The Book of Henry
Director - Colin Trevorrow
Writer - Gregg Hurwitz
Starring - Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Dean Norris, Sarah Silverman, Lee Pace, Maddie Ziegler
Why yes, that is an image of an 11 year old wearing stupid goggles, an old leather hat with a japanese character holding a plunger outside of his magical forest fort and yes, the film tries to use that outfit to set up its emotional climax. No, I have no idea what anybody on set was thinking. From the director of the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX, Colin Trevorrow (I think every Book of Henry review is legally required to mention that) comes what is easily the worst movie of the year so far. A word of warning, this film is best seen cold so I would encourage you to stop reading now, bookmark this page, see the movie, and then come back. This movie is a fucking avalanche of snowballs of bad ideas rolling down a hill barreling into everything incoherently generally making a giant mess.
Henry Carpenter (Lieberher) is the sort of gifted child that exists in movies written by people who have never interacted with children in their lives. He waxes poetically about the nature of fate and human morality during a class assignment where students are asked to guess what their legacies will be. He creates Rube Goldberg machines so intricate that the film is physically unable to capture their workings, instead reduced to merely offering us glimpses of his genius at work. He trades stocks and in general runs the finances of his household which consists of his mother (Watts) and younger brother (Tremblay). He has a flirting will-they-won't-they thing with his mother's best friend (Silverman). He has as much medical knowledge as his neurosurgeon (Pace). He elaborately and secretively investigates his neighbour (Norris) and plans his murder upon discovering he abuses his step-daughter (Ziegler). He protects his dweeby young brother from school bullies and lets him play in his magical forest fort after they converse via walkie-talkie. He is a walking collection of quirks and Lieberher is simply lost playing him largely defaulting to an almost arrogant superiority that he tries to pass off as precocious but instead comes off as smug.
At it's core there are two movies in The Book of Henry. The first one is an innocuously terrible quirky indie family dramedy wherein a single mother attempts to raise her two children but is instead looked after by her super genius son. In one scene Henry is sitting at the kitchen table, computer open, bills strewn everywhere, doing the family's finances while Susan plays X-Box in a way that indicates Naomi Watts has never seen anybody play a video game before in her life. Oddly, for all the power Henry wields over the family financially in addition to being the emotional rock, Susan does actually set and administer the rules of the household. There's a glimmer of potential here to explore the tension in this environment but this is not a film that moves towards potential. It runs in the opposite direction screaming. It showcases this family dynamic as a sort of platonic ideal. Everybody loves each other and everything in the house is perfect. This lack of conflict creates a massive void in the script so Hurwitz decided to fill it with a Rear Window inspired subplot about the neighbour molesting his daughter because that is exactly the kind of story that fits the quirky indie family dramedy tone the movie had going for it.
I'm not going to reveal too much about what occurs in the second half of the film because it truly needs to be seen to be believed. It does feature is easily the worst cross cutting montage ever put to film though. This montage is not only incredibly tone deaf but it features several of the worst cuts I've ever seen. At one point I thought I had seen what might be the single worst cut I've ever seen and then about ten more terrible cuts happened immediately after it. I honestly have no idea what Trevorrow was even attempting with this montage.
The crazy part about this movie is that montage isn't even the worst thing to happen in the climax of the movie. Remember how I said the costume Henry wears in the header image is used to set up the emotional climax of the film? Well it is one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid things I've ever seen in a movie. Just a complete failure on all levels. The script not only does a poor job setting up this climax, but doesn't realize how fundamentally stupid the entire premise of it is and the direction doesn't have any of the grace required to sell this terrible idea. That is largely Trevorrow's biggest problem with this film. His direction (apart from the amazing montage) is completely graceless as if he saw the script after signing on and had no out clause so he just shot everything with a half-hearted shrug and hoped for the best. He presents this awful script as it is with no attempts at elevating it in any way.
