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JOSHUA
Directed by: George Ratliff.
Produced by: Johnathan Dorfman.
Written by: David Gilbert & Ratliff.
Director of Photography: Benoit Debie.
Edited by: Jacob Craycroft.
Music by: Nico Muhly.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Country of Origin: USA. 105 min. Rated R.
With: Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, Celia Weston, Dallas Roberts, Michael McKean & Jacob Kogan.

Real estate values have skyrocketed, and wealthy young families are now choosing to remain in the Big Apple, no longer fitting the role of a decaying, crime-ridden counterculture hotbed. But the new film Joshua brings us back to the festering paranoia of 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby. Nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan) could very well be the spawn of the devil; if every generation has its movie bad seed, he’s it for the new millennium.

The boy’s terrorization of his family begins upon the birth of his beautiful baby sister, Lily. From the start, director George Ratliff steadily builds the suspense in an unhurried manner, like the slow-build tension in both Rosemary and in The Exorcist, a reminder of when thrillers relied more on character motivations than rapid-fire editing or special effects to be frightening.

As in The Exorcist, clues begin piling up immediately that all is not well within the Cairn household. At the party celebrating Lily’s arrival, Joshua viscerally reveals his feelings, vomiting on the rug in front of the guests. (Bodily fluids, always an attention grabber.) What makes the film disturbing is what is not shown, leaving the imagination to run wild about why baby Lily wakes up crying in the middle of the night.

At first, it’s easy to write off Joshua as exceptionally self-aware and intelligent for his age, the product of the best private school education money can buy. On the surface, his manners are impeccable, but too much so – not “Thanks,” but “Thank you very much.” Whether walking the family’s dog or practicing piano (Chopin’s “Funeral March”), he wears his school uniform as if it’s another layer of skin. Regurgitating facts on Egyptian embalming methods, he speaks in a monotone, his face perpetually blank; suitably, he walks like an automaton, arms rigidly by his sides.

His parents share the audience’s puzzlement as they cling to each other, subconsciously keeping their distance from their son, with Lily snuggly wrapped in mom’s arms. A cell phone-to-his-ear hedge fund manager with a Fifth Avenue apartment, Brad (Sam Rockwell) and his brood are as much a symbol of New York today as Rosemary’s struggling actor and his young bride were in the ‘60s.

As the mother, Vera Farmiga becomes more and more feral as her second born suddenly becomes as colicky as her first. Farmiga lets loose, confirming what was only hinted at in her mainstream appearances in The Departed and Breaking and Entering. In just one scene, Ratliff captures an eerily too-realistic vision of hellish New York motherhood: a medicated Abby helplessly trying to calm a screaming baby against the equally incessant booms and bangs from the apartment above – as vivid as anything that Ellen Burstyn faced.

There’s not a throwaway line or scene to be found in the solid three-act contraption. (Robert McKee would be proud.) Ratliff unabashedly sets out to entertain, following the tropes of the genre – at one point Abby can’t resist venturing into the dark at the top of the stairs. Kent Turner
July 6, 2007