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Critics Consensus: Director Christian Alvert has a certain stylish flair, but it's wasted on Case 39's frightless, unoriginal plot.
Critic Consensus: Director Christian Alvert has a certain stylish flair, but it's wasted on Case 39's frightless, unoriginal plot.
All Critics (75) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (59) | DVD (1)
It's a bummer when the audience is smarter than the protagonist.
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.
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.
Almost identical to 2009's Orphan, Case 39 does little keep your attention as its riddled with cliches--menacing music, domino casualties, and predictable horror plotline.
A soulless amalgamation of several horror classics, and marks another dud in the career of Renee Zellweger.
Despite its initial premise showing promise, Case 39 turns out to be boring, predictable and nothing new.
The end of Zellweger as we've known her.
While it's able to pull you in at some points with its eerie mood, it needed a lot more originality and better scares than the cheap kind of just having things pop up out of nowhere.
[A] dumb thriller.
While a Zellweger fan (and she does well here) this story about innocent looking and acting DEMON CHILD! has been done before and better, and hoping and wishing for a new wrinkle here won't make it real. Ahh, well ... better luck next time.
Super Reviewer
three stars
Edward Sullivan: They say when you're born you're given your eternal soul. The part of you that lives on, lives again. Whatever evil she is,didn't come from us. It was already there. From the moment she came into being, she brought something with her. Something older, destructive. Soul of a demon. "Some cases should never be opened." Not as terrible as I expected, but I expected the worst. Case 39 is still just recycled parts from better evil kid horror movies, like The Bad Seed and Orphan. It ends up playing like a more entertaining form of The Good Son. It also has a lot of things that just don't add up when examined closely, but that is the least of its problems. The biggest problem the film has is that its target audience is going to hate it and find it repetitive in the least. The target audience for this film are the people who enjoy the evil kid horror genre. And guess what; we've seen them all. So this isn't going to cut it. When you try to make a movie like this, you have to come up with something new, strange, and terrifying to add to the formula. If you can't, the result will be a failure, like Case 39. The sweetness of the little girl is played off terribly. I don't know if that is a result of her acting skills or bad writing. It may just be a combination of the two. To be honest though, the movie does have a decent start. It all goes downhill quickly though, because the writing is terrible and stuff just doesn't add up. Why would the little girl be afraid of telling the social workers about her situation because the father gives her a nasty look? She's the evil one. I know we aren't supposed to know that then, but damn have some foresight in your fucking script. There is some entertainment value in the movies awfulness. I can say I was never bored by the movie. I can also say that a lot of the entertainment I got from it came from me laughing at the ridiculousness of some of the scenes. I could talk about everything I hated in the movie, but that would take all day. Let's just leave it by saying it's bad. Maybe if you have never seen another movie in the sub genre, you will find it intriguing; but if you have, I would suggest skipping it.
It actually wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. Despite a fair amount of cheese and predictability, I stayed interested enough to watch the whole thing. Do not mistake this bone for high praise, however.
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