Opening Day: 20 September 2007 (Exclusively at GV Plaza and GV VivoCity)

Synopsis:

JOSHUA is the tale of Brad (Sam Rockwell) and Abby (Vera Farmiga) Cairn, perfect Manhattan parents in a perfect Manhattan apartment whose perfect life begins to crack after the birth of their second child Lily. Shortly after Lily arrives home, a dark side of prodigy son Joshua slowly begins to reveal itself.


Movie Review:

“Joshua” uses the tropes left behind by “The Good Son” and “The Omen” (mostly resembling the latter, more yuppie-centric remake) to hollow effect but has the sort of suggestive, campy thriller sensibility that’s plainly derivative while also being surprisingly bent upon highbrow preoccupations of upper-middle class anxieties and the latent dissimulations of family dynamics.

Wall Street pays for Brad Cairn and his wife Abby’s (Sam Rockwell, and a wildly unhinged Vera Farmiga) West Side apartment next to Central Park and their precociously talented son, Joshua’s (Jacob Kogan) intellectual pursuits that consist of music, museums and mummification. Clearly working from the tempestuous redirections of a child’s angst and emotive lashings from perceived insecurities of being alienated and misunderstood, director George Ratliff forges a none too subtle mystery surrounding Joshua’s predilection for creepiness that involves musical-theatre loving Uncle Ned (Dallas Roberts).

When taken as a straightforward thriller, Ratliff’s often clunky and overwrought depictions of dour little boys in mini-suits start to wear thin as soon the film begins boldly implicating Joshua’s self-fulfilling prophecy down the path of a sociopath. It’s just all the more disappointing when the film doesn’t realise how to explore its most thought provoking aspects of familial discords stemming from neglect and self-involvement and instead veers from one outlandish scene to the next in order to justify each preceding scene.

Being different is akin to being evil in the case of this film. While bible thumpers get the short shrift by deranged Hebrews with postpartum depression, homophobia rears its ugly head and introverted children that prefer higher minded hobbies are mocked and self-labelled as nothing short of “weird”. By the time its end credits start to roll, you might have already made up your mind on whether “Joshua” is the year’s most subversively funny film or the year’s most ridiculously offensive.

Movie Rating:



(Try to view this as a satire on the creepy child subgenre instead of what it really wants to be)

Review by Justin Deimen