i didn't really understand what he's trying to say about the end and didn't find that moment implying anything at all. it's just shitty. i wish i could wipe my memory of this film, not because i want to forget but because i want every time i see it to be like the first.
Is that what he was saying, "enchilada"? Oh, god, is that how they pronounce it in the film?? edit - I should really be more shocked at the entire situation, but I think I've just come to accept the sheer absurdity of the movie at this point in the video. XD
If Henry's such a goddamn genius, why doesn't he use his small fortune to hire a merc off the dark web to shoot the guy rather than making his mom do it?
Dammit, it all makes so much sense. He's got the cash, and there wouldn't need to be a convoluted plan when you leave the job to someone so experienced.
If the production of this movie is any indication there is also quite a variety in how thick some skulls are. It would seem some heads are made entirley of bone.
I'd watch the heck out of that movie. Kid getting bullied about his stupid dream, grows up to make it happen? It feels super sappy or like a ridiculous comedy that old Sandler or Ferrel would do.
Except when it is played for laughs. This might just be me, but there's something inherently funny about kids being way more eloquent and introspective than kids would ever realistically be, such as seen with Calvin & Hobbes and some SMBC strips.
At the very least, Calvin just has a huge vocabulary, but combined with a kid's sense of priorities, which is how one ends up with things like him selling the Earth to space aliens in exchange for skipping a homework assignment.
Yeah, and Calvin is a good balance even if you look at the more serious strips. He's incredibly smart for being six, but not overly _mature_ for being six, and has a realistic amount of power over the world for being six. (E.G., unlike this movie, Calvin's mom would not literally try to commit murder at his behest.) He can be sympathetic but his status as a child is never used to portray him as supernaturally ~*~pure and wise uwu~*~. If anything, being so intelligent makes his life a little bit harder because he's prickly and doesn't fit in or have a ton of friends (and importantly, this is not romanticized, it just is.) So even if C&H wasn't a comedy, Calvin would still work.
I like how Dan's opinion on how well the mom mom'd changed so much. On first viewing, Dan went along with how it was framed...but by the time he wrote his second Book of Henry review, he realized that her bad mom-ing was basically just one girl's night and playing video games a little. And not worrying about finances when Henry tells her to.
Yeah this movie leaned into the "if Mom does any but be a Mom, then she's a bad Mom." It leaned in HARD. It implied she needed to be punished (the death of her son) because she had hobbies.
I love that the actor who plays Henry would essentially go on to play a teenage Ben Shapiro type character in Knives Out, cause if we're being real, that's who Henry basically is.
Also a Star Wars link there, Trevorrow gets fired from episode 9 because of this, and Rian Johnson put Jaeden's character in Knives Out because of the alt-right trolls harassing him after episode 8.
The thing is that it genuinely wouldn't be more absurd for the plot to be "dead 11 year old turns confused mother into sleeper agent assassin because neighbor abuses a valuable lamp"
@@rosejuliette9180 I agree. Along with all the Henry stuff, we lose what seems to be the ultimate point of the film: a woman working through the loss of her child. There's too much setup, and it would be better if they cut out 90% of Henry's on-screen presence and gave us a full narrative taking place in what is 'act 3' of this movie.
Susan’s boss at the diner has more character and likability in his pinky toe than literally everyone else, and he’s only in two, little over a minute total scenes 🤣
I dunno why the rest of you are trying to be mean, I thought it was nice that Dan bothered to reply to this one. I also think it’s cool to know that an aspiration someone can have for a long time can actually pay off. I have my own ideas running around my head that I hope to visualize and express someday, too.
The second half could probably work re-edited as a surreal horror. THE BOOK. THE BOOK KNOWS. OBEY. THE BOOK SEES. THE TAPE RECORDER LOVES US ALL. Like Henry dies and ascended to become a diabolical god-tyrant.
SPOILER FOR THE ENDING: The implication of the ending seems even more messed up than that to me, considering the girl is a survivor of sexual abuse. Her wanting the nightlight on and the door closed seems like it's at least in part a protective measure. Basically the movie is saying her PTSD helps her to fit right in the family and fill the hole of a dead child, which of course Henry probably figured out.
My best guess is that they were going for the Lifetime movie method of tackling super dark subject matter in a superficial way, and hope that by ending on a happy-enough note, the audience feels happy. Except that by not thinking through the implications, not really dealing with the trauma, and packaging it all with such inept film making that connection to the story is impossible, the audience just feels rightfully bitter about the attempt to emotionally manipulate it.
I agree that this is the implication based on conventional metaphor and film language, but I don't think that was actually intended... I feel like the intention is way worse. I don't think that much thought went into the scene. They portray it in a way that, because she has been taken out of a bad place and put into a situation where she "fits in," she is now cured of the sads and PTSD can't hurt her simply because she is loved -as an outright replacement for a recently deceased family member of the- by the new caregiver and new brother. It's *tonally* coded in a way that she is now "cured" of her past. Love in its many forms conquering trauma isn't a bad message (compassion is usually the foundation of recovery), but it is bad to imply that you are fixed just by finding a place to fit in. EVERYONE IS FIXED NOW AND ALL IT TOOK WAS A CHILD DYING OF BRAIN CANCER AND SPREADING GHOST ENERGY ON HIS LOVED ONES.
A thing that truly bothers me about this movie is that... OK, so the teenage daughter is being sexually molested by her step-dad... I hate. I. hate. how in the movie treats that like a minor thing with no further consequences as soon as the dad offs himself... like, "Yep, now she lives happy ever after on the Carpenter family, no long lasting damage after her experience with with Glen."
I was expecting the same in kinda the opposite way; that he's always been dead the whole time. But really by that point it was open season for daft twists, pretty much just a dice roll. :)
Henry seems to be exactly the kind of character to Moffat his happy ass back to life, yeah. I honestly thought that's where the 'magic trick' was going.
Trevarrow's ep 9 script is genuinely such an atrocity. The man managed to write something so awful that the studio decided the fucking Rise of Skywalker was acceptable in comparison. What an absolute hack of a writer.
When you have over a half million in your account, a five grands withdrawal is basically new furniture for your living room or a spending spree at Best Buy. Either of those would work as a believable alibi for the bank teller.
What are you talking about? This is an awesome super villain origin story. Henry is like a combination of Hannibal Lecter, Xanatos, Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, and the Shadow King. This is the tale of his ascension. The masterful manipulation of his family to carry out his perverse desires is but a taste of his terrible powers. The tribulations he forced his mother through are a sacrifice to his name, so that he may transcend his corporeal form. The spreading of his ashes has clearly allowed him to infiltrate the unsuspecting minds of the town. Soon, all shall fall beneath his thrall and the world will tremble at the hour of Henry's apotheosis.
The downside to watching this video after watching the fully scripted video is that it's not as wholly formed in its thoughts and ideas and treads over them in a manner with less flow. The plus side is that it much better represents the sheer fucking baffling feeling when you first finish watching the movie.
