Rufus

...without the emo songs. It sounded like they were trying to sell a soundtrack. They were too distracting and took me right out of the movie.

Pretty good plot and watchable characters and acting. Music was horrible and intrusive.

Nearly every scene was a stand-alone snippet with very little context. It drew attention to the filming process in that you could fully sense the crew setting up the shot, the cast members taking their positions and getting themselves into character, the director saying, "Action", and then the story starts up again. There was no flow between scenes.

Worse, more often than not, the characters displayed wild mood swings between scenes. In one scene, a character might beat another with a pipe and in the next scene they're walking together calmly discussing the situation. Rufus' "adoptive" mother abruptly changes from pleading not to let him stay the night to becoming a nurturing she-bear to protect him. Rufus can sleep in her dead son's room and wear his old clothes but she has a meltdown when she sees him using her son's baseball glove.

Her husband bounces back and forth between wanting to be a father to Rufus to expressing contempt or impatience with him. And I'm not talking about a story arc wherein attitudes change. I'm talking about the attitudes switching back and forth from scene to scene for no apparent reason.

Likewise, the mother of Rufus' cross-street crush who goes from warning Rufus to stay away from her daughter to encouraging her daughter to "go after him", again for no apparent reason for this change of heart. Ditto for the older boy who suddenly switches from being a menacing character in Rufus' life to becoming a heartthrob for him.

In all these examples (and plenty more), the drastic changes are made as a light switch being turned on or off rather than with some sort of revelation leading to the 180 degree turn-about in attitude.

Also, various characters seem to pop up out of nowhere for no logical reason and always just in time to create a dramatic effect.

In short, the script mostly defies reality rather than attempting to support it To be clear, I don't mean the reality of the supernatural elements of the story. I mean the more mundane actions of people within the story behaving in an annoyingly unrealistic way.

I guess some people would call their dog Rufus. But in this case we get something different (what? You have to watch to find out). Rufus has a really stellar cast with an interesting spin on a sort of known story. There is violence and there are relationships built that lead to an inevitable conclusion. A conclusion or a way the story goes, that is very predictable.

Still the movie is about the ride and about finding out and seeing those relationships evolve or develop. It's not easy to avoid the cliché trap, but the movie does so in some occasions. A person is not only one thing (the thing he/she appears to be), it's more complex than that ... and we get to see some of those sides here. A difficult task that the movie almost completely masters

This movie does borrow from other movies including "Twilight" and "Let the Right One In," and even the stage musical, "Bat Boy," but it stands on its own feet well enough because of its strong direction and acting. It does move slowly, but it's not boring at all. The characters all have secrets which are slowly revealed as the mystery of who and what Rufus is slowly unfolds. The actor who plays Rufus is talented and makes interesting choices, so he really is the glue that holds this film together.

I was expecting some B-rated cheesy flick but this was a soild movie. The acting was pretty good.