The Prodigy

Source

I was doomscrolling on tiktok and came across a video of a movie review, the person was talking about a troubled child and a desperate mother trying to understand the disturbing behaviour of her son. I said to myself 'say no more', the guy had me at troubled child, I just knew I had to watch.

Hi, I'm Abeegail, welcome to my blog, I'm a teen that loves psychological horror movies and the movie 'The prodigy' hits that. The movie starts out with the death of a serial killer Edward Scarka, and simultaneously birth of Miles. Miles started showing strange behaviour other than the fact that he is unusually intelligent beyond his age. His behaviour becomes more unsettling that his mother begins to worry, she suspects that something is deeply wrong. Sarah goes to a therapist and she was introduced to the concept of reincarnation, she finds out that miles may be the reincarnation of a serial killer, whose soul needs to finish unfinished business through miles.

Source

The performance of Jackson Robert Scott (Miles) gave me goosebumps. For such a young actor, he protrayed the part of a possessed kid well. The switch from innocent to serial killer is smooth, he does it with ease and he quite looked like a disturbed child. If not for anything, watch this movie just for the performance. Another performance I found quite lovely was Taylor Schilling (Sarah), she played a convincing part of a conflicted mother torn between fear and maternal love. She expressed the struggle of a mother. I loved the eerieness of the movie the visual shift between the innocent miles and serial killer Edward Scarka and watching Miles was quite a mixed emotions of fascination and unsettling.

One thing that I would find to be a critique would be the predictability of the movie. From the first scene I could see the reincarnation theme and it just follow the same formula as other child horror the likes of orphan or the omen. With everything lead up to this moment, the end also feels rushed and gave off more of a shock than a dramatic ending.

This is a good movie, not a great movie but a good one. It's not bad but not great either, it is a well acted movie with the thrills and all but it doesn't rise above horror conventions. It entertaining but not mind blowing.

It's Abeegail ✨