Joshua.

"Some have called Joshua a class act, when all it does is transplant The Good Son to Birth's snooty upper Manhattan hood," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Joshua might have been delicious if it weren't so blatantly hateful toward women, queers, and religion. Only a fool would consider the film a sincere look at post-partum blues, and only a bigger one would take it seriously as a commentary on nurture versus nature."

"Ultimately, [director George] Ratliff hasn't done much more than add a particularly stupid entry to the 'little boys in suits are scary' subgenre, and this one comes with a thoroughly uninvestigated stench of homophobia," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot.

Updated through 7/7.

"The movie traffics in many clichés - like the one that demands all wealthy families look absolutely perfect in the first act and downright monstrous by the end credits - and it owes more than [Vera] Farmiga's haircut to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby," writes Matt Singer. "But director George Ratliff manages to put a fresh spin on the material with a unique perspective and a wicked sense of humor." In the end, "why quibble over a few minor flaws in one of the most effectively paranoid visions of New York City parenthood, well, ever?"

Also at IFC News, Aaron Hillis talks with Ratliff, who tells him, "I think Hell House is a very, very funny movie. Sometimes I'd be in a screening, and I'm laughing the whole way, and people think I'm just a sick bastard. And Joshua was funny to begin with. I mean, for God's sakes, we cast Sam Rockwell and Michael McKean in it. I don't think that's a conflict because I think there's a deep connection between anxiety and laughter that goes way back in human development."

Earlier: Sylviane Gold's profile of Rockwell for the New York Times; and "Sundance. Joshua."

Update: Nick Schager: "I'm not sure whether Joshua's campiness outweighs its offensiveness - it's got both in spades - but there's no getting around the fact that George Ratliff's creepy-kid thriller is seriously awful."

Update, 7/4: Jesse Hassenger in the L Magazine: "The experience of watching the film is less visceral and more reflective than most horrors; its chief point of interest is not wondering when or who little Joshua will kill, but the way Ratliff and co-writer David Gilbert creep around typical evil-kid clichés."

Updates, 7/5: Joshua is a "delicately arty, robustly nasty horror movie about a family rotting to its haute-bourgeois core," writes Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly. "And though the rote mother-blame of the horror movie gets a little tedious, Joshua gets one thing right: Slathered in how-to parenting books and post-feminist anxiety about doing right by the kids, the modern mother has forgotten how to do the one thing that makes her kids blossom and flourish - enjoy them."

"Joshua intentionally generates an enigmatic aura of mismatched storytelling cadences as a means of studying the frustration of childhood supposition," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "To that end, it's a wonderful mess."

"Only viewers with some appreciation for the odd, bloodless character of moneyed family life in New York will really understand how hilarious and deadly accurate this movie is," notes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "But then again, New York parents are the last people who will want to see it."

Michael Tully: "I dig the shit out of this movie."

Chris Willard: "The Reeler made a quick stop Tuesday at the Lighthouse Theater for a special cast and crew screening of the thriller Joshua before the film opens Friday in New York."

"I'll gladly confess that Joshua had me in its grip for most of its running time," writes Jürgen Fauth. "The film provides an involving experience while it lasts, but the payoff is less than satisfying."

"Ratliff offers up a polished but hollow core, a mélange of vague fears deftly served but with no reward or catharis," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. "It's not that he needs a definite moral - Hell House demonstrates the dangers of having an all-too-coherent worldview - but ultimately, it's hard to know or particularly care what Joshua's really about."

Updates, 7/6: "Ratliff and co-screenwriter David Gilbert play brilliantly on the common but rarely acknowledged fear of spawning a child who resembles you in no way whatsoever," writes Mike D'Angelo for Nerve. "What are the limits of unconditional love, the movie dares to ask, and it's Rockwell's heroic performance, which begins in determined empathy and ends in black-comic revulsion, that makes Joshua more than the sum of its atonal frissons."

"Uneasily straddling age groups and genres, Joshua is a highly effective family drama cloaked in the stale tropes of the demon-seed thriller," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "[T]here is so much on screen to enjoy that the movie's endgame flight into excess is disappointing but not disastrous."

"So, it's not Rosemary's Baby, but George Ratliff's Joshua is nevertheless languidly seductive and creepy, perfect for a hot summer night when nobody has the energy to pose a lot of questions," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 7/7: Nathan Rabin at AV Club: "Rockwell and [Jacob] Kogan's relationship is initially sketched with tenderness and vulnerability, but as the film devolves unadvisedly into standard horror-thriller territory, it becomes increasingly one-dimensional. The film follows suit."

Ryan Stewart at Cinematical: "Vera Farmiga must be one of our great actresses - for the first two-thirds of Joshua, she not only kept me enraptured by her performance, but also made me think I was watching a good movie."

ST VanAirsdale talks with Ratliff.

Posted by dwhudson at July 3, 2007 6:12 AM