Henry is young Sheldon with somehow even less charisma, and the fact that like Light Yagami he planned all this out is a sign he probably would've grown up to be a serial killer
I find it super implausible that the mom doesn't know how to use computers even though she's shown to be very into video games. I mean it is possible I just find that implausible
Its really not even possible tho.... Not given the time setting of this movie. It's set in relatively modern day.... I mean the game she's playing is fairly high def iirc. In order to even set up a console you need some tech knowledge about WiFi, connectors, etc. (and, given Henry's distaste for video games I doubt he'd have set it up for her-he's such a dick)
The script was originally written in the 90s and has been batted around for a while, so that’s likely an artifact of that. In the 90s it’d make perfect sense for someone to be into console gaming or what have you and not be very tech-savvy with computers.
That makes sense but I was thinking about late 80s logic computer is for nerds and smart ppl but a grown woman playing super Nintendo doesn't makes sense maybe late 90s I don't know watching her on a 64 I mean it doesn't makes sense. I know a WiFi game and the generation makes less sense on the year it got out but it never makes sense.
See this just shows up their writing as stupid. Henry is really idiotically negative with this comment. The Olympics are a bunch of arbitrary choices that do change. And the choices are mainly based on what will draw in viewership without going too much against their snobbish air of being the arbitrators of 'proper sports'. Although obviously the closer they get to losing money, the more blatantly it's going to swing in the direction of viewership numbers... Really, though they ought to accept any sport at all. There's a strong argument for that because honestly, why the hell even should there be a seperation between one sport and another in that way? They're all games with some kind of physical test aspect to them, that are played in ways so that elite performances emerge from them, for the essential end purpose of entertainment. So what exactly then makes one sport valid and another sport invalid? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So if this kid was actually the slightest bit as intelligent as they thought he might be, he'd point out the politics of the situation and call the other kid's dream idealistically commendable but practically difficult. And encourage it nonetheless, since stranger things have happened. Olympic games used to have a gold medal in town planning, for instance. :) Happening to know a thing another person doesn't know, is about the least actually intelligent form of intelligence you can actually show off.
If this kid is so smart that he can orchestrate a post-mortem conversation with his own mother, why did he bother trying unsuccessfully to convince his mother to pay attention to the bills and stocks when he was *alive*? On the other hand, why did he even fail in the first place? Does this kid really have more agency dead than alive?
poipoi So, out of curiosity, how in depth does Henry go? Like, did he explain why, somehow, murder is the only thing they can do, outside of the excuse that "Dad is Police Comish/Brother is CPC head", which could still be worked around?
@@christianhansen2569 yeah like.... Now that you mention it, it would probably take swimming through a bureaucratic nightmare on some level, but those people are not the highest authorities in the state or something. There are ppl who could still help.... Like... Oh... Maybe the FBI??? It's the obvious agency to call in my mind for a situation like this
How would a kid purchase a car, get the registration / tags, insure it and then drive it someplace without being stopped or noticed??? I guess you'd have to bribe someone to impersonate your mom.
i’ve come back to this video many a times in the last few years and the incredulous mouth buffering at 26:15 as mr folding ideas himself grapples with the implication of henry’s cremains being spewed over an audience at an elementary school talent show kills me every time
As an experiment I watched the film BEFORE I watched this vlog just to see just how many faults I'd find within the film. Honestly didn't expect the film to be this bad. I have two whole A4 pages of scribblings/questions/inconsistencies that upset me so much. How come the mother has a better relationship with the girl next door than with her own children? WHY DO THEY HAVE A SPECIAL HANDSHAKE? WHAT'S GOING ON? So, Henry recorded all the plan C instructions before he knew that he was dying? How? What? I also genuinely thought the scenes leading up to Henry's death were worse than that of Slipknot's in Suicide Squad. It's like BTW HE HAS HEADACHES and 5mins later he's in the hospital diagnosing himself to a doctor who's like YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY MY EQUAL, HERE ARE YOUR MRA SCANS. What. The entire movie is built up like, HENRY'S SO SMART, SO GIFTED, I NEED TO ASK HENRY WHAT TO DO, and yet when this kid is DYING and trying to arrange for everything NOBODY LISTENS TO HIM. "This is important mom". Not listening. "Peter I want you to give my book to mom but you can't read it I trust you". Doesn't try to find it and "accidentally" sees it and THEN gives it to the mothr. Oh but not before reading it. "I want to see the sky". Doesn't get to see the sky (even though it's his dying wish). I realised as the entire movie had passed that I still don't know the mother's name? Why did she even get custody of Christina? She has no job and she plays video games all day long. WHY. Aaaaahh.
I wish they had rounded out Henry by including some actual emotions in him. I think it would be really powerful if he started to cry while explaining his own illness to the doctor, or being afraid. It would be much more powerful to see the precocious child unravel when facing his own mortality, and the shock of that unraveling would provide at least some kind of more emotionally fueled reason why the mom listens to Henry’s instruction.
Every once in a while, I come back to reviews of this movie because I still can't believe it's a real thing that happened. That said, if the plot had been that Henry's brain cancer had been making him increasingly paranoid and how this child had been so smart, but didn't have the emotional intelligence or life experience to admit/accept his own impending death, so he hyperfocused on an incorrect perception of what was going on next door and used the murder plot as an excuse to set everything up for his family to be "okay" after he died (new car, money safely transferred from stocks a minor shouldn't have had control of, replacement child)...it would have also been bonkers, but at least without the weird veneer of all this crazy being justified.
I don't normally watch 40 minute videos due to attention difficulties, but MAN this was RIVETING. When you recounted the moment "Amazing Grace" was sung, I loudly exclaimed "Oh my god" and had to pause and put down my laptop for a moment. The cringe was too strong.
I just realized the precise form the Christ metaphor takes in this movie. The snowflakes in the magic trick at the end are supposed to symbolize the Holy Spirit, the communal connection between believers. It's meant, of course, to answer the corresponding metaphors earlier in the film: first, Henry as the Father, as the effective head of the household, and then as the Son, the martyred savior. It's breathtaking, how bad it is
SO MUCH of the Book of Henry I was really, REALLY expecting a twist where it would turn out that like... Henry was a genius but he was also just a kid and he was actually just sorta so used to being 'the mature one' that he ended up concocting this crazy thought in his head about how this girl was being abused because like, she was a teenager and just was sad sometimes and didn't have a great relationship with her dad. And then like, either a dark ending where the mom finds out after she kills the guy or a less so version where the mom sorta stops herself before she kills him and sort of comes to realize that, like... Holy shit, I am about to murder my next-door-neighbor on the advice of my dead son who came up with this plan at a point in his life where he was literally about to die from something bad that was affecting his brain. And like, it would be about how the mother had sort of let her genius kid become the adult in the house and handle everything because he was good at it when actually, even though he was a genius and could do that stuff, she had stopped seeing him as a kid. And that she would eventually come to appreciate Henry for being the (admittedly gifted) child he was instead of the sort of ubercompetent caretaker she'd been treating him as. Like, that all made sense. That's why his plan was so stupid, because it's the sort of plan a child comes up with. "Buy a sniper rifle and lure him outside so I can shoot him from my treehouse." His neighbor wasn't evil, but because he had never had a parent willing to parent him, he just hadn't realized what a real parental relationship would look like. So like, he didn't realize that it would just be normal that a girl his age (10-12 or so) would probably sometimes be pouty and pissed off at her dad about some stuff. And yeah, the dad would yell at her or smoething but he wasn't actually witnessing a crime, he was witnessing a kinda stressed-out traditional but ultimately well-meaning single father trying to parent a girl going through a rough part of her life. We're told she had bruises, but we never see them which means, like... Yeah. Probably she did. Because probably as a kid, she went outside and played sometimes or did stuff at dance rehearsals or anything else that would lead to the fact that, well, sometimes she would have bruises on her body because kids fall over sometimes. Like, even a bit of the conclusion kinda seems like it's headed there? It seems like she WAS supposed to realize that her son was a child and not just the real adult, but like... He was right and his plan only failed because... His mom decided not to kill someone at the advice of a 12-year-old? Like honestly it kinda feels like maybe it was written the way I was thinking at some point, and then eventually the writer thought "Okay but what if Henry was actually RIGHT" and like... Didn't realize that changed the whole story?
