I honestly don't think I have seen a worse movie. This was nothing but a collage of half-baked creepy scenes that were done much better in much better movies. This includes depictions of gruesome deaths that are somehow influenced by a devil child (The Omen); levitating devil child (The Exorcist); a house setting that is the site of strange occurrences and earlier murders (The Amityville Horror); secret cabal of Satan worshipers (Rosemary's Baby); strange markings and unexplained events like appearance of rats, dead cat, breaking windows (many different movies).
All of this might at least make a watchable movie if there was a sensible plot and actors who could actually act, but alas, there was none. Apparently the writers found it easier to make the child a near-mute to hide his inability to act. But they were stretched to even find enough lines for the adult actors, so to lighten the burden, they invented the need for the mom to be sedated mid-way through the movie. She only awakens a few times during the remainder of the film, mostly just to groan, lol. At one point when she resists being injected again with a sedative by her nurse, the nurse belts her across the head hard enough to knock the mom unconscious, only to proceed to jab the needle into her anyway-just to be sure, I suppose.
I don't recall a movie where an apparently loving husband and father could be so clueless. When he is interviewing the two potential nannies, he is handed a list of references by the first candidate. After the second interview with the very creepy and rude girl, he wisely chooses the first girl, but we are not shown if he actually tried to contact any of the references-just took the girl's word for it I guess. I wouldn't be so trusting with my own child. But it matters little, however, because his first choice in nannies is beaten to death by the second girl, who dupes the father into hiring her by making him believe that girl number one is no longer interested in the job.
As the plot moves on, the dad learns that there are people who want to kill his son, who they believe will become the devil or some such thing when he reaches his 11th birthday on 11/11/11. At one point dad is so determined to protect his son, he sits guard at the boy's bed while wielding a baseball bat. But later he seems to be nowhere in sight while his wife is gouging out the eyes of her nurse and the crazy cat lady marches into the house to drug and kidnap the boy. When he does check on his wife, he finds the nurse has staggered to her feet, only to fall out the bedroom window to her death. The scene was so cartoonishly done that I literally laughed out loud as she screamed while falling.
When he returns to his son's room he finds the secret cabal of Satan worshipers (who had abandoned the smokey black van where they held their conferences) chanting and working themselves into a fever, presumably at the prospect of the devil's return in the person of his son. He drives them away with the handy can of wasp spray he had purchased earlier but never got around to using on the huge swarm of hornets hovering around the nest outside the house. I guess the prop guys didn't want that can of spray to go unused, lol. I don't know if the writers were going for comic relief with that scene, but hilarious it was.
In the end the dad has to do what cat lady wanted to do from the beginning. But in the final scene we are left with the idea that maybe he killed the wrong child. Yuck!
A dreadful ending to a dreadful film.
All of this might at least make a watchable movie if there was a sensible plot and actors who could actually act, but alas, there was none. Apparently the writers found it easier to make the child a near-mute to hide his inability to act. But they were stretched to even find enough lines for the adult actors, so to lighten the burden, they invented the need for the mom to be sedated mid-way through the movie. She only awakens a few times during the remainder of the film, mostly just to groan, lol. At one point when she resists being injected again with a sedative by her nurse, the nurse belts her across the head hard enough to knock the mom unconscious, only to proceed to jab the needle into her anyway-just to be sure, I suppose.
I don't recall a movie where an apparently loving husband and father could be so clueless. When he is interviewing the two potential nannies, he is handed a list of references by the first candidate. After the second interview with the very creepy and rude girl, he wisely chooses the first girl, but we are not shown if he actually tried to contact any of the references-just took the girl's word for it I guess. I wouldn't be so trusting with my own child. But it matters little, however, because his first choice in nannies is beaten to death by the second girl, who dupes the father into hiring her by making him believe that girl number one is no longer interested in the job.
As the plot moves on, the dad learns that there are people who want to kill his son, who they believe will become the devil or some such thing when he reaches his 11th birthday on 11/11/11. At one point dad is so determined to protect his son, he sits guard at the boy's bed while wielding a baseball bat. But later he seems to be nowhere in sight while his wife is gouging out the eyes of her nurse and the crazy cat lady marches into the house to drug and kidnap the boy. When he does check on his wife, he finds the nurse has staggered to her feet, only to fall out the bedroom window to her death. The scene was so cartoonishly done that I literally laughed out loud as she screamed while falling.
When he returns to his son's room he finds the secret cabal of Satan worshipers (who had abandoned the smokey black van where they held their conferences) chanting and working themselves into a fever, presumably at the prospect of the devil's return in the person of his son. He drives them away with the handy can of wasp spray he had purchased earlier but never got around to using on the huge swarm of hornets hovering around the nest outside the house. I guess the prop guys didn't want that can of spray to go unused, lol. I don't know if the writers were going for comic relief with that scene, but hilarious it was.
In the end the dad has to do what cat lady wanted to do from the beginning. But in the final scene we are left with the idea that maybe he killed the wrong child. Yuck!
A dreadful ending to a dreadful film.