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One thing Cardone has going for him is that
“Wicked Little Things” has great direction. From minute one, the
atmosphere and tension is evident, and thick in the air. As the three
women we set down on delve into the forest to live among nature, we can
already feel the story unfolding. The tension is thick, and I was
curious as to where it was headed. “Wicked Little Things” only further
increases my sentiment about my hatred for kids. They’re creepy, and
often times the creepy ones are easier to find than the cute ones.
Zombie children are only the tip of the iceberg. The presence from
Geoffrey Lewis is a saving grace for this misfire providing his usual
odd appeal, as he does with every single movie he’s ever been in. It’s
odd how the man can command the screen with very little dialogue.
Of course, if you’re looking for something
new or original, you’d better look elsewhere. “Wicked Little Things”
offers the same old things for the audience, and none of it is ever
pleasing. You mean there’s a ghost that can communicate with the
youngest daughter? You mean the youngest daughter is the only one that
can see her special ghost? You mean, they’re moving into a small town up
in the middle of the woods? Who actually does that beyond cults? And,
what a surprise, the cell phones the characters own aren’t working,
there isn’t help for miles and miles, there are newspaper clippings of
missing children plastered all over walls, there’s a hillbilly local
station manager, and of course there’s the young child attune to the
supernatural, and the older child that’s rebellious and smart mouthed;
how utterly original. “Wicked Little Things” stomps over the same old
grounds we’ve seen in hundreds of other films involving ghosts and
entities before, and it’s a waste of time to see something we’ve seen in
better films.
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Especially since other movies have created
compelling characters that have been dealt to us in the same
situation. Instead, what do we get?
We have a mom who looks much too
young to be believable as a mother of two children (through
no fault of Lori Heuring), we have Chloe Moretz who is only
on-screen to serve as a plot device for communicating with
the flesh munching children eventually. |
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And of course, there’s Taylor Scout-Compton
whose performance is not only wooden, but extremely stilted and stiff.
Her deliveries of the one-liners, and snappy comebacks are often
embarrassing and cheesy, and Compton can never quite hold up her end of
the attempted tension. The recycled premise and set-up are matched
with one-dimensional characters that never go beyond what they’re
supposed to take part in. They play their parts in the story’s sequence
and nothing more. We never get to know them, they’re never drawn with
much more complexities than the writers feel we deserve, and it’s rather
unrewarding. The build-up to the actual point of the damn story is also
disappointing, all with gore that's just arbitrary. Why the hell are
these kids killing folks? I couldn't have cared less, no matter how hard
I tried to. “Wicked Little Things” offers nothing new, nor does it seek
to break conventions. It’s routine and cheesy from start to finish.
Cardone’s supernatural thriller is an
utterly derivative and cliché offering with stale performances, boring
characters, and a snail’s pace. In spite of Cardone’s direction, and the
walk-on from Geoffrey Lewis, “Wicked Little Things” is a stale and
forgettable quasi-ghost/quasi-zombie flick.
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