Prodigy

I don't think PRODIGY deserves a legitimate effort at a proper review from me for the following reason.

I'm sure there's a more commonly-used name for it, but since I don't know what it is, I'll simply call PRODIGY a "parasite" movie. A parasite movie is one that is quickly produced at the same time a very similarly named, more "legitimate", big-budget movie is making the rounds in theaters. Right now, there's a horror picture called THE PRODIGY playing at theaters accompanied by a lot of promotional advertising, and now here we have PRODIGY released direct to video.

Another example current at the time of this writing is the digitally animated DUMBO in theaters and the direct to video junk-animated movie JUMBO trying to capitalize on it.

The apparent objective of such parasite movies is a slimy attempt to capitalize on the popularity and advertising promotion of the host movie and get people to watch their crummy knockoff by mistake.

A particularly irritating feature of PRODIGY is that it's a spiritual/theological message movie from a Christian production company, Visionary Film Productions (VF). The only conclusion I can come to is Visionary Film Productions is hoping to Trojan horse their religious message by engaging in this kind of trickery.

In the interest of full disclosure, while I'm not religious myself, I am generally pro-Christianity on a philosophical basis. To my way of thinking, the entire mechanism of parasite movies falls into the general category of lying which goes into the whole general heading of bearing false witness, and we know what the 10 Commandments has to say about THAT. The fact that a Christian production company would engage in this kind of deceptive behavior just helps to support what atheists have to say about Christianity.

And the cherry on top is that the primary "prophet" character in the movie has the most ear-bleeding going-through-puberty cracking voice I've ever heard. It makes you want to stab yourself in both ears with a sharp pencil.

Visionary Film Productions, and all the people that work for them, should be ashamed of themselves for engaging in this kind of duplicity. WWJD

>:(

This is one of those movies where the director and the writer are the same person. I often suspect this happens when the writer can't get any studio to produce his work and so decides to go it alone and do it himself (not always, of course). Sometimes, the result is a really interesting, original movie. I've come across a few of those. Unfortunately, this movie does not belong to that group. Whatever studio(s) gave this script the thumbs down made the right decision. It is that bad.

This is chock full of themes and ideas from other, better, movies. Despite that, there are plenty of holes in the plot. It boasts a roll call of truly cliched characters - the jaded father who drinks to forget and has become estranged from his family; the barmaid with the heart of gold and a sad past; the sinister doctor from a mysterious and unethical government agency; and the group of murderous rednecks with guns etc etc. They're all there. What the movie does lack is tension, excitement and a plot you care about. You won't have seen the cast in any other movies and you probably never will. They may very well be the director's family members for all I know. Some of the male cast members do look similar. Sadly, none of them can act and it's sometimes painful to watch them trying. This movie was done on the cheap and it shows. I hope no one mortgaged their house to make this movie! The script occasionally throws up some quasi-religious gobbledygook and once or twice I was asking myself if this was maybe produced by some religious organisation. I'm still not sure. The religious stuff does nothing to make the movie more enjoyable though, as you may expect.

Coming in at almost two hours, this movie is a real test of endurance. I watched it to the end, not because I was engrossed in the story, but because I wanted to see how bad it got. The answer - pretty bad. I happily recommend that you give this movie a miss and assure you that you wont actually have missed anything.

This is the wrong kind of bad movie. Nothing fun like some cheesy 50's B movie sci-fi. This is plodding and dull exercise that will have you hitting fast forward in hopes something interesting happens. It is an okay story completely undone by poor acting, poor direction, poor scriptwriting and the worst editing and continuity I've ever had the misfortune to watch. Amazon Prime needs to do a better job choosing movies that show up on it's service.

Mr. Leon and company ALMOST made a good film.

Production quality is very strong. Oregon woods, shot exceptionally well. Drone filming, static scenery, lots of natural light. Continuity smooth. Comfortable editing.

However, the pace is slow. The script is tolerable. The delivery, by actors who may have wanted to do more, is plodding and tone deaf. "Prodigy" is like a well produced (technically), long, student film.

As in another review here, "Midnight Run" meets "Knowing" at a sermon.

In descending order of goodness: -The camerawork and general cinematography was really nice at times reminding me of much higher budget movies. -The concept was a good one. -The dramaturgy was fine and provided for some thrills and twists even if some of them ver really predictable. -The music used was good, but at times unfitting and always too loud. -The acting had it's moments from everyone involved, but also really bad moments from everyone involved. Decent effort, needs improvement. -The audio editing was not good. It wasn't quite as atrocious as other low profile movies, but bad enough to put this in the student movie category. -The story.... was atrocious. It left me with a 'damn this was awful' feeling, even though the whole thing wasn't really bad as a whole. The constant cringy dialogue and events and the super hamfisted religious bits... ugh

All in all if A movies are blockbusters, B aresmaller budget hollywood movies, C are direct to video, comedies, and arthouse, and series tie ins, and D are student films, this is a D movie. I hesitated between giving this a 4 or a 5, but eventually, it wasn't that bad, and it did some things right, the whole story just left one feeling profoundly unfulfilled and nonsensical and the ending didn't help much at all. It felt a bit like some american bible belt fantasy. If that kid was not jesus2.0 then he shouldn't have been acting like this much of a messiah figure. Nice effort, with lots of good bits, but could've been handled a lot better, with more believable characters especially the main father son duo, and a less shallow preachy plot