Case 39 Review

Messages: The movie suggests that evil lurks everywhere, even in the sweetest and most innocent of children. You can't trust anybody or anything, and there's never any attempt to learn anything, to turn things around for the better, or to find hope in the world.

Role models: Emily is a social worker who ostensibly wants to help children, but this doesn't come from a place of generosity. She's frustrated and stressed and apparently incapable of forming any meaningful relationships of her own. She's short and abrupt with people and quick to mistrust them. Once she decides that the child is evil, she never really tries to help; her first impulse is to try to kill the child.

Violence: Some violence involving children, including a sequence in which two parents push a girl into an oven and light it. She escapes, but the father pushes his boot into her back to stop her. They duct tape her mouth and smash her hand in the oven door. In another sequence, a boy kills his parents with a tire iron, though no actual "contact" is shown; viewers see blood on the walls and pillows. Adults fight: Viewers see a man with a broken jaw, a man gets stabbed in the neck with a fork, and another man falls on the same fork (it impales him in the eye). Also images of a woman on fire, a dog attack, shooting guns, a speeding car (with a child on board), a burning house, scary demons, and several sudden shocks.

Sex: Some flirting between grown-ups.

Language: A couple of uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "hell," "ass," and "oh my God."

Consumerism: Characters drink Heineken beer in a bar.

Drinking, drugs and smoking: Adults drink a beer in a bar, and the main character enjoys a glass of wine at home. The main character also grinds up sleeping pills into a cup of tea to give to the demon child.