I am replying to this after discussing stuff and watching the other video on this channel about The Book of Henry and *man* I love this idea. It would also become a great callback to that "Rube Goldberg machine accounts for all possible outcomes to avoid failure" when then that's not what Rube Goldberg machines are. Imagine an alternate scene where Henry hails what he builds as life changing, tries to run it, but the machine fucks up at the end and the ball hits his little brother in the eye. And while Peter is crying and Henry is confused about what failed, their mother tries to consul Peter by saying "well at least you didn't end up with pencil lead in your eye!" Then later on Henry's mother has gun ready (oh he's either not actively dying and does it/decides to do this himself before he dies) all in part of a large and needlessly convoluted plan full of way too many caviats. Only to end up killing Christine (thematically shot in the eye) who we learn right after, wasn't even getting molested. Her and her father had just been arguing a lot the past few months because she wanted to be part of a study abroad program in a couple years, and he was worried for her health and safety. *And to rub salt in the wound*, the reason the father was sometimes in the bathroom in her was because she needed assistance getting in and out of the tub. And sometimes he'd check for specific kinds of bruising related to hemophilia. Because Christine had ongoing health issues and the dad, despite his daughters desires, more so wanted to keep her home where he could make sure everything would be okay. Being very worried something bad would happen while she was out of his immediate vicinity. and then, in her room she gets fucking shot(on accident)
which is honestly concerning considering that the reason this movie was even made is because of how respected the director was at that point, disney gave him the last movie of the sequel trilogy and made him writer and director (for a time, thank you henry), studios were gonna fund whatever the fuck he wanted to make, and yet he made this
I honestly can't even believe that at any point, a producer somewhere looked at this and went "Yep, that's good. Ship it out like this, this is comprehensible, enjoyable and totally not an off-the-wall bonkers piece of hot garbage." Goodness this was a pungent hunk of dung
16:15 ... As a bank teller of 12 years, yeah. It's not very suspicious to withdraw $5,000 from a $600,000 account... but if it's an unusual transaction it is still a small red flag. The teller will likely casually ask you about the transactions purpose. (Because your teller is trained to look for signs you, the customer, might be getting scammed and not realize it.) Common answers to taking that much cash? Buying a car. Down payment on a car. Home improvements (like buying a new air conditioner). But... I expect Henry's concern was this exact "trail" if she got the cash in person. Then there is a witness to her taking the money and not just a paper trail.
"That's not suspicious when you're rich." Yeah... but does anyone /know/ she's rich? Maybe that's what he's trying to avoid, anyone realizing they're rich in the bank when they pull up her account and look at it. (No idea... hadn't seen the movie)
I just realized- this movie would be completely fine if Henry were just psychic instead of being super smart, and they got rid of the wealth and “Henry detects his own condition” themes that don’t add to anything. Henry wouldn’t be a complete asshole, and everything would be more interesting and creepy.
The weirdest part is: this is the best possible version of this story. Directing, acting, casting, lighting they are all as good as you could hope for, but nothing can come close to getting past the film's most damning flaw: THE BASIC PREMISE OF THE MOVIE!!!
Two years later but I think this shows how the writing is the most important part of a movie. There is a video of other RUclipsr about how you can make a great comedy of this movie if was directed by Wes Anderson but the script is garbage you would be making just something like the justice league of josh Wheadon.
The premise could've been saved by something like an unreliable narrator, or perhaps the writer not actually buying that their self-insert main character is a genuine genius messiah
31:30: New film premise: Weirdly precocious kid dies, convinces sibling to scatter his ashes at the talent show, and starts to possess everyone in the auditorium.
"So this genius kid is an asshole to everybody and planing to kill his neighbor..." "...Okay?" "Then he dies of brain cancer..." "What?" "so now the mom has to murder the neighbor instead..." "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"
Ah yes, cynicism and joylessness as a proxy for intelligence. That's when you know you are watching something written by the kind of person who brings up their IQ in social settings.
So I love watching people rant about media online. It's a slight addiction for me (I have literally watched a two hour video on why the TV show Sherlock is terrible multiple times) and seeing this, a new complaint, is making me really excited. I might have a problem.
Actually, I just noticed that both Sherlock and Book of Henry have the same main characters: the Ubermensch asshole who is still somehow beloved by his peers, the sidekick male with no real role other than being there and maybe doing a few things, and all the female characters whose major character trait is their relationship to the male lead. Whoa. The subjects of my favorite rants are lining up. Cue the X Files music!
So much of the first half of this movie and its characters hinge of Henry's allegedly obvious emotional maturity, yet based on what we the viewer are actually shown of how he interacts with the other characters, he's actually... not. He reads more like a book smart prodigy held back by still having the emotional maturity of someone his age. Even while his actions throughout the film clearly denote him as a righteous character, Henry is just so goddamn unlikable.
I knew this movie would be a shitshow when the trailer contained this dialogue exchange so we'd know the one character was the villain: "So you're living with your father" Neighbor girl [grimly]: "Stepfather"
This story would have been so much better if the red book was meant for the neighbour girl- where perhaps she is the one that is given the instructions on how to rescue herself (perhaps with help from mum). I’d far rather see an abuse victim rescue herself rather than be relegated to a goddam lamp. She’s barely even a plot device. Nah- I’d rather see an abuse revenge fic. Give her a bit of agency.
That would make sense omg. Henry: "Peter, when I die I want you to give Christina my red notebook, make sure she reads it." Plus she'd have to consult it in secret without her dad finding it, creating opportunities for suspense. The plan itself would have to be changed drastically, though. No way is a 12 year old girl buying a sniper rifle. Especially when her abusive dad is the police commissioner
How did Henry register the car? Did he tell the dealership to just drop it off in a random lot and leave the keys in the ignition? Did Henry know timing of the talent show down to the second? What really happened - the daughter/lamp suffers from horrible nightmares and stepdad just comes in to comfort her. Stepdad feeling depressed and helpless because he could not prevent the death of his wife kills himself even though he knows the abuse allegations are false. The intended takeaway was that the audience should not believe such an unreliable witness and that the whole book/Bible is false. The reappearance of Henry is just a cheap magic trick. PS never say die
I wish to thank you for taking this one "for the team", as it where. It means I don't need to waste what little time the good Lord has afforded me on this Earth actually watching what, by all accounts, sounds like the cinematic equivalent some kind of rare, untreatable, and extremely painful, bowel cancer.
