The Prodigy is a 2019 suspense movie about a mother who thinks her child that is behaving oddly might be under a supernatural control. The Prodigy (2019) movie review
The kid, oddly creepy without even trying to be creepy, does a good job being menacing as well as innocent. His mother Sarah (played by Taylor Schilling) tries her best to figure out why he is acting weirdly. As he continues to show signs of social distancing, she still clings to the notion that her son is fine. He is just a bit awkward, which she thinks he should grow out of soon. Like every movie about weird creepy kids, this one also has a mother having tough time accepting the fact her child is really odd/evil. In this sense, the movie doesn’t do anything different to stand out.
Miles (played by Jackson Robert Scott) is not an interesting character. We are given a sense that Miles is unique and possible on a spectrum, but we have no idea what is “wrong” with him. It is not strictly expressed as his behavior is built up to a point that it ends on a jumpscare. For that matter, there is nothing interesting about Miles’s parents either. They are bland, have disagreement, and are constantly wanting to be loving parents. Beyond that, nothing about them is explored. You can’t also expect them to act smart . They are not written to be anything but average one dimensional beings. This is very common in horror movies (especially children centered horror movies).
When the main characters realize that something is wrong with Miles, it will leave the audience exclaiming, “Really? It took you this long to figure it out?” with 20 min left in the movie to tie everything up and become a standout flick. The whole movie is lazy, filled with cliches, and it can be added to the growing list of “Creepy children are creepy” movie category. The Miles character is not well developed and a lot of the scenes exist for the director to get out his “boo! I scared you” trope. The movie felt rushed, forced, boring, drawn on, and incredibly long (even though not much happens). I don’t remember any unique scenes besides the whole Hungarian language thing, which is not even close to being enough for me to genuinely recommend it.
Thanks for reading my short The Prodigy (2019) movie review
