One of the more distinctive independent films of the year (featured at Sundance and ultimately distributed by Fox Searchlight), Joshua is the story of a disturbing young boy. It’s not hard to immediately jump to comparisons with The Omen, but the comparisons would be nothing more than surface deep. It’s ultimately an effective movie, and quite clever when it wants to be. One of the only real problems with the movie is that you need to suffer through the first half of the movie for it to pay off correctly.

Writing: For the most part, this is a story with a cool final act that needs to spend the rest of the time laying groundwork. And the groundwork that it needs to lay is a bit tedious. The worst thing is that it would be a tough sell if you didn’t adequately lay said groundwork, so there’s no real way around it. The story does an excellent job keeping you on your toes trying to figure out if this kid is sociopathic or truly psychotic, and the end result is quite cool.

Production: This movie is very independent in feel. While most of it works pretty well, it has its moments of amateur camera work, not to mention a couple moments that have to be the result of guerrilla film-making in NYC. The irony is that the most visually effective scene is an intentionally amateur sequence with a video camera as filmed by one of the characters. Sound is average and editing is average. At points, the movie feels like it’s trying to be a Kubrick film. It does so in interesting ways, rather than pretentious ways.

Cast: Sam Rockwell was one of the main reasons I wanted to see this movie, and he does a great job as the poor by standard caught in the middle of it all. Jacob Kogan does an excellent job as the antagonist son. Vera Farmiga gets a rather odd compliment from me for her performance as the mother - she did a bit TOO well as somebody not only suffering postpartum depression, but a emotional/mental breakdown. It’s actually a bit hard to watch (not to mention all the constant baby crying), and makes the first half of the movie a bit rough as an audience member. So yeah, the slighted compliment is that she did too good a job acting out somebody that’s tough to be around. Other supporting performances are good.

Music: Much like the previous Kubrick comparison I made, the musical approach also takes that path. Cold and austere, it’s comprised of primarily simplistic piano work (as played by the son - or at least in the style of). For the most part, it works well enough.