Strange as this had better acting, story construction, pacing, dialogue and so on and so on. But its execution was just so poor and the subject material so serious that I think I agree, it's worse. Would have fared far better as a dark comedy than whatever the hell it was trying to be. I can't believe how many people thought it was a great, not just good, film.
He pointed out that suicide squad was rushed, reshot, slashed to ribbons, and stitched back together, so I think that influenced the difference. Book of Henry was being written for 18 years. You'd think something good would come from that
This is a very old comment on a very old video, but I wanted to genuinely thank you for putting subtitles on a reaction video like this. I can hear, but it's tough for me to understand what I'm hearing sometimes, so the subtitles are really helpful. Thank you, genuinely, for doing this.
Henry sounds like a terrible Mary-Sue. A film which was similar about a gifted kid who was realistic, and all that comes with that, might be really interesting.
Little man Tate is kinda like that. Tate is really smart but he's still a kid. The gifted school that he goes too and the woman who takes over as his guardian can't replace his down-to-earth mother or his need to have a normal balanced childhood.
There's actually a movie called Gifted that came out earlier this year about a little girl who's this genius math prodigy, and while it's not perfect, it handles the subject so much better and much more realistically. It's good at showing how smart she is, but she still acts like a normal kid. I recommend it, it's a decent film. Much better than this garbage.
Obviously it isn't grounded in reality but Malcolm in the Middle did a good job of portraying a smart kid. Malcolm was smart, but he was also a kid who thought getting a zit would ruin his life
I want a movie called Mary Sue. It’s about a perfect girl who can’t do wrong, even if she tried. She’s cursed. She wants 2 be normal but instead everything she does is perfect. everyone hates her, except they don’t because she’s Mary sue and just so darn like-able, but Mary sue hates them. Just pure, unadulterated nonsense. Shoving Mary Sue down everyone’s throats. Here is a Mary Sue character that highlights the imperfections of all other Mary sue’s. Maybe it’s a horror?
You know, I'd never heard of this movie. I had no idea what to expect from it, not even the genre. So when you got to the whole "and the book is a step by step instructional for murdering their neighbor," it was really exciting and unexpected, and what started out sounding like a boring Phenomenon-meets-Powder thing suddenly became REALLY interesting. The tapes were reminiscent of The Doctor's recording in the (famous, excellent) Doctor Who episode Blink, and the whole setup got more and more interesting. So the question for me became "how does he know all this stuff? Is he a time traveler? A PKD Precog? A failed military experiment??" And even though you were criticizing the film, you managed to make it sound pretty fascinating... Until the "emotional" direction of the ending. So here's what I was hoping for as I was drawn into the movie: If, instead of "snow" raining out of the talent show box, it had been BLOOD, and the gnarled bestial hand of her son clawed its way out, demon horns and fire, and hissed at her "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM... YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO MURDER HIM... THEN WE COULD BE TOGETHER!" followed by, like, a Glen and his boys gun down the monster, followed by some logical tie ups like "everything going wrong was being faked by Henry and his infernal machines" or something... This would be the greatest movie OF ALL TIME. .. Just saying. For a long while there, this movie sounded GREAT.
Michael Reed Honestly, it would have been the best movie ever. Henry sounds like a demon or evil psychic. He has his mom wrapped around his finger. It sounded terrifying. Just a few tweaks and it would've been great.
The instructions through the headphones immediately made me think of "Primer." The plot actually makes way more sense if you assume that Henry had a time machine.
> “It makes Henry out to be a poltergeist, a haunting spirit, who possesses people and overrides their free will.” That suggests an alternate Book of Henry directed as a horror movie, where through his notes he possesses his family members and forces them to enact his horrifying murder plot.
The movie would have been great if in the end, Mom does kill Glen, but the aftermath is just that Henry was wrong. Glen wasn't an abuser, neighbor girl was just an angsty preteen, and despite Henry's intelligence, he didn't have the depth of experience to make rational decisions. Then the movie could have had a good message about treating children like children and the dangers of forcing them to grow up to fast, coupled with societies unhealthy inability to deal with anguish and loss in a constructive manner.
From how the first part was going, I would've thought the movie would be a slice of life type movie. But after Henry's death... what happened?!? Attempted murder? Spraying ashes over an audience?
Henry is kind of like if they threw Dexter from Dexter's Lab and Mandy from Billy and Mandy in a blender, hit blend and tried to make a story around the result. Also: For those keeping score, this is the THIRD So Bad It's Good Disasterpiece (after 2013's double whammy of Diana and Adoration) Naomi Watts has had the leading role in. Three more, and she can redeem her "So Bad It's Good Movie Card" for a free jar of jellybeans from Nicolas Cage.
I'm struggling to find a reason why Henry had to be 11. It wouldn't have changed much but being in school if he was an adult, and would have made leaps and bounds more sense.
I think henry would be a pretty perfect example of the "gary stu" trope in that the story seems to snap its spine trying to bend over backwards to make him look perfect, logic and believability be damned
Развлечения
ah yes, the two genders: enchilada and butterfly
Hey hey Lily, dial it down, there's kids watching
Especially when used in reference to little kids!
I thought they were coke and pepsi
i didn't really understand what he's trying to say about the end and didn't find that moment implying anything at all. it's just shitty. i wish i could wipe my memory of this film, not because i want to forget but because i want every time i see it to be like the first.
Is that what he was saying, "enchilada"? Oh, god, is that how they pronounce it in the film??
edit - I should really be more shocked at the entire situation, but I think I've just come to accept the sheer absurdity of the movie at this point in the video. XD
If Henry's such a goddamn genius, why doesn't he use his small fortune to hire a merc off the dark web to shoot the guy rather than making his mom do it?
Underrated comment lol
Yeah! Besa Mafia doesn’t care if you’re an eleven year old kid!
Dammit, it all makes so much sense. He's got the cash, and there wouldn't need to be a convoluted plan when you leave the job to someone so experienced.
what the fuck that would be infinitely easier lmao
I know the comment is a year old but it's because the script was written in the 90s and they didn't update it
They buried Henry in a cardboard box in the back yard like a hamster.
It was worse than I thought. So much worse.
this is the best comment
why did this comment make me like cry laughing
Cut to deleted scene of them reading a note from Henry explaining how it made more economical sense to bury him in the yard like a hamster
Fuck it, now I NEED to see this.
"He scatters a dead child's ashes over a cheering crowd" sounds like an incredible punchline to an Aristocrats joke.
probably was an Andy Kaufman sketch
Haha that's genius.
I'd use it in the buildup myself
33:19 "Colin Trevorrow is curently slated to direct episode 9 and I get the feeling that that might change after this."
This aged incredibly well.
