3 out of 5

Directed by: Christian Alvart

German filmmaker Christian Alvart made a splash with a couple of gritty, effective indies, then tried his hand at some American films in the crowded horror glut of the late 00s, a long-tailed slasher revival era that got confuzzled with torture porn and kind of fizzled away the excitement / wider respect movies like Saw generated. In other words: this was a tough time to drop an average flick and not have it be rejected as part of the less-than-average flock; Case 39 is – to me – actually a cut above average, even, but I suspect its subject matter and a vibe of stunt casting turned the critical reception into a pile on. People didn’t like Alvart’s Pandorum; they really didn’t like Case 39; and then he went back to Germany and continued to make well received flicks.

Social worker Emily (Renee Zellweger) is as overloaded as anyone else in her role, but her boss drops another case on her desk – her 39th: checking in on 10 year old Lily (Jodelle Ferland). We’ve already had a peek at Lily’s parenting prior to this, with a creepily shot sequence featuring mom and dad peeking through a crack in the door, waiting for their daughter to fall asleep for what the lighting and music tells us are nefarious purposes. When Emily visits the home, that creepiness is confirmed: Lily sits fearfully on a couch with dad (Callum Keith Rennie) whispering his replies to his mousey wife (Kerry O’Malley), offering religious-coded answers that dodge anything actionable. But Emily can clearly see something is amiss, so she persuades her cop friend Mike (Ian McShane) to help, and they end up rescuing the girl from a particularly harrowing event. The parents are jailed; after a beat, Emily elects to take the Lily in.

Cue realizing that Lily is short for “Lillith,” and for all of the soft-spoken phrases she uses to start sounding like threatening whispers. People around Lily and Emily start getting hurt. But as long as things are going Lily’s way, everything’s alright…

The evil kid premise is nothing new, of course, but Case 39 is pretty mean about it. The deaths are senseless, and often a little cruel. Ferland also plays the evil kid bit rather uniquely; I would know the actress later from Silent Hill and Dark Matter, and the self awareness she brought to those roles is here as well: while Alvart and writer Ray Wright leave plenty of logic gaps in how things shake out, I found the trajectory to be entrancing enough to forgive that, and Ferland’s ability to make a line sound innocent or demanding when using pretty similar body language and vocal tones is definitely part of that. Similarly, though Zellweger’s response goes from caring parent to doubter too quickly, each part of that presentation is really effective – I believe her fear; and her determination (and ability) to overcome it.

But, yeah, this movie does some of those film no-nos, with harming kids, harming dogs (not on screen), and doesn’t deign to dress the whole thing up with some easy explanation of possession or etc. While it’s not not suggested that there are inhuman things involved, it really just boils down to Lily being evil as shit, and Emily is more than willing to kill an evil-as-shit kid. I can see a lot of that irking people, alongside Zellweger’s standing in film at the time of the movie’s release – her last few films had not done well -suggesting she was cast somewhat against type for some extra buzz. (Of course, the movie had actually been shelved for a few years, but maybe wiki pages weren’t as eagerly updated back then.)

Visually, Alvart, editor Mark Goldblatt, and d.p. Hagen Bogdanski – heck, also composer Michl Britsch – are way, way too stylish at points, but that ultimately adds some unique “voice” to the movie; the 90% remainder of it is really well handled, with well-balanced colors, good use of CG, a pretty unnerving score, and a consistent undertone of dread. Does the movie truly do anything new? Hardly; it is rightly considered as part of its era’s glut. However, it did what it does professionally, and manages to eke out some new ideas from the scary kid genre.