Summary
Social worker Bethany isn’t prepared for this next case…
My Thoughts
When it comes to Halloween there's no shortage of scary films to match the spooky mood of the beloved holiday, the whole month of October is just a perfect time to snuggle down with a hot cup of coffee while the cool, crisp autumn air rushes you through the cracked windows, licking your exposed cheeks with the refreshing oxygen, all while the sounds of screaming mother's are resonating from the television screen, as they observe their child being hacked to bits by a serial killer. At these times we welcome the feeling of terror because we're safe in our homes where nothing can touch us, we take comfort that the only bumps we notice are those on our arms and not of those in the night. Some of the most terrifying films are, at least in my opinion, the ones that involve children, it could be a group of murderous demon children like Children of the Corn, or those that are born straight from the dark lord himself such as The Omen or Rosemary's Baby, something about innocence turned evil sparks intrigue and fear into the viewer, it's a great horror trope when it works.
For Case 39 it definitely does not work.
Case 39 follows social worker Emily (Renee Zellweger), a fairly cheerful and optimistic woman who's dedicated to helping children in abusive situations. She goes to investigate a home that has been reported for abuse, this will be her 39th case, as the title would suggest. Before entering the house, the film shows the parents inside said house, trapping their 12 year old daughter Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) in the oven and turning it on before supercop (Ian McShane) and Emily break down the door and save the child. This scene is easily the best and most effective of the film, it's messed up enough to get the R rating and it is quite successful at being genuinely scary, too bad the rest of the film couldn't follow the strong opening. After this event Lilith quickly latches to Emily and begs her to take her home with Emily, to which Emily accepts and begins to Foster Lilith until a good permanent family is found. Quickly after the two are settled in strange things start happening, and eventually one of the kids from her past cases murders his parents and tells Emily that Lilith called the night before warning the child. Emily becomes fearful of this and goes to talk to the parents in a mental institution where they have been locked up, they tell Emily that Lilith isn't a human child but a demon that sucks the goodness out of people until they become deranged.
Spooky.
On paper this sounds like a fairly decent horror story, but the execution is purely lifeless that it elicits no sense of terror or dread, just a flatline pace of uninteresting event after uninteresting event, what could've been a decent little thriller is botched by poor direction and writing, there's some good ideas here, such as Lilith being able to make her victims hallucinate horrible things, like she does with Emily's friend Bob (Bradley Cooper) who is a child psychologist and talks with Lilith only to be threatened by her. Then later that day Bob is tormented by hornets coming out of his face holes and he freaks out and kills himself by breaking his neck or something, it's a scene that isn't scary at all and goes on five minutes longer than it should. Another is when our superhero cop is tormented by visions of vicious canines stalking him while he walks to his car, the scene is so generic and silly you can call his death from a mile away, there's not even a specific atmosphere surrounding this film, it's all so dull and boring.
Eventually things come to a head in clunky unassuming fashion, the only thing that makes this film watchable is how unintentionally funny it is, the actors do the best with what they got but the dialogue is stilted, the direction is clumsy and it shows all too often, from the inconceivable ending that makes no sense to the explanation of the spirits origin all of it seems like a cheap rehash of other better films. It's not that Case 39 feels lazy, on the contrary, it feels like the director wanted to make a really scary demon child movie, but the filmmakers just weren't competent enough to fully realize the vision. The one dimensional characters plague the story, the scares are few and far between and not well executed when presented, the story itself has promise but just isn't realized to its full potential. If you're not interested in being interested or scared by a horror film revolving scary kids then Case 39 might be for you, for anyone else I'd pick one of the many better ones I've mentioned above.
I give Case 39 2 stars out of 5.
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