Absolutely Fantastic

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This film is staged ham. Not surprisingly since most of the cast was apparently held over from its Broadway run. Only the mother Nancy Kelly seems to have caught on that she's acting in a film here. Everyone else is hamming it up for the cheap seats. That kid. Yikes. She delivers her lines like a brat in a community theatre production of Little Orphan Annie. This is conceivably the worst performance by a juvenile I have ever seen committed to film. Ever. The drunken mom of the dead boy? Holy ham bones, Shakespeare, she's playing to seats to cheap and so far away she might as well be in Yankee Stadium. Similarly, the teacher and the gardener fair very poorly. Hard to believe a veteran director of the big screen would let his actors run away from him like this. Maybe it would have worked on Philco's Monster Horror Chiller Theatre or whatever they called it on the 50s b00b tube.

I thought that this movie was just, OK. One thing that I was surprised by was that this movie is dark. Claude Daigle is a little boy who is found drowned in water. Everyone is trying to find out who is responsible for Claude's death. Ms. Fern tells Rhoda's mother Christine that Rhoda was the last person to see Claude alive. A few minutes later Leroy is talking with Rhoda and says to her that he knows that she killed Claude, and she tells him that he doesn't know what he's talking about. When Rhoda sees her mother next she finds out that Rhoda did kill Claude with her shoes by hitting him over the head. The reason why she killed him was because she wanted the metal that Claude had. When Leroy finds out that it actually was Rhoda that killed Claude, Rhoda burns Leroy to death. The one other thing besides the movie being dark was that at the very end of the movie Rhoda dies on a dock by getting struck by lightning. To me Rhoda acted like Veda from Mildred Pierce, Rhoda acted polite while acting like a spoiled brat.

There's not much I can say about his other then that horror movies of today don't make you feel as creeped out as this one did for me. The compelling acting of the leading girl as she goes from sweet and innocent to a cold blooded killer was convincing to the core. This psychological drama using almost nothing but its smart script and fantastic cast to tell a story of murder and guilt that'll make you second guess your ideas of having children in the future

Overall this was a pretty great movie. I thought there were a lot of areas where they could have just done away with a scene or two..... or three. Creepy kid movies like this one are the reason why I don't want kids. Rhoda was amazing. For being so young I thought she had the best performance out of all actors in this film. McCormack did an amazing job at playing this adorable little psychopath, I was genuinely freaked out and I couldn't stand the girl. I do wish that Christine wasn't such a weak character, I think the story would have been even more interesting if her and Rhoda were on opposing sides instead of working together. The ending was absolutely insane. Just when I thought it was over, the story turned another corner. As for the final scene all I can say is.... Karma.