Milwood

Flat story, acting, everything! Steer clear of this monstrosity.

This movie is so bad. They changed the name to the orphanage and it's just horrible. I felt like I was watching a junior college project filmed in a dorm. Nothing good about this movie at all. I feel like the name was changed so that people might accidentally rent it thinking it's the horror classic of the same name. I wish I could have that 97 minutes of my life back. The camera work was weird, The acting was weird, The dialogue was weird. This review might be weird but the movie was such a train wreck it made me feel weird. What were the film makers thinking? Were they high or are they retarded? I fee that they might be all three. I feel bad for the kid who starred in this rubbish.

WOW! Where do I start? I think to call this a film is even an insult to the movie industry. I have to start by saying that this is one of the worst films you will ever see. The camera work is all over the place, it is jerky in parts and then still when it shouldn't be and what is with the rolling pan shot of the wall when the boy is talking to the cook? They say a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end...this film has none of them, just a garbled mess. And as for the acting (if you can call it that) well that was just the worst. The only redeeming actor was the young lad in what was actually his first acting performance. Although I don't actually know if he was any good or just better than the rest of the cast. Michelle Romano, who played Judy, was actually not terrible albeit a little wooden but she did know the basics of acting at least. Jimmy Scanlon was terrible and after seeing he has since wrote the script to a short film called "Methadone Mile" I suspect he may well have been high on heroin at the time of this movie, although even that wouldn't explain his behaviour. I would like to end with at least one redeeming factor for this film but there were none. I don't think I have ever been so excited to see the credits at the end of a movie. Please do not watch this film, you can actually find it on YouTube as a free movie so what I would recommend is to just flick to any point in the film and just see how bad things are. Truly amazed this was ever distributed.

The eleven year-old boy Nathan Perry (Christian Goodwin) is beloved by his parents that are going to give a dog for him. However his family is destroyed in a car accident when his parents die and the boy is sent to the custody of Milwood, an orphanage managed by Mr. Clemens (Jimmy Scanlon). The boy is treated with love by the social assistant Judy (Michelle Romano), but abused by Mr. Clemens. When Nathan is bullied by other boys, Mr. Clemens sends him to the feared Ward B and the mean Katherine Rizzo (Tiffany Shepis) becomes his tutor and he has medical assistance from the weird Doctor Charles (Don Tempesta). While snooping around the Ward B, Nathan discloses a dreadful secret. What have him discovered?

"Milwood" is an amateurish, brutal and pointless drama. The plot is confused and it is never clear the motives of Mr. Clemens and Doctor Charles: are they simply deranged sadists with their experiments or do they sell organs? The cinematography, lighting and edition are awful. The histrionic Jimmy Scanlon has a ham performance and only Christian Goodwin has an excellent performance. Michelle Romano has a nice character and also a good performance. The government sends the boys to the custody of Milwood, but there is no audits, in a very strange behavior. The marketing of this drama is completely wrong and viewers believe it is a horror film. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Orfanato" ("Orphanage")

This is a really poor effort. Within five minutes I could tell it was going to be bad but I stuck with it until the end. OK, I admit that I did skip a couple of chapters towards the end of the DVD and this did help matters. It has the feel of a school project about it and feels very low key. The story is just terrible as this is one of those films that you expect to get better and it doesn't. I picked this up for a £1 and I feel I was robbed.

The boy is OK but certainly not great and the movie just fails completely as a whole. What is the reason that the institution to treat the kids like they do? It's never explained. Avoid.