Sarah's Child

Sarah and her husband are unable to have a child. Over time, Sarah seems to be losing her mind, telling people that she's "expecting" and buying little girl clothes. Sarah starts getting pretty creepy!

Enter Melissa, a little girl who just appears at the house. She's creepy too. Michael is oblivious. Sarah gets creepier. Michael starts seeing a therapist, while Sarah has pretend tea parties with Melissa.

Horror and tragic death ensue.

SARAH'S CHILD is one of those movies with a half-way decent plot that is completely undermined by terrible acting and dialogue. It also drags a lot, seeming to be hours long! Cut down to about 20-30 minutes, it could have been a tolerable short film. As it is, the bad far outweighs any good...

This is a very pedestrian production of what could have been an interesting story. The way it is presented might have worked for a "Twilight Zone" style TV show but just drags and drags as a feature film. Even so it does keep you watching to the end to find out exactly what is going on. Incidentally, the DVD version I watched was obviously copied direct from a video source using cheap software. Picture quality was VHS standard and the soundtrack kept slipping out of sync. On the other hand it only cost the equivalent of $1.50 so I wasn't expecting much. There are some nice locations - the producers clearly took full advantage of tax breaks and subsidies - it's difficult to see how they would have raised the money otherwise. Not as terrible a film as some reviewers would have you believe but I'm sure their are better ones that haven't made it to DVD yet (even at bargain basement prices).

Why when there are so many good to excellent films out there waiting to be transferred to DVD does such appalling rubbish as this get the nod?

There's no acting ability demonstrated and a script that has all the characters spelling out what's going on in the non-existent story to the viewer at every stage. I didn't think professional films could get this poor. Everyone should see at least some of it (I fell asleep for the last half hour - twice!) just to appreciate how good even the poorest of other films are.

To really cap this off - the region 2 DVD transfer is dreadful too. I don't believe that at any point the sound was properly synchronized with the picture, the error varying from just perceptable to very obvious.

It's a shame I have to score it at least 1. Minus 10 would be more appropriate.

I don't think this film was that bad at all, and thought i would watch it to the end just to see if i could, and it was quite good, the acting was a bit shifty but not unbearable to watch. It might not be everyones cup of tea to see a lovely family dispel all signs of sanity and emerge into madness but then its only a film right.

I watch movies while I do my artwork, so they run really in the background as I'm painting. If you were sat actually watching this film as your only entertainment then I don't think you will enjoy it too much.

The DVD I have of the film is very poor quality but I found the actors and story surprisingly engaging. I loved the nosy old lady who was the landlady.

Sarah and Michael move to a new home and want to start a family, sadly Sarah is deemed infertile and seems to begin to lose her grip on reality as the distress overcomes her. The film has many flashback of Sarah's childhood which seem to relate somewhat to how she is behaving now but it's all very cryptic. Sarah strikes up a rather inappropriate friendship with a strange little girl called Melissa and the film seems to imply that this child isn't a real child, that she is a figment of Sarah's imagination and that she's imagined her so strongly that she has actually become a real child.

The film goes down the road of possible mysterious happenings, wishing things to be real actually does make them real, continuing flashbacks of Sarah's childhood, a psychiatrist and then the possibility it's Michael that's imagining things! It all becomes a little muddled and in the end you don't really know what's going on.

I did enjoy this movie, not sure why.