‘Case 39’ With Renee Zellweger Should Have Remained Closed

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Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – A film where a little girl screams as her foster parents attempt to brutally murder her can be a tough sell to theater owners. Perhaps that’s why Paramount’s “Case 39” with Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper has been sitting on studio shelves for years since it closed production in 2006. How do you market a film that chooses to turn the world of foster parenting into a horror thriller? Why make it in the first place?

The horrible decisions that were made on day one might inspire you to wonder how the hell “Case 39” ever got made but the bad choices didn’t stop there. Miscast, poorly-directed, and just-plain boring, “Case 39” never clicks into place. There are rumors that they went back and re-cut the film in attempts to try and change the plot wholesale before releasing it stateside but that should give you some idea about what they were working with. No matter how many times you re-shape a piece of crap, it’s still a piece of crap.

Case 39
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

Filmed back when Renee Zellweger was still a star and before Bradley Cooper became one, the Oscar-winner stars as a foster child case worker who describes herself as “just not mom material.” Yes, this is another one of those films in which a working woman tries to have a family life too and pays the price; typical Hollywood misogyny.

Our doomed heroine stumbles across the case of a sweet girl named Lily (Jodelle Ferland) stuck in the aforementioned horrific situation. She breaks down the door with her police friend Mike (Ian McShane) just as they’re about to kill their foster child. Are they crazy? Pure evil? Or should the fact that they barricade themselves in their own room every night mean something?

Of course, the girl gets adopted by the case worker, who also enrolls her in therapy with her longtime unrequited love Doug (Bradley Cooper). And, of course, things start getting weird pretty quickly. One of Lily’s classmates ends up brutally murdering his parents and Mike determines that a call came from Lily just before it happened. Cue the tones of “The Omen” and “The Bad Seed” as creepy music now scores the life of the girl who may not be as innocent as we first thought. Like characters only do in movies, Lily goes from sweetheart to a kid that would obviously be thrown in a padded cell by anyone she encounters. As her shrink says, “I’ve talked to a lot of kids. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that before.” Yeah, that’s because it’s not remotely believable.

Case 39
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

Up to this point, “Case 39” is just dull and if it had stayed that way, Paramount probably would have released it in a “dump month” and banked off Zellweger’s draw and fans of the subgenre of adoption horror (an oddly-vibrant one lately with “Joshua,” “Orphan,” etc.) But the second half of “Case 39” devolves from a typical thriller into something far dumber. With tones of J-horror remakes like “The Ring” and “Shutter,” “Case 39” goes places far too loony for you to even believe if you read them in this review. There’s a scene with bugs coming out of a man’s ear that most writers of straight-to-DVD “Grudge” sequels would axe for being sillier than it is scary.

As for the cast, you can almost tell that none of them gave a damn. I say “almost” because the ridiculous horror tricks of director Christian Alvart – extreme close-ups, flare-ups in the music, choppy editing, bad effects – pile on top of each other to the point that the film collapses underneath them. Zellweger has to switch from protective mother to scared woman so quickly that she fails to find any believability. Cooper is just a pretty face and Ferland is a plot device. Only McShane does a decent job but mostly because he’s the character we wish we could leave with every time he goes off-screen.

It’s ironic that Paramount finally chose a weekend to release Alvart’s genre junk that also sees the release of a truly great horror movie based on another film that hadn’t even been shot by the time “Case 39” was in the can. Go rent “Let the Right One In” or see “Let Me In” long before seeing “Case 39.” And then watch them again.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com