• Consequence
  • Music
  • Film
  • TV
  • Heavy
Menu Consequence
Menu Shop Search Newsletter
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Live
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Contest
Advertisement
  • Reviews
  • Film Reviews

Film Review: The Prodigy Lives, and Ultimately Dies, By Its Creepy Kid Horrors

Something's wrong with Miles, and before long, same goes for the film around him

the prodigy orion pictures horror movie taylor schilling
D+

Directed by

  • Nicholas McCarthy

Starring

  • Taylor Schilling
  • Peter Mooney
  • Jackson Robert Scott

Release Year

  • 2019

Rating

  • R
Advertisement
Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
February 8, 2019 | 4:57pm ET

    The Pitch: On a fateful night in 2010, two events take place simultaneously. In rural Ohio, a notorious serial killer known for abducting, dismembering, and eventually killing his young female victims is killed in a police raid. In suburban Pennsylvania, Sarah (Taylor Schilling) gives birth to a healthy baby boy and names him Miles (Jackson Robert Scott). As Miles gets older, he demonstrates remarkable intelligence, even as his social skills consistently lag behind. But by the time he turns 8, his intelligence begins to manifest itself in more unsettling forms, from fits of violence to Miles speaking in strange tongues in his bedroom, insistent that a presence has been passing in and out of his body. Soon, Sarah’s absolute love for her child will be pushed to gruesome extremes, as she attempts to help Miles before losing him for good to whatever else might be inside her son’s head.

    The Pains of Childbirth: Going back to the days of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, the horror genre has long mined chills from one of the simplest, most arguably unanswerable questions there is: what if you had a truly evil child? At what point does parental love have to give way to the rational prevention of that evil’s spread? The Prodigy doesn’t break any new ground in the field of horror films about loving mothers forced into the unspeakable to protect their children, but director Nicholas McCarthy ably builds a strong sense of escalating dread out of Sarah’s slow realization that Miles may not only be dangerous, but also some level of aware of it.

    A great deal of that dread emerges from the pair of leading performances at its center. While her husband John (Peter Mooney) is mostly present to be more immediately panicked about Miles than Sarah and/or disappear for long chunks of the film, Sarah is the one who has to convey many of the film’s low-budget shocks through physicality alone. Schilling is an able horror lead in this respect; in addition to serving up some exceptional “scream face” in the later part of the movie, the Orange is the New Black star brings a trembling anxiety to her performance that elevates the stakes even when much of the film’s stiff storytelling falls short. Likewise, even if Scott is tasked with delivering some pretty distateful dialogue, even for a kid in a hard-R horror flick like this one, the young actor manages to find speeds between cherubic and sinister, turning Miles’ slow transformation into a frightened child’s losing battle with his own brain.

    Advertisement
    Related Video

    Coming of Age: However, too little else about The Prodigy distinguishes itself aside from its performers. While there are a couple of interesting visual tricks up McCarthy’s sleeve throughout (Sarah seeing a distinctly different face over Miles’ own is the film’s one great scare), the film half-considers most of its ideas without ever meaningfully developing them. Sarah and John drink in their car on date night and muse about giving up their hard-partying lives for parenthood, but neither the characters nor the film bring this point up again. Likewise, John’s history with his abusive father is mined for a character-based shock or two, but the film never connects it to Miles’ plight in any meaningful way. Most of the early details aren’t so much paid off later in the film as simply mentioned again for a quick “a-ha” of recognition, and the clearer it becomes what’s happening to Miles, the less and less engaging the film becomes.

    It’s not that where the film goes isn’t rife with possibilities, either. The Prodigy is a pretty brazenly gory film at points, and given the youth of its pro/antagonist, there was a shot at something genuinely transgressive on the table here. However, the closest the film comes to pushing on any real boundaries is in an exchange between Miles and a keen-eyed therapist who may know more about his condition than anybody else. In that one moment, The Prodigy turns lurid and grotesque, but it also feels, at least for a moment, like it’s doing something halfway memorable. Then, it’s back to the old standards, buzzing flies betraying secrets and purposeful car crashes and the like.

    The Verdict: Every time The Prodigy seems to be shoring up momentum, it betrays its disappointing insistence on begging the audience to keep wondering what’s wrong with Miles, even as the very first scene of the film more or less declares it outright. Because of this, there’s no mystery in the back half of the film where mystery should be, no sense that anything happening to Sarah or Miles is going to surprise. While it’s a reasonably paced thriller, The Prodigy is almost wholly devoid of real scares, instead relying on the assumption that a kid doing violent adult things is enough to sustain a 90-minute movie. It’s neither far over the top enough to fully entertain, nor compelling enough to frighten as a horror flick. For lack of more eloquent phrasing, after a while, The Prodigy is just sort of there.