The Book of Henry is a marvel of film making. It starts as a merely terrible movie then veers almost in The Room territory for its second half. The difference between it and The Room though; Tommy Wiseau had no idea what he was doing and everybody else hired were just low-skilled drones trying to exist in his world. In The Book of Henry, the director of Jurassic World and the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX directs a very talented cast with a (presumable) group of industry veterans working behind the scenes. This group of people pulled off what should be impossible using their collective powers, they created one of the worst movies ever made and we should all be thankful for it.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
Why yes, that is an image of an 11 year old wearing stupid goggles, an old leather hat with a japanese character holding a plunger outside of his magical forest fort and yes, the film tries to use that outfit to set up its emotional climax. No, I have no idea what anybody on set was thinking. From the director of the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX, Colin Trevorrow (I think every Book of Henry review is legally required to mention that) comes what is easily the worst movie of the year so far. A word of warning, this film is best seen cold so I would encourage you to stop reading now, bookmark this page, see the movie, and then come back. This movie is a fucking avalanche of snowballs of bad ideas rolling down a hill barreling into everything incoherently generally making a giant mess.
Henry Carpenter (Lieberher) is the sort of gifted child that exists in movies written by people who have never interacted with children in their lives. He waxes poetically about the nature of fate and human morality during a class assignment where students are asked to guess what their legacies will be. He creates Rube Goldberg machines so intricate that the film is physically unable to capture their workings, instead reduced to merely offering us glimpses of his genius at work. He trades stocks and in general runs the finances of his household which consists of his mother (Watts) and younger brother (Tremblay). He has a flirting will-they-won't-they thing with his mother's best friend (Silverman). He has as much medical knowledge as his neurosurgeon (Pace). He elaborately and secretively investigates his neighbour (Norris) and plans his murder upon discovering he abuses his step-daughter (Ziegler). He protects his dweeby young brother from school bullies and lets him play in his magical forest fort after they converse via walkie-talkie. He is a walking collection of quirks and Lieberher is simply lost playing him largely defaulting to an almost arrogant superiority that he tries to pass off as precocious but instead comes off as smug.
At it's core there are two movies in The Book of Henry. The first one is an innocuously terrible quirky indie family dramedy wherein a single mother attempts to raise her two children but is instead looked after by her super genius son. In one scene Henry is sitting at the kitchen table, computer open, bills strewn everywhere, doing the family's finances while Susan plays X-Box in a way that indicates Naomi Watts has never seen anybody play a video game before in her life. Oddly, for all the power Henry wields over the family financially in addition to being the emotional rock, Susan does actually set and administer the rules of the household. There's a glimmer of potential here to explore the tension in this environment but this is not a film that moves towards potential. It runs in the opposite direction screaming. It showcases this family dynamic as a sort of platonic ideal. Everybody loves each other and everything in the house is perfect. This lack of conflict creates a massive void in the script so Hurwitz decided to fill it with a Rear Window inspired subplot about the neighbour molesting his daughter because that is exactly the kind of story that fits the quirky indie family dramedy tone the movie had going for it.
I'm not going to reveal too much about what occurs in the second half of the film because it truly needs to be seen to be believed. It does feature is easily the worst cross cutting montage ever put to film though. This montage is not only incredibly tone deaf but it features several of the worst cuts I've ever seen. At one point I thought I had seen what might be the single worst cut I've ever seen and then about ten more terrible cuts happened immediately after it. I honestly have no idea what Trevorrow was even attempting with this montage.
The crazy part about this movie is that montage isn't even the worst thing to happen in the climax of the movie. Remember how I said the costume Henry wears in the header image is used to set up the emotional climax of the film? Well it is one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid things I've ever seen in a movie. Just a complete failure on all levels. The script not only does a poor job setting up this climax, but doesn't realize how fundamentally stupid the entire premise of it is and the direction doesn't have any of the grace required to sell this terrible idea. That is largely Trevorrow's biggest problem with this film. His direction (apart from the amazing montage) is completely graceless as if he saw the script after signing on and had no out clause so he just shot everything with a half-hearted shrug and hoped for the best. He presents this awful script as it is with no attempts at elevating it in any way.
The Book of Henry is a marvel of film making. It starts as a merely terrible movie then veers almost in The Room territory for its second half. The difference between it and The Room though; Tommy Wiseau had no idea what he was doing and everybody else hired were just low-skilled drones trying to exist in his world. In The Book of Henry, the director of Jurassic World and the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX directs a very talented cast with a (presumable) group of industry veterans working behind the scenes. This group of people pulled off what should be impossible using their collective powers, they created one of the worst movies ever made and we should all be thankful for it.
Schurmann Score - 1/10
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