't believe I ever saw a character smile once.

Starring: Sydney Aguirre, Nathan Zellner, David Wingo, Zack Carlson, and Heather Kafka. Directed by: David Zellner.

The pizza was crunchy but with ample topping. It looked delicious and sounded delicious and I've never seen any food in a film that I've wanted more because of the way it was portrayed on film. The movie itself was as shallow as it gets, but these guys could definitely have a promising career in making pizza commercials.

A truly independent American production, Kid-Thing was produced, written, directed, recorded and shot by the Texan Zellner Brothers. And if one of them was a 10 year old girl, they would have taken the lead role as well, but seeing as they're not, the brothers instead play her father, Marvin, and his dumb ass sidekick Caleb.

Annie is a 10 year old girl living in a rundown Hicksville town somewhere in Texas. With no apparent friends and a father who pays little attention to her, she lives on a diet that consists almost entirely of sweets (breakfast is a big multicoloured bowl of them, with milk) and spends her days ambling through the streets and surrounding woodland, setting off firecrackers, pelting things at cars and various other acts of minor vandalism.

At first this looks like it's shaping up to be a southern fried American take on the social realist work of another hardworking pair of film making siblings, Belgium's Dardennes Brothers. But a couple of scenes in, things take a different turn when Annie stumbles across a hole in the ground and hears an old woman calling for help. She returns with food to feed the mysterious voice, who identifies herself as Esher, but refuses her pleas to help her get out of there.

We are now in a quirky fairy tale world where everything is just a little off kilter. The brothers delight in scene after scene of unexpected comic moments that make ingenious use of the locations, props and people they had to hand – a rotting dead cow, a blind guitarist who can sing and play songs backwards (a Kings of Leon number, at a guess), a hypnotised chicken - and the little details - dead cockroaches on the windowsill, weeds sprouting through paving slabs, a tramp sleeping under newspaper at a bus stop. It's worth seeing just Annies unique sandwich making technique.

The brothers made a brave choice in casting Sydney Aguire as Annie, who doesn't fit the cute kid role that is normally required for this sort of thing. Instead we get a tomboyish force of nature with a cruel, destructive streak, but who is also sensitive enough to convey a whole host of emotions and to always keep us guessing as to what she will do next.

Having been a long-time fan of the Zellner Bros.' work, I was pretty eager to see their latest feature. Needless-to-say, KID-THING did not disappoint. I loved every second of it, and can't wait to see it again!

Newcomer, Sydney Aguirre, gives a break-out performance as Annie -- a friendless, essentially parent-less, 11 year old who roams around her east-Texas town wreaking havoc. One day, while hanging out alone in the woods, Annie comes across a woman at the bottom of a well (voiced by Hollywood legend, Susan Tyrrell). The cast is rounded out by the Zellner Bros. themselves (who are delightful as usual), and a host of interesting characters -- a catatonic, young birthday girl, a blind, backwards-guitar playing singer, lots and lots of farm animals (alive and dead), etc.

I can't recommend this film enough. Check it out if you get the chance!

The movie really sets very high goals. And I guess you could talk quite a bit about that ending. But I'll leave that up to you (if you are willing to go the whole distance that is). The thing is that while the main actor (a child) is really good in what he is doing, he is absolutely not likable. Even if you take into account that it's not really the fault of the kid (the kid does not have supernatural powers or anything else like that).

The director was there (with his brother, who is in the movie) and did explain a few things. Again the intentions were very good, but I do feel the movie fails in a few aspects of it. It remains mysterious until the end, which you either think is a good thing or will make you loathe the movie even more. Very strange pace and not really with mass appeal