HE SCATTERS HENRY'S ASHES OVER THE CROWD
And somehow everyone is happy about being showered by the metaphorical remains of a dead child... what?
I don't think it's a metaphor...
Matthew Manard THAT MAKES IT SO MUCH BETTER 😂😂😂😭😭😭😰😰
I know right? XD
You know, I have less of a problem with that than with everything else.
"Plywood is only slightly thicker than the human skull?" What? Plywood comes in every thickness you can imagine!
If the production of this movie is any indication there is also quite a variety in how thick some skulls are.
It would seem some heads are made entirley of bone.
Akin to “mom, don’t worry...water is only slightly smaller than the human palm.”
Category error of sorts?
Experience has taught me that scattering your dead brother's ashes over a crowd of children and parents is a social faux pas if nothing else.
What if that one kid's legacy was that he grew up to make dodgeball into an Olympic sport and he was the first champion?
I'd watch the heck out of that movie. Kid getting bullied about his stupid dream, grows up to make it happen? It feels super sappy or like a ridiculous comedy that old Sandler or Ferrel would do.
What I would pay to see that happen....
And itll be broadcasted on ESPN El Ocho.
Hell, skateboarding could be in it soon
Hey man, if someone can make pole dancing as an olympic sport then why not dodgeball.
Nothing ruins a story faster than a badly-written precocious child.
Except when it is played for laughs. This might just be me, but there's something inherently funny about kids being way more eloquent and introspective than kids would ever realistically be, such as seen with Calvin & Hobbes and some SMBC strips.
Tiggurix Yeah, but I wouldn't call Calvin and Hobbes badly written. Unrealistic, yes, but for what it's going for it's well written.
Mary Sue characters will kill any work of fiction, but when that character is a child it becomes a special sort of terrible.
At the very least, Calvin just has a huge vocabulary, but combined with a kid's sense of priorities, which is how one ends up with things like him selling the Earth to space aliens in exchange for skipping a homework assignment.
Yeah, and Calvin is a good balance even if you look at the more serious strips. He's incredibly smart for being six, but not overly _mature_ for being six, and has a realistic amount of power over the world for being six. (E.G., unlike this movie, Calvin's mom would not literally try to commit murder at his behest.) He can be sympathetic but his status as a child is never used to portray him as supernaturally ~*~pure and wise uwu~*~. If anything, being so intelligent makes his life a little bit harder because he's prickly and doesn't fit in or have a ton of friends (and importantly, this is not romanticized, it just is.)
So even if C&H wasn't a comedy, Calvin would still work.
I like how Dan's opinion on how well the mom mom'd changed so much. On first viewing, Dan went along with how it was framed...but by the time he wrote his second Book of Henry review, he realized that her bad mom-ing was basically just one girl's night and playing video games a little. And not worrying about finances when Henry tells her to.
I mean framing things a certain way can really get an audience to overlook stuff like that until they reexamine it.
"How dare you not worry about the finances?! Don't you know we only have 600k and also you don't need to work anymore?!"
Yeah this movie leaned into the "if Mom does any but be a Mom, then she's a bad Mom." It leaned in HARD. It implied she needed to be punished (the death of her son) because she had hobbies.
I love that the actor who plays Henry would essentially go on to play a teenage Ben Shapiro type character in Knives Out, cause if we're being real, that's who Henry basically is.
Also a Star Wars link there, Trevorrow gets fired from episode 9 because of this, and Rian Johnson put Jaeden's character in Knives Out because of the alt-right trolls harassing him after episode 8.
"She's not a character... She's barely a plot device." That's the precise moment I lost my shit
You could replace her with a valuable lamp
The thing is that it genuinely wouldn't be more absurd for the plot to be "dead 11 year old turns confused mother into sleeper agent assassin because neighbor abuses a valuable lamp"
@@rosejuliette9180 I agree. Along with all the Henry stuff, we lose what seems to be the ultimate point of the film: a woman working through the loss of her child.
There's too much setup, and it would be better if they cut out 90% of Henry's on-screen presence and gave us a full narrative taking place in what is 'act 3' of this movie.
@@1098tech Yes. Henry's death (technically the midpoint) should have been the inciting incident.
Susan’s boss at the diner has more character and likability in his pinky toe than literally everyone else, and he’s only in two, little over a minute total scenes 🤣
This gritty reboot of Dexter's Laboratory sounds awesome.
Kenneth Plank haa...
Kenneth Plank omg you're right and I love you... lol 🤗
#headcanonaccepted
Crossed over with the serial killer Dexter.
Dee-Dee scatters Dexter's ashes over the crowd
If a movie like this can actually get made it gives me hope that one day I'll actually see a screenplay of mine produced.
That's the spirit!
How’s the screenwriting been going for the last for years?
Yeah how's your screenplay career going so far?
Was it Star Wars ep.9, you maniac
I dunno why the rest of you are trying to be mean, I thought it was nice that Dan bothered to reply to this one.
I also think it’s cool to know that an aspiration someone can have for a long time can actually pay off. I have my own ideas running around my head that I hope to visualize and express someday, too.
To all those who would view this video,
To watch this to completion is to watch a man slowly embrace madness, in a convenient 40 minute format.
The second half could probably work re-edited as a surreal horror. THE BOOK. THE BOOK KNOWS. OBEY. THE BOOK SEES. THE TAPE RECORDER LOVES US ALL. Like Henry dies and ascended to become a diabolical god-tyrant.
"henry dies and ascended to become a diabolical god-tyrant"
this is the new plotline of the movie, it has been decided.
Don't forget the children's picture book the mom writes where the last page has a drawing of Henry's dead body sprawled out in a garden.
Wait what
@@PointsofData Seconded.
Wait, what?
Wait what
whoa whoa whoa, hold up... what
The ending is actually much simpler in meaning. Everyone's lives are better off without Henry.
SPOILER FOR THE ENDING: The implication of the ending seems even more messed up than that to me, considering the girl is a survivor of sexual abuse. Her wanting the nightlight on and the door closed seems like it's at least in part a protective measure. Basically the movie is saying her PTSD helps her to fit right in the family and fill the hole of a dead child, which of course Henry probably figured out.
Wow, that is kind of troubling. Why would you put that in a movie?
My best guess is that they were going for the Lifetime movie method of tackling super dark subject matter in a superficial way, and hope that by ending on a happy-enough note, the audience feels happy. Except that by not thinking through the implications, not really dealing with the trauma, and packaging it all with such inept film making that connection to the story is impossible, the audience just feels rightfully bitter about the attempt to emotionally manipulate it.
I know this thread is months old but my ma watches a shit-ton of Lifetime movies and you've put into words exactly why I hate them so much
I agree that this is the implication based on conventional metaphor and film language, but I don't think that was actually intended... I feel like the intention is way worse. I don't think that much thought went into the scene. They portray it in a way that, because she has been taken out of a bad place and put into a situation where she "fits in," she is now cured of the sads and PTSD can't hurt her simply because she is loved -as an outright replacement for a recently deceased family member of the- by the new caregiver and new brother. It's *tonally* coded in a way that she is now "cured" of her past. Love in its many forms conquering trauma isn't a bad message (compassion is usually the foundation of recovery), but it is bad to imply that you are fixed just by finding a place to fit in. EVERYONE IS FIXED NOW AND ALL IT TOOK WAS A CHILD DYING OF BRAIN CANCER AND SPREADING GHOST ENERGY ON HIS LOVED ONES.