    Advertisement

    Where’s It Playing? Wide-ish release starting February 8th.

    Trailer:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
Advertisement

More on this topic

  • Colm Feore
  • Horror
  • Jackson Robert Scott
  • Nicholas McCarthy
  • Orion Pictures
  • Scary Kids
  • Taylor Schilling

Sign up for updates

Subscribe to our email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.

Advertisement

Popular Stories

Lisa Marie Presley

Music

Lisa Marie Presley Underwent Extreme Weight Loss Regime Prior to Death

Paul Shaffer World's Most Dangerous Band The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon The Roots

TV

Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band to Fill In for The Roots on Jimmy Fallon

Advertisement

Shop for GWAR's Bud of Gods Delta-8 and Sour OG vape cartridges.

Shop for GWAR's Bud of Gods Delta-8 and Sour OG vape cartridges.

Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper 2023 tour

Heavy Consequence

Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper Announce 2023 North American Tour with Ministry and Filter

borat broke up pamela anderson and kid rock love pamela with love memoir documentary dating

Film

Borat Broke Up Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock

Latest Stories

Sundance 2023 Film Reviews

Sundance 2023 Review Roundup: The Best Films We Saw This Year

January 30, 2023

A-
Infinity Pool Review Alexander Skarsgard

Infinity Pool Sends You Down a Road of Hedonistic Excess (In a Good Way): Review

January 27, 2023

B+
Netflix You people

You People Review: Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill Star in a Funny and Refreshing Update of a Familiar Tale

January 27, 2023

B-
Jamojaya Rich Brian Sundance Review

Rich Brian Juggles Family, Music, and Culture in Jamojaya: Sundance Review

January 25, 2023

B-
Cat Person Review Nicholas Braun

The New Yorker Bad-Date Story Gets Frustratingly Literal in Cat Person: Sundance Review

January 25, 2023

B+
shortcomings review randall park

Randall Park's Shortcomings Playfully Pokes at the Arthouse World: Sundance Review

January 24, 2023

B+
You Hurt My Feelings Review

Sundance Review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Learns the Cost of Honesty in the Hilarious You Hurt My Feelings

January 24, 2023

A-
theater camp review

Sundance Review: The Hilarious and Authentic Theater Camp Takes Center Stage

January 23, 2023

Advertisement

News

  • Music
  • New Music
  • Album Streams
  • Upcoming Releases
  • Tours
  • Film
  • TV
  • Pop Culture

Reviews

  • Music Reviews
  • Film Reviews
  • TV Reviews
  • Concert Reviews
  • Festival Reviews

Features

  • Editorials
  • Interviews
  • Cover Stories
  • Lists
  • Guides
  • CoSign
  • Song of the Week

Live

  • Tickets
  • Festival News
  • Tour Dates
  • Photo Galleries
  • Music Instruments & Gear

Heavy

  • News
  • Interviews
  • Concerts

More

  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Wellness
  • Giveaways

Other sites

  • Heavy Consequence
  • Consequence Media
  • Modern Drummer
  • About
  • Privacy policy
  • Advertising
  • Work For Us
  • Terms
  • Contact
  • Copyright
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Download our app

  • Get it on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitch
  • Tiktok
Consequence
Current story

Film Review: The Prodigy Lives, and Ultimately Dies, By Its Creepy Kid Horrors

Menu Shop Search Newsletter
Consequence
News
  • News
  • Music
  • New Music
  • Album Streams
  • Upcoming Releases
  • Tours
  • Film
  • TV
  • Pop Culture
Reviews
  • Music Reviews
  • Film Reviews
  • TV Reviews
  • Concert Reviews
  • Festival Reviews
Features
  • All Features
  • Editorials
  • Interviews
  • Cover Stories
  • Lists
  • Guides
  • CoSign
  • Song of the Week
Live
  • Tickets
  • Festival News
  • Tour Dates
  • Photo Galleries
  • Music Instruments & Gear
Podcasts
  • The Opus
  • Kyle Meredith With...
  • Stanning BTS
  • The Story Behind the Song
  • The What
  • Going There with Dr. Mike
  • The Rome and Duddy Show
Videos
  • Interviews
  • Two for the Road
  • First Time I Heard
  • When I Made
  • Battle of the Bandmates
  • Peer 2 Peer
  • Essays
  • Fan Theories
Heavy
  • News
  • Interviews
  • Concerts
  • Premieres
  • Culture
  • Beyond the Boys Club
  • Mining Metal
Shop
  • Shop
  • Giveaways

Follow Consequence

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitch
  • Tiktok
Close
Close