Perhaps the scariest thing about Joshua was the feeling I got at the end that I had just sat through some kind of weird gay panic movie.
Joshua (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:95
Fresh:59
Rotten:36
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: Though Joshua is ultimately too formulaic, its intelligence and suspenseful buildup heighten the overall creep factor.
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: Brad (Sam Rockwell) and Abby Cairn (Vera Farmiga) seem to have it all. A successful Manhattan couple living in a plush uptown apartment, they have just welcomed their second child into the... Brad (Sam Rockwell) and Abby Cairn (Vera Farmiga) seem to have it all. A successful Manhattan couple living in a plush uptown apartment, they have just welcomed their second child into the family--a lovely little girl named Lily. Everything should be golden for the happy family, but their little boy--the nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan)--is less than pleased with the latest addition to the family. An intelligent but odd little boy, Joshua's lack of humor and preoccupation with death belie his tender age, and as the parents coo over Lily, it becomes clear that they are not quite sure what to make of their stone-faced son. When Lily suddenly turns from a quiet baby into one who mysteriously begins wailing day and night, the Cairns' ordered life quickly disintegrates. The lack of sleep and stress takes a heavy toll on the mentally fragile Abby, and Brad begins racing around the city trying to care for his newborn daughter, ailing wife, and emotionally disturbed son. The family stress mounts, and when small animals and the family dog turn up dead, it doesn't take long before fingers begin pointing at the brooding and bizarre Joshua. Vera Farmiga delivers a realistic and disturbing performance as someone tottering at the edge of emotional collapse, and Sam Rockwell is a true pleasure to watch in his turn as a father desperately trying to hold his life together. Using a slow, teasing pace and claustrophobic camera angles, the film strives for a Hitchockian level of suspense while also delivering many topnotch performances. [More]
Starring: Jacob Kogan, Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, Celia Weston
Starring: Jacob Kogan, Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, Celia Weston, Dallas Roberts, Michael McKean
Director: George Ratliff
Director: George Ratliff
Screenwriter: George Ratliff, David Gilbert
Producer: Johnathan Dorfman
Composer: Nico Muhly
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Reviews for Joshua
A by-the-numbers, would-be thriller that's just never scary. About the best that can be said of it is that it reminds you of better movies.
If you can appreciate complex, slow-burn dramas and forego the buckets of blood, then you're likely to agree with me when I say that Joshua is among the best of films of its genre to come along in quite some time.
With deliberate pacing, well-placed scares, and a pitch-black sense of humor, [George] Ratliff keeps us guessing until the stunner finish.
George Ratliff, who gave us the (much more frightening) doc Hell House, works on hoarily familiar territory here and doesn't bring much new to the party.
I'm not sure whether Joshua's campiness outweighs its offensiveness - it's got both in spades - but there's no getting around the fact that Ratliff's creepy-kid thriller is seriously awful.
Joshua might have been delicious if it weren't so blatantly hateful toward women, queers, and religion.
[W]hy is it so hard to make a scary flick about evil kids these days? The Omen remake was pretty hilarious, and Joshua is ridiculous, though they are apparently attempting to re-position it as a "black comedy"
If there's a better model of passive-aggressive than this Joshua kid in a recent movie, I'd like to know of one.
In good quality horror, fear and suspense arise from a deepening sense of character, not a noisier sense of one.
Even though the story covers familiar ground, it provides enough tension and humor in the presentation to make it worth watching.
Using well the paradigm of the outsider, here the impact of a new baby on a seemingly perfect family, this elegantly made, often sophisticated psychological thriller marks Ratliff's smooth transition from docu to feature filmmaking; he's a talent to watch
Boasts enough in the way of sharp acting, as well as visual and musical smarts, to give the psychological twists and turns a respectable aesthetic context.
Builds to a number of gripping climaxes that leave the viewer quite shaken by how subtly and effectively this movie delivers on the thrills.
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