I love that "[creepy implication] and Henry knew about it" is a reasonable claim about this movie.
As I'm watching the video
Dan, in the video: "And then he shoots himself."
Me: "With the sniper rifle?"
Dan, in the video: "yeah."
sethraptor just like Henry and the tapes
zack snack Oh no, Henry poltergeist-possessed Dan!
sethraptor Dan is a poorly written precocious child
@@kongqianfu ahahahahahaaa
Dan’s French philosopher voice is f*cking delightful!
[Flicks invisible cigarette]
A thing that truly bothers me about this movie is that... OK, so the teenage daughter is being sexually molested by her step-dad... I hate. I. hate. how in the movie treats that like a minor thing with no further consequences as soon as the dad offs himself... like, "Yep, now she lives happy ever after on the Carpenter family, no long lasting damage after her experience with with Glen."
I thought for sure that the end was gonna be that Henry was alive the whole time and everything happened exactly as he had it planned.
TMM I almost wish that was the ending
Shit, didn't expect to find you here.
all according to keikaku
I was expecting the same in kinda the opposite way; that he's always been dead the whole time. But really by that point it was open season for daft twists, pretty much just a dice roll. :)
Henry seems to be exactly the kind of character to Moffat his happy ass back to life, yeah. I honestly thought that's where the 'magic trick' was going.
Incredible that he was able to predict Colin Trevorrow losing the Star Wars Episode 9 job just from watching this movie
Trevarrow's ep 9 script is genuinely such an atrocity. The man managed to write something so awful that the studio decided the fucking Rise of Skywalker was acceptable in comparison. What an absolute hack of a writer.
@@mousasha-writers like him are one of the reason universal has so many bootlickers right now
When you have over a half million in your account, a five grands withdrawal is basically new furniture for your living room or a spending spree at Best Buy. Either of those would work as a believable alibi for the bank teller.
Drakkenmensch Silverflare And it doesn't even hit the $10,000 mark required to inform the IRS, nor is it suspiciously under that amount (I.e. $9,900)
Come for the beard, stay for the kitty
Oh, and the in depth film analysis and whatnot
Christ you're not wrong about the beard
What are you talking about? This is an awesome super villain origin story. Henry is like a combination of Hannibal Lecter, Xanatos, Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, and the Shadow King. This is the tale of his ascension.
The masterful manipulation of his family to carry out his perverse desires is but a taste of his terrible powers. The tribulations he forced his mother through are a sacrifice to his name, so that he may transcend his corporeal form. The spreading of his ashes has clearly allowed him to infiltrate the unsuspecting minds of the town. Soon, all shall fall beneath his thrall and the world will tremble at the hour of Henry's apotheosis.
Don't forget Morriaty clearly some "lets fuck with them after im gonne kind of deal"
can't wait for the Book Of Henry cinematic universe
At least henry did something beyond the grave. The Morriaty cliffhanger led to nothing.
it's not an origin story if he dies
I was thinking more like the Jigsaw killer.
The downside to watching this video after watching the fully scripted video is that it's not as wholly formed in its thoughts and ideas and treads over them in a manner with less flow. The plus side is that it much better represents the sheer fucking baffling feeling when you first finish watching the movie.
Henry is young Sheldon with somehow even less charisma, and the fact that like Light Yagami he planned all this out is a sign he probably would've grown up to be a serial killer
I find it super implausible that the mom doesn't know how to use computers even though she's shown to be very into video games. I mean it is possible I just find that implausible
Its really not even possible tho.... Not given the time setting of this movie. It's set in relatively modern day.... I mean the game she's playing is fairly high def iirc. In order to even set up a console you need some tech knowledge about WiFi, connectors, etc. (and, given Henry's distaste for video games I doubt he'd have set it up for her-he's such a dick)
The script was originally written in the 90s and has been batted around for a while, so that’s likely an artifact of that. In the 90s it’d make perfect sense for someone to be into console gaming or what have you and not be very tech-savvy with computers.
That makes sense but I was thinking about late 80s logic computer is for nerds and smart ppl but a grown woman playing super Nintendo doesn't makes sense maybe late 90s I don't know watching her on a 64 I mean it doesn't makes sense. I know a WiFi game and the generation makes less sense on the year it got out but it never makes sense.
Are you telling me I can't be an Olympic dodgeball champion?
Page Murray Sure you can. Just get it made an Olympic Sport first. Worked for Snowboarding...
See this just shows up their writing as stupid. Henry is really idiotically negative with this comment. The Olympics are a bunch of arbitrary choices that do change. And the choices are mainly based on what will draw in viewership without going too much against their snobbish air of being the arbitrators of 'proper sports'. Although obviously the closer they get to losing money, the more blatantly it's going to swing in the direction of viewership numbers...
Really, though they ought to accept any sport at all. There's a strong argument for that because honestly, why the hell even should there be a seperation between one sport and another in that way? They're all games with some kind of physical test aspect to them, that are played in ways so that elite performances emerge from them, for the essential end purpose of entertainment. So what exactly then makes one sport valid and another sport invalid? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
So if this kid was actually the slightest bit as intelligent as they thought he might be, he'd point out the politics of the situation and call the other kid's dream idealistically commendable but practically difficult. And encourage it nonetheless, since stranger things have happened. Olympic games used to have a gold medal in town planning, for instance. :)
Happening to know a thing another person doesn't know, is about the least actually intelligent form of intelligence you can actually show off.
+Jane Ross truth
If this kid is so smart that he can orchestrate a post-mortem conversation with his own mother, why did he bother trying unsuccessfully to convince his mother to pay attention to the bills and stocks when he was *alive*? On the other hand, why did he even fail in the first place? Does this kid really have more agency dead than alive?
1upsuper guilt is one hell of a motivator
good call on predicting this movie sinking Colin Trevorrow's Episode IX chances
It was ultimately for the best.
The problem is, they gave it to JJ Abrams instead of Rian Johnson.
There's no universe where 9 was good lol
RUclips peaked 5 years ago w/ Dan's existential crisis over THE BOOK OF HENRY.
Oh dear god, the page of the book literally says WHY THERE'S NO OTHER WAY TO HELP CHRISTINA. Magical.
poipoi So, out of curiosity, how in depth does Henry go? Like, did he explain why, somehow, murder is the only thing they can do, outside of the excuse that "Dad is Police Comish/Brother is CPC head", which could still be worked around?
@@christianhansen2569 yeah like.... Now that you mention it, it would probably take swimming through a bureaucratic nightmare on some level, but those people are not the highest authorities in the state or something. There are ppl who could still help.... Like... Oh... Maybe the FBI??? It's the obvious agency to call in my mind for a situation like this
I wasn't prepared for the ashes bit.
