CASE 39

Jodelle Ferland and Renee Zellweger

CASE 39 (2009). Director: Christian Alvart.  NOTE: This review gives away some plot points. 

Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is a social worker who gets involved in the case of two parents who seem to hate their young daughter, Lily (Jodelle Ferland). After the couple literally try to murder their daughter in an oven, they are arrested and Lily is taken away from them. Lily begs Emily to let her live with her even as her parents continue to warn her that the child is evil. And then people start dying ... 

Ian McShane

Case 39 is well-directed and well-acted by Zellweger, an amazing young Ferland, and Ian McShane as a slightly grizzled cop. If there had never been any other horror films with demonic children, it might have been a contender, but to say this is staggeringly unoriginal is a major understatement. While not as "epic" as The Omen and its sequels and imitations, it is basically a rip-off of earlier films (and apparently many consider it a copy of a similar film entitled Orphan, which I have not yet seen). This is too bad, because the film is slick, well-photographed by Hagen Bogdanski, and has some effectively ghoulish sequences, such as when Emily's good-natured friend Doug (Bradley Cooper) is attacked and killed by wasps or hornets. Emily, and especially the hardened detective played by McShane, accept the supernatural explanation for the goings-on much, much too quickly to be believable. 

A more recent and better film entitled The Prodigy featured a devious youngster but that was about a possessed child, not a child who was demonic or Satanic, and it also had some interesting twists to the plot. 

Verdict: Entertaining enough, but you've seen it all before -- many times. **1/4.