Renee Zellweger plays Emily, an overworked social worker, who
comes across a special case: ten year old Lilith (well-played by young Jodie
Ferland) who has such an unnatural fear of her parents that she thinks they hate
her. Still, despite the lack of evidence, Emily's hunch tells her that there’s something
seriously wrong with this situation, so she gives Lillith her private phone number,
just in case she ever needs help. And when Lillith finally does call, Emily comes
running with Mike, (Ian McShane, from Deadwood), her detective friend, in tow.
They arrive just in the nick of time to stop Lillith’s parents from killing her
in a grisly manner.
Emily, feeling bad for Lillith, decides to take the unusual step of taking care of the girl in her own home--and, of course, we soon find out that maybe Llillith’s parents weren’t so crazy after all. Maybe, just maybe, Lillith is a spawn of Satan! Case 39 is a big budget horror movie that reportedly sat on the shelf for a while before finally being released. One can understand the studio’s initial reluctance, because the film takes a promising story idea and falls flat on its face. What begins as a gritty, realistic story with horrific overtones soon careens into an all-out horror film with goofy scenes straight out of The Omen/The Exorcist, where everyone in Emily’s life starts getting offed one by one.
But Case 39 lacks the slow build-up of tension that The Exorcist, and Richard
Donner’s The Omen both employed. And unlike The Exorcism Of Emily Rose,
another supernatural horror film that does a much better job at blending the real
world with the idea of demonic evil, Case 39 just isn’t very scary. The superb
cast also includes Bradley Cooper (who played Face in the recent A-team movie), who undergoes an unintentionally hysterically funny scene where he has live buzzing hornets coming out of every orifice. Which begs the question: if Lillith is powerful enough to be able to kill people from a distance like this, then how does anybody stand a chance of fighting her?
But if the demonic Lillith is supposed to be symbolic of the problem child in the
social service system, then isn’t having the film’s heroine try to kill her
sending the wrong message? At one point in the film, one of the characters tells
Emily to "walk the walk" in regard to how she teaches her clients coping skills
in dealing with their kids. What if she had completely embraced that idea with
Lillith by teaching the little beast the difference between
right and wrong. Not only would Emily be Lillith’s guardian, but she would be
the guardian for everybody else by curtailing Lillith’s murderous rage in this
manner. However, a powerful message like this--that every child is worth
fighting for--is ignored in favor of a shallow horror film that fails miserably
by only going for the cheap shocks.
--SF
Case 39 [Blu-ray]
