Review of Case 39 (2009) by Dana A — 07 May 2011

This is your fairly typical paint-by-numbers "the creepy kid is gonna kill you" movie. There is nothing new or creative about this film. It downright predictable and somewhat boring. I could follow the action without even looking at the movie.

For someone who's a demon, you'd think she'd be able to actually kill people instead of just make them hallucinate and make them kill themselves. Then there are all the horror movie cliches in this film.

Lead female runs scared in her underwear, ends up learning she's not afraid and has to to defeat the demon, parents are mistaken for being the bad guys...it's all really weak.. I especially hated how to set up some "clever" shots reminiscent of foreshadowing that everyone needed to have wooden floors.

It's not unwatchable by any stretch of the imagination. Jodelle Ferland (who plays Lillith) is good but she's no Isabelle Fuhrman. I wish I had something more profound to say about "Case 39" rather than some superficial ramblings but it was a very superficial film and doesn't really deserve it.

I suppose I should congratulate whoever wrote the script for a good first half and an atrocious second. Once Bradley Cooper's character reaches his demise, everything goes downhill. "Case 39" could have been a really scary tale of the supernatural but it wasn't.

I'm not even going to mention the gore since it was so sparse that if you blink you'll miss it. Horror doesn't need to be all about the gore anyway but it certainly does need to have a good story.

Just throwing the occasional grisly moment in is just lazy and, unfortunately, getting too predictable. All "Case 39" needed was a cat jumping out of a closet and a lot more loud noises and I could have written it off yet another complete piece of formulaic crap.

Actually, even without those elements, it still is.