Greta (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

"Just try to get rid of Greta," she taunts. "Just watch me," we say on our way out of the theater.

In what was sure to be a fabulous resurgence of the psycho-biddy subgenre, Greta promised lots of things. Or at least its marketing campaign did. It promised a horror-comedy like we haven't seen in a while, a full-on camp spectacle with enough ick and eek to entertain for at least a couple hours. Unfortunately, the only thing that delivered on these promises was its trailer.

Isabelle Huppert gives a solid but totally misdirected performance as Greta, the crazed woman who leaves purses on trains around New York City, waiting for a kind soul to return one to her. That soul is Frances, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, whose utterly lifeless delivery makes you want terrible things to happen to her. Of course, it doesn't take long for their burgeoning friendship to get creepy as hell, and when it does you're already angry at Frances for being so incredibly stupid. Nobody does the smart thing here except Greta, and even she makes a few silly mistakes.

The problems here are manifold, but can be largely credited to writer/director Neil Jordan. In trying to make a bonkers thriller into a psychological horror-drama, he fails in crafting a fresh tone or even in having fun with the proceedings. Gruesome as the film occasionally can be, everything -- apart from Huppert's occasionally knowing extravagance -- is played straight and grounded, taken far too seriously for its own good. As a result, we aren't allowed to have any fun shuddering at the creepy old woman or giggling as people get abducted, tortured, and murdered. Instead, we try to keep up with the bizarre behaviors of everyone involved and waste time trying to understand why they're all so opaque.

And why on earth did they waste Colm Feore's talent like this? It's just criminal.

The Prodigy (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

There's nothing prodigious here, and the inability of the film to so much as send a chill down your spine is the tip of this melting iceberg.

"What's wrong with Miles?" reads the poster tagline, and if you've ever seen any movie in which a child becomes possessed by another conscious entity, you already know the answer. The opening sequence of The Prodigy sets up a nasty twist on the genre, suggesting that the untimely death of one man in Ohio and the simultaneous birth of a baby boy in Pennsylvania are connected. We're not exactly sure how they're connected yet, but the blood spots on the infant mirror the bullet wounds on the man. We're sure, though, that the man is not a good man; he had an abducted woman imprisoned in his basement who had escaped and screamed "He took my hand!" to the first person she encountered.

Miles, though, matures quickly and his parents are proud that their son is so advanced. Unfortunately, we know he's not a prodigy so much as possessed because he's just so fucking creepy. Not scary, mind, just uncomfortable. He stands silhouetted in doorways and window frames, listening and muttering to himself in Hungarian, glaring at the people we know he's planning to attack. He may be smart, but he's no genius. He's just got a fully grown psychopath sharing his brain.

The film strings itself along from plot point to contrived plot point, cliche to groan-inducing cliche. It's what would happen if The Omen was less demonic and more The Orphan. We learn quickly that the dead man/abductor was a serial killer who murdered women and removed their hands as his trophies. After the turning point when Miles's mother -- and, actually, everyone -- knows Miles is evil, she discovers their dog's mutilated body in the basement with its paw cut off by garden shears. The dog, by the way, is the only certain death in the film. What is the deal?

There's not a moment we don't see coming, and not a moment we really care about. The thin, flaccid story is even worse than Nicholas McCarthy's purposeless direction. His film can't decide what it wants or how to achieve any meaningful affect; its aesthetic is lost in shifting focus and scenes drained of energy. The whole affair becomes an exercise in the most boring kind of nihilism, the kind that makes the movie feel not only unwelcome but almost insulting.

My favorite part occurs about halfway through, when Miles's teacher at his gifted school convinces Miles and his mother to visit her colleague, a psychologist or academic (we don't know) who studies reincarnation. It's all a lot of hooey, but Colm Feore plays the good physician with a delicious magnetism. His glistening dark eyes and haunted visage are exactly what I need in a horror movie worthy of his talents. That is, not this one.