The Prodigy reviews: What do critics say about the Taylor Schilling horror movie?

The Prodigy follows Sarah, a mother whose young son Miles’ disturbing behaviour signals an evil, possibly supernatural force has overtaken him. The synopsis continues: “Fearing for her family’s safety, Sarah must choose between her maternal instinct to love and protect Miles and a desperate need to investigate what — or who — is causing his dark turn. She is forced to look for answers in the past, taking the audience on a wild ride; one where the line between perception and reality becomes frighteningly blurry.”

What do critics say about The Prodigy?

Unfortunately for Schilling, The Prodigy only has a 43 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The critics’ consensus reads: “The Prodigy doesn’t take the bad seed genre to any truly new places, but for horror fans in search of an evil child to fear, it might still be worth a watch.”

Simon Abrams for RogerEbert.com:

McCarthy’s direction is so sleepy that a number of key scenes fizzle out before they can pay off with the next big jump scare.

David Edelstein for New York Magazine/Vulture:

The film is cruelly well-made.

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Rob Bailey-Millado for the New York Post:

The latest in a long, increasingly lousy line of bloodthirsty kid movies…

Alan Zilberman for the Washington Post:

McCarthy is a filmmaker who recognizes that the buildup is more fun than the payoff, and he manages to generate suspense with seemingly little happening on the screen.

Gary Goldstein for the Los Angeles Times:

A tense and gripping, persuasively acted horror-thriller that evokes such evil-child flicks as The Omen, The Exorcist, The Bad Seed and The Good Son, while carving its own pulse-pounding, if inherently far-fetched niche in the process.

Jeannette Catsoulis for the New York Times:

The movie’s occasional chills do little to obscure the thin plotting, problematic pacing and a central mystery that’s left aggravatingly vague.

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Rafer Guzman for Newsday:

A fine little horror-chiller that puts a twist on the usual bad-seed story.

Courtney Howard for Variety:

While it lacks gripping, nail-biting tension, the unnerving horror that underscores the family drama brings it to life.

Jesse Hassenger for the AV Club:

The filmmakers figure out how to make a creepy kid chilling again, then stop short, closing the case too early.

Justin Lowe for the Hollywood Reporter:

Struggling throughout with issues of structure and pacing, Nicholas McCarthy’s horror feature threatens to debase standards for the genre to levels that even undiscriminating thrillseekers seem likely to reject.

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Kate Erbland for indieWire:

The Prodigy could stand to stretch its R-rating to even ickier ends, but its psychological surprises are the ones that really stick.

William Bibbiani for TheWrap:

Tips its hand so early, and provides so very few twists, that the film quickly runs out of material.

Jenna Stoeber for Polygon:

The Prodigy wants to capture the grief-stricken gravitas of Hereditary, but it isn’t willing to commit to the acts of brutality it needs to earn that intensity.

Matthew Lee for Flickering Myth:

The Prodigy is a forgettable, tedious horror film that few will remember come this summer.

The Prodigy is out in cinemas on March 15, 2019.