Average Rating: 4/10
Reviews Counted: 70
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 54
Director Christian Alvert has a certain stylish flair, but it's wasted on Case 39's frightless, unoriginal plot.
Average Rating: 3/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 8
Director Christian Alvert has a certain stylish flair, but it's wasted on Case 39's frightless, unoriginal plot.
liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 63,368
In CASE 39, family services social worker Emily Jenkins (Renée Zellweger) thinks she has seen it all... until she meets 10-year old Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland) and the child's cruel and dangerous parents. Her worst fears are confirmed when the parents try to harm Lily, their only daughter. Frightened for her life, Emily enlists the help of Detective Mike Barron (Ian McShane) and takes Lily in while she continues the search for the perfect foster family. Just as it seems as though Lily is
Oct 1, 2010 Wide
Jan 4, 2011
$13.2M
Paramount Studios
All Critics (70) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (55) | DVD (2)
It's a bummer when the audience is smarter than the protagonist.
By the time the killings start, it's clear that Ray Wright's screenplay is more interested in following formula than in breaking new ground.
The devil made them do it, but that doesn't mean you have to see it.
[Plays] like one more piece of multiplex in-box clutter, ready for the circular file in our moviegoing consciousness.
An aggressively inept demon-seed chiller starring a bunch of grown-ups who should've known better.
Zellweger, forced to play a character who lurches from rational to absurdly credulous, loses credibility by the minute.
[A] dumb thriller.
...a decent little horror flick...
Directed by Christian Alvart (Pandorum) with a less than giddy hand, Case 39 is truly terrible. But at least it scores a few 'so bad it's good' points.
Not only is Case 39 deplorable and morally off-center, the film is dull to boot.
What starts out as slight and fairly obvious turns into a frequently colorful horror tale.
Neither the the direction acting nor is the problem here. It's the script that does the picture in. (Blu-ray Edition)
...we get a couple of moments of genuine suspense combined with a whole lot of cheap thrills.
What do you do with a crummy horror movie that has been sitting on the shelf for a couple, or maybe three, years?
... before the movie is half over, the usual cliches take over ...
Its time to put the nail in the otherworldly evil child genre until someone comes up with something original. The only thing supernatural about Case 39 is its ungodly presence on this planet.
What do you do with a crummy horror movie that has been sitting on the shelf for a couple, or maybe three, years?
Neither so awful as to be enjoyable nor eerily artful enough to be anything other than a snoozy also-ran.
in the meantime, director Christian Alvart went on to make the effectively moody "Pandorum," but this movie is a dud.
It's as lame as can be, and despite sitting on the shelf for four years, it's not even bad enough to be unintentionally funny.
Unremarkable except for its subversive subtext.
As demonic children movies go, it?s really not bad -- and the acting makes it seem a little better than that.
From a bevy of cheesy jolt scares (alarm clock! barking dog!) to the embarrassing sight of Zellweger and Ian McShane treating this Orphan-style B-movie silliness with grave seriousness, the film proves to be one hokey-horror riot.
That pounding you hear is the sound of nails going into Renee Zellwegger's career coffin
Case 39 had a promising start, bur once you realize how the events play out; the film is just recycled ideas from many other possessed child films. The film doesn't do anything refreshing and it's a shame because it started off well. But about forty five minutes in, you realize how ill conceived the film really is. I
August 26, 2011
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