A Very Very Baaaad Boy

Despite the fact that most (if not all) of us find the very notion of young children being capable of evil a revolting one, Hollywood has on occasion delved into precisely this tabooed topic in films such as ‘Village of the Damned,’ ‘The Bad Seed,’ ‘The Omen,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘The Good Son,’ ‘Children of the Corn’ and ‘Better Watch Out.’  Carrying on this time-honored tradition of portraying cherubic angels as the Devil incarnate is ‘The Prodigy,’ which seeks to put a fresh new spin on this divisive subject.

 

In ‘The Prodigy,’ young parents Edward and Sarah had a boy, one whose mental faculties are so advanced and “developed” so fast that it provided this movie its name.  At first, the parents considered themselves lucky that they engendered such a genius offspring, but as the kid grows up they become increasingly horrified by what he’s become and is capable of.  Is Miles inherently evil, or is there some dark supernatural forces at work here?

 

While ‘The Prodigy’ doesn’t exactly proffer anything particularly new to the “evil kid” subgenre of horror, it does manage to impart a pervasive sense of dread and suspense in the viewer, even a jaded horror aficionado like yours truly.  Disturbing, unsettling and utterly uncontemplatable, ‘The Prodigy’ challenges us to accept its inconceivable premise like all those before it: the idea that some children are simply bad to the bone.

Grade: B