Case 39 (2009)

I tried to settle down on this one a little by sleeping on it. Please believe me in saying that I really did try.

Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is a state social worker just assigned with a new case (you guessed it, her 39th) on Lily Sullivan who is showing signs of neglect. After an uncomfortable visit with Lily and her parents, Emily takes up an interest in Lily and after receiving a disturbing phone call Emily rushes over with her detective friend Mike (Ian McShane) to discover Lily is in the process of being burned alive by her parents in the oven. Lily is freed, her parents institutionalized, and Emily petitions for custody of the child until a permanent foster home is found for her. Not soon after, it becomes clear that Lily isn't the sweet innocent child she seems to be.

CASE 39 is a movie that you watch and think "I'd rather have stepped in a pile of dog shit". Seriously. We are supposed to be terrified of this little girl who can basically make you hallucinate your fears and drive you mad until you kill yourself and plant murderous thoughts in your head and is just all around evil. The movie could have been over well before Emily ever took custody of her had Lily's parents just shot her or cut her throat or anything less dramatic than throwing her in the fucking oven. The characters are so painfully paper thin that we don't care how they meet their end whether it be stabbing themselves in the eye with a fork(when did we start giving metal forks and steak knives to violent crazies inside the hopsital!?), or being chased by bees (in a scene that makes Nic Cage from The Wicker Man remake look good) and killing yourself in the bathroom it just doesn't matter. The acting is wooden and the editing awkward and choppy. And fuck the pacing of this movie. 109 minutes. 109 minutes of staring at Renee Zellweger's scrunched up "I can't fucking act so I'll just be ugly to cover it up" face is too much to handle. She ruins just about every movie she's in and while this one wouldn't have been saved by someone else, at least they wouldn't have been Renee fucking Zellweger.

CASE 39 was filmed in 2006 and sat on the shelf in almost every country it was released in until 2009, the USA waited with overflowing anticipation until October of 2010. And boy, what a treat we got. Demon child who is apparently really hard to kill and knows all of your thoughts but can be tricked into drinking tea with a crushed up sleeping pill in it? And then when she falls asleep from that pill you soak the whole house in gasoline EXCEPT FOR HER FUCKING BEDROOM? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? FUCK OFF. And don't even try to tell me that soaking her door counts. The bitch has a window.

Seriously one of the worst movies I've ever seen.