The Book of Henry

Year: 2017
Genre: Drama
Directed:Colin Trevorrow
Stars: Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Lee Pace, Dean Norris, Maddie Ziegler, Tonya Pinkins, Bobby Moynihan, Geraldine Hughes, Maxwell Simkins
Production: Focus Features

I am truly at a loss for words concerning Focus Features's newest, and I pray last filmic experiment. In it, director Colin Trevorrow, and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz attempt to, among other things, balance the story elements of a taut thriller, a morality play and a maudlin melodrama while making a smart, borderline psychic 11-year-old not seem like the kid from The Omen (1976). While doing so they use the affable Naomi Watts as a doe-eyed sacrifice to the Gods of tortured metaphor, and willfully ignore the fine line between believable, unbelievable and unbelievably stupid. Is Book of Henry maliciously bad or just plain bad? The fact that I can't tell should say something.

Jaeden Lieberher plays the titular Henry, the elder son of a single mom (Watts) living in Upstate New York. Henry is by all accounts a whizkid. Some would call him brilliant, he calls himself precocious - I prefer to call him a snot who, in addition to putting his peers to shame on a regular basis has more-or-less taken over every responsibility at home. Things however take a turn when Henry discovers his neighbor and coincidentally the town Police Commissioner (Norris) has been abusing his daughter (Ziegler). Finding only obstacles where there should be help, Henry ultimately decides to save the day, using his mother as a means to "take out" the Commissioner for the sake of his tortured crush.

Did I say crush? I ask because the plot assumes there's some kind of deeper connection but we never see Henry have anymore positive emotion than a waffle iron towards anyone. The character basically has two modes: smug and pissy which somehow only gets worse as the film progresses. Likewise Ziegler, Watts, Norris and Tremblay are given nothing more than a single trait in which to base their entire performances on. Tremblay especially gets shafted being forced to play a modern version of Ralphie's brother in A Christmas Story (1983) when if anything he should be channeling Elijah Wood in The Good Son (1993).

It's all wrong. It's the wrong tone...

The tone of the film (once it manages to settle on one) can't help but be at odds with the cynicism of its lead character. Lieberher's Henry moralizes with the eloquence of a French philosophe but can't help but sound like a patronizing baby Hitler when he says things like "There are worse things in the world than violence." Henry as written doesn't have an iota of love in his body and as a result his mother is in for a Rube-Goldberg-like ride that has a lot of moving parts but amounts to nothing. Despite this, the movie itself is so obnoxiously twee it feels like it's trying to mimic the best part of The Goonies (1985) while exhibiting the worst parts of Red Dawn (1984) - which is to say an inconsistent, reactionary moral compass with nary a character in search of real solutions.

I mean, it's cheaper than a sniper rifle...

Below is a list of things that happen in this movie. They're not spoilers per se, as they are without context. That said, I truly believe the lack of context actually makes everything better:

-Watts becomes a stone-cold killer and sharpshooter in under a month.
-Henry buys and sells stocks on a schoolyard payphone.
-Sarah Silverman macks on Jaeden Lieberher and it's played off as okay even though the entire movie sets itself up as against child abuse.
-60% of Maddie Ziegler's lines are the words, "I'm fine."
-Henry plans a murder with two outdated textbooks on forensic science.
-Naomi Watts repeatedly plays Gears of War while ignoring her sons yet its supposed to come across as absentmindedly charming.
-Naomi Watts prepares school lunches like she trying to give children diabetic comas.
-Watts nonchalantly buys an illegal weapon despite nearly having a panic attack in the car earlier.
-Henry explains an MRI to a professional surgeon (Pace) despite zero medical training.
-The handsome doctor boxed-beard then unexpectedly shows up to a middle school talent show, despite not having kids, and it's not seen as creepy.
-The assassination is setup to a middle schooler crooning "Amazing Grace, " presumably because she couldn't get the rights to Ave Maria.
-Henry's young brother showers the audience of a middle school talent show with fake snow strongly implying that he has just spread a person's ashes.
-The school principal continually ignores Henry's claims of abuse but calls the cops after the talent show because apparently she can speak dance.

Of course taking any of this farce at face value would be giving it far too much credit. Every story beat, character decision and sudden jolt in the narrative rings too demonstratively false to be taken seriously. Even if it does carry itself as just another thriller. I've seen a lot of bad movies but rarely have I seen a movie so hypnotic in its badness. The makers of this thing best be reminded that movies are tricky.

Final Grade: F