How would a kid purchase a car, get the registration / tags, insure it and then drive it someplace without being stopped or noticed??? I guess you'd have to bribe someone to impersonate your mom.
I like how you actually begin tearing up once you get to the punchline of the performance show.
i’ve come back to this video many a times in the last few years and the incredulous mouth buffering at 26:15 as mr folding ideas himself grapples with the implication of henry’s cremains being spewed over an audience at an elementary school talent show kills me every time
Dan-o's French impression is masterful
He's Canadian, so he perhaps has more practice than most of us.
That dodgeball kid should have been like "I'm sure feeling the kindness and goodness when you're putting down my dodgeball dreams."
As an experiment I watched the film BEFORE I watched this vlog just to see just how many faults I'd find within the film. Honestly didn't expect the film to be this bad. I have two whole A4 pages of scribblings/questions/inconsistencies that upset me so much.
How come the mother has a better relationship with the girl next door than with her own children? WHY DO THEY HAVE A SPECIAL HANDSHAKE? WHAT'S GOING ON? So, Henry recorded all the plan C instructions before he knew that he was dying? How? What? I also genuinely thought the scenes leading up to Henry's death were worse than that of Slipknot's in Suicide Squad. It's like BTW HE HAS HEADACHES and 5mins later he's in the hospital diagnosing himself to a doctor who's like YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY MY EQUAL, HERE ARE YOUR MRA SCANS. What.
The entire movie is built up like, HENRY'S SO SMART, SO GIFTED, I NEED TO ASK HENRY WHAT TO DO, and yet when this kid is DYING and trying to arrange for everything NOBODY LISTENS TO HIM. "This is important mom". Not listening. "Peter I want you to give my book to mom but you can't read it I trust you". Doesn't try to find it and "accidentally" sees it and THEN gives it to the mothr. Oh but not before reading it. "I want to see the sky". Doesn't get to see the sky (even though it's his dying wish).
I realised as the entire movie had passed that I still don't know the mother's name? Why did she even get custody of Christina? She has no job and she plays video games all day long. WHY. Aaaaahh.
Heh,well..you're not wrong.. *shrug*
I wish they had rounded out Henry by including some actual emotions in him. I think it would be really powerful if he started to cry while explaining his own illness to the doctor, or being afraid. It would be much more powerful to see the precocious child unravel when facing his own mortality, and the shock of that unraveling would provide at least some kind of more emotionally fueled reason why the mom listens to Henry’s instruction.
Oooh that actually would've made the movie better.
So apparently the director wanted to make him emotionally intelligent. Hard to do that without having any emotions.
Every once in a while, I come back to reviews of this movie because I still can't believe it's a real thing that happened.
That said, if the plot had been that Henry's brain cancer had been making him increasingly paranoid and how this child had been so smart, but didn't have the emotional intelligence or life experience to admit/accept his own impending death, so he hyperfocused on an incorrect perception of what was going on next door and used the murder plot as an excuse to set everything up for his family to be "okay" after he died (new car, money safely transferred from stocks a minor shouldn't have had control of, replacement child)...it would have also been bonkers, but at least without the weird veneer of all this crazy being justified.
I don't normally watch 40 minute videos due to attention difficulties, but MAN this was RIVETING. When you recounted the moment "Amazing Grace" was sung, I loudly exclaimed "Oh my god" and had to pause and put down my laptop for a moment. The cringe was too strong.
And then I laughed my ass of during your beautiful rendition. This video is a wild ride of emotions.
ASHES
I CAN'T BREATHE
Well said. I thought I might have skimmed through at some point, but nah...yeah riveting review LOLZ
I just realized the precise form the Christ metaphor takes in this movie. The snowflakes in the magic trick at the end are supposed to symbolize the Holy Spirit, the communal connection between believers. It's meant, of course, to answer the corresponding metaphors earlier in the film: first, Henry as the Father, as the effective head of the household, and then as the Son, the martyred savior. It's breathtaking, how bad it is
SO MUCH of the Book of Henry I was really, REALLY expecting a twist where it would turn out that like... Henry was a genius but he was also just a kid and he was actually just sorta so used to being 'the mature one' that he ended up concocting this crazy thought in his head about how this girl was being abused because like, she was a teenager and just was sad sometimes and didn't have a great relationship with her dad. And then like, either a dark ending where the mom finds out after she kills the guy or a less so version where the mom sorta stops herself before she kills him and sort of comes to realize that, like... Holy shit, I am about to murder my next-door-neighbor on the advice of my dead son who came up with this plan at a point in his life where he was literally about to die from something bad that was affecting his brain.
And like, it would be about how the mother had sort of let her genius kid become the adult in the house and handle everything because he was good at it when actually, even though he was a genius and could do that stuff, she had stopped seeing him as a kid. And that she would eventually come to appreciate Henry for being the (admittedly gifted) child he was instead of the sort of ubercompetent caretaker she'd been treating him as.
Like, that all made sense. That's why his plan was so stupid, because it's the sort of plan a child comes up with. "Buy a sniper rifle and lure him outside so I can shoot him from my treehouse." His neighbor wasn't evil, but because he had never had a parent willing to parent him, he just hadn't realized what a real parental relationship would look like. So like, he didn't realize that it would just be normal that a girl his age (10-12 or so) would probably sometimes be pouty and pissed off at her dad about some stuff. And yeah, the dad would yell at her or smoething but he wasn't actually witnessing a crime, he was witnessing a kinda stressed-out traditional but ultimately well-meaning single father trying to parent a girl going through a rough part of her life. We're told she had bruises, but we never see them which means, like... Yeah. Probably she did. Because probably as a kid, she went outside and played sometimes or did stuff at dance rehearsals or anything else that would lead to the fact that, well, sometimes she would have bruises on her body because kids fall over sometimes.
Like, even a bit of the conclusion kinda seems like it's headed there? It seems like she WAS supposed to realize that her son was a child and not just the real adult, but like... He was right and his plan only failed because... His mom decided not to kill someone at the advice of a 12-year-old?
Like honestly it kinda feels like maybe it was written the way I was thinking at some point, and then eventually the writer thought "Okay but what if Henry was actually RIGHT" and like... Didn't realize that changed the whole story?
Reportedly, it was originally a Black Comedy much like Burn After Reading before Colin Trevorrow became the director. Honestly, it tracks too well 😅
@@CNWhatImSaiyanknowing what we know abt Trevarrow Henry kinda feels like his self insert lol
I am replying to this after discussing stuff and watching the other video on this channel about The Book of Henry and *man* I love this idea.
It would also become a great callback to that "Rube Goldberg machine accounts for all possible outcomes to avoid failure" when then that's not what Rube Goldberg machines are.
Imagine an alternate scene where Henry hails what he builds as life changing, tries to run it, but the machine fucks up at the end and the ball hits his little brother in the eye. And while Peter is crying and Henry is confused about what failed, their mother tries to consul Peter by saying
"well at least you didn't end up with pencil lead in your eye!"
Then later on Henry's mother has gun ready (oh he's either not actively dying and does it/decides to do this himself before he dies) all in part of a large and needlessly convoluted plan full of way too many caviats.
Only to end up killing Christine (thematically shot in the eye) who we learn right after, wasn't even getting molested.
Her and her father had just been arguing a lot the past few months because she wanted to be part of a study abroad program in a couple years, and he was worried for her health and safety.
*And to rub salt in the wound*, the reason the father was sometimes in the bathroom in her was because she needed assistance getting in and out of the tub. And sometimes he'd check for specific kinds of bruising related to hemophilia.
Because Christine had ongoing health issues and the dad, despite his daughters desires, more so wanted to keep her home where he could make sure everything would be okay. Being very worried something bad would happen while she was out of his immediate vicinity.
and then, in her room she gets fucking shot(on accident)
This movie feels like it was written by a ”gifted child” who is mad the real world didn’t give him constant affirmation
which is honestly concerning considering that the reason this movie was even made is because of how respected the director was at that point, disney gave him the last movie of the sequel trilogy and made him writer and director (for a time, thank you henry), studios were gonna fund whatever the fuck he wanted to make, and yet he made this
I honestly can't even believe that at any point, a producer somewhere looked at this and went "Yep, that's good. Ship it out like this, this is comprehensible, enjoyable and totally not an off-the-wall bonkers piece of hot garbage."
Goodness this was a pungent hunk of dung
To be fair, it took 18 years for the script to get to a production
“... And then he shoots himself, so... yeah.
..
Anyway, back at the talent show”
I swear Dan is plotting to get Shinji in the robot for most of the video.
Contla3 x'D fuck this killed me
Not enough finger-locking.
i didn't get it.. then i scrolled up, and FLASH. "oh, yeah.. I get it now"
16:15 ... As a bank teller of 12 years, yeah. It's not very suspicious to withdraw $5,000 from a $600,000 account... but if it's an unusual transaction it is still a small red flag. The teller will likely casually ask you about the transactions purpose. (Because your teller is trained to look for signs you, the customer, might be getting scammed and not realize it.) Common answers to taking that much cash? Buying a car. Down payment on a car. Home improvements (like buying a new air conditioner).
But... I expect Henry's concern was this exact "trail" if she got the cash in person. Then there is a witness to her taking the money and not just a paper trail.
"That's not suspicious when you're rich." Yeah... but does anyone /know/ she's rich? Maybe that's what he's trying to avoid, anyone realizing they're rich in the bank when they pull up her account and look at it. (No idea... hadn't seen the movie)
I just realized- this movie would be completely fine if Henry were just psychic instead of being super smart, and they got rid of the wealth and “Henry detects his own condition” themes that don’t add to anything. Henry wouldn’t be a complete asshole, and everything would be more interesting and creepy.
The weirdest part is: this is the best possible version of this story. Directing, acting, casting, lighting they are all as good as you could hope for, but nothing can come close to getting past the film's most damning flaw: THE BASIC PREMISE OF THE MOVIE!!!
Two years later but I think this shows how the writing is the most important part of a movie. There is a video of other RUclipsr about how you can make a great comedy of this movie if was directed by Wes Anderson but the script is garbage you would be making just something like the justice league of josh Wheadon.
The premise could've been saved by something like an unreliable narrator, or perhaps the writer not actually buying that their self-insert main character is a genuine genius messiah
Enchilada Two to Butterfly One: ATTACK I repeat, ATTACK!
31:30: New film premise: Weirdly precocious kid dies, convinces sibling to scatter his ashes at the talent show, and starts to possess everyone in the auditorium.
You just put “the book of Henry”, “The Exorcist”, and “Carrie” in a blender.
@@cavejohnson4306 The Exorcist 2, where they need to exorcise an entire PTA!
That sounds completely off the walls fucking bonkers
But in a way that you just *know* is going to be waaaay more boring to watch than hear it explained
It's true; it only really starts feeling bonkers during the last half hour. The first hour is "will Henry hurry up and die already??"
When you said he died I thought you were joking lol
Just saw it. First time in an empty theater. That was amazing.
Come for the movie, come for the ending
"So this genius kid is an asshole to everybody and planing to kill his neighbor..."
"...Okay?"
"Then he dies of brain cancer..."
"What?"
"so now the mom has to murder the neighbor instead..."
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"
your framing in these vlogs is underappreciated
This does, unfortunately, sound like the kind of bad movie that should be experienced first-hand. I mean I'd rather not, but also I feel I must.
henry wouldn't listen to zep. he would listen to prog rock and cheesy jazz fusion.
So King Crimson then?
Ah yes, cynicism and joylessness as a proxy for intelligence. That's when you know you are watching something written by the kind of person who brings up their IQ in social settings.
So I love watching people rant about media online. It's a slight addiction for me (I have literally watched a two hour video on why the TV show Sherlock is terrible multiple times) and seeing this, a new complaint, is making me really excited. I might have a problem.
Actually, I just noticed that both Sherlock and Book of Henry have the same main characters: the Ubermensch asshole who is still somehow beloved by his peers, the sidekick male with no real role other than being there and maybe doing a few things, and all the female characters whose major character trait is their relationship to the male lead. Whoa. The subjects of my favorite rants are lining up. Cue the X Files music!
TheWriteGirl I know the feeling, I've watched that same Sherlock video at least twice.
Is it by any chance the hbomberguy's sherlock video that you've watched?
Mari Edwards Tis.
Mari Edwards yeah that's the one
"He scatter Henry's ashes over the crowd." I couldn't tell if you were crying or laughing after you said that. Are you okay?
So much of the first half of this movie and its characters hinge of Henry's allegedly obvious emotional maturity, yet based on what we the viewer are actually shown of how he interacts with the other characters, he's actually... not. He reads more like a book smart prodigy held back by still having the emotional maturity of someone his age.
Even while his actions throughout the film clearly denote him as a righteous character, Henry is just so goddamn unlikable.
I knew this movie would be a shitshow when the trailer contained this dialogue exchange so we'd know the one character was the villain:
"So you're living with your father"
Neighbor girl [grimly]: "Stepfather"
W.C. Wit All stepparents are inherently evil in Hollywood.
@@TheTentacledMenace It's a long-standing tradition. Remember Hansel and Gretel?
@@elafimilo8199 only in the revised edition. In the original, it‘s their biological mother who convinces their father to abandon them
This story would have been so much better if the red book was meant for the neighbour girl- where perhaps she is the one that is given the instructions on how to rescue herself (perhaps with help from mum).
I’d far rather see an abuse victim rescue herself rather than be relegated to a goddam lamp. She’s barely even a plot device. Nah- I’d rather see an abuse revenge fic. Give her a bit of agency.
That would make sense omg. Henry: "Peter, when I die I want you to give Christina my red notebook, make sure she reads it."
Plus she'd have to consult it in secret without her dad finding it, creating opportunities for suspense.
The plan itself would have to be changed drastically, though. No way is a 12 year old girl buying a sniper rifle. Especially when her abusive dad is the police commissioner
The way that Dan keeps crying late in the video is the best thing I've ever seen
"He's the kid who's gonna like spend his teenage years being like, 'Oh, pop music is like the worst. I listen to Led Zