Neglected on its brief foray into the nation’s cinemas earlier this year, and not even having been released in the US yet, Case 39 limps onto rental and retail DVD with the faintest of fanfare.
Which is all a bit strange really, when you consider the film stars Renee Zellweger and man-of-the-moment Bradley Cooper, and clearly had a bit of money thrown at it production wise.
Perhaps it was down to release schedules, perhaps it was the fact that the story has many similar themes to a host of other recent movies (think The Orphan for example) or perhaps people just don’t like Renee, but the truth of the matter is, while far from being a great film, there are a lot worse out there at the moment.
Zellweger plays a child welfare officer, who is handed another assignment to look into, despite having 38 cases on the go - see what they did there with the title?
Anyways, she checks out the story behind Lilith, a young girl who appears to be abused by her parents.
Bursting in with her police associate (Ian McShane), Zellweger finds the parents attempting to cook Lilith in their oven, boasting how they will ‘send her to hell’.
The parents are carted off to the loony bin, and Zellweger decides to look after Lilith herself.
So far, so routine, but things get creepier (supposedly) as the story develops and we learn Lilith may not actually be the wide-eyed innocent she was originally thought to be.
To say the movie is predictable is a bit of an understatement, and there is little to quicken the pulse.
It trundles along at a decent pace, before things get out of hand with an over-the-top finale that just does not really work.
In fact, perusing the dvd extras reveal a mountain of deleted scenes (and a different ending) that gives some indication into the chopping and changing that must have gone on with this production.
On the plus side, the acting is pretty good, and it is always nice to see actors like Zellweger and Cooper (who plays a child psychologist) in a full-blown horror movie.
But even that is not enough to drag Case 39 out of the ‘if you have nothing else better to do’ category.
This is by no means a bad film, but there is so little originality on show it is virtually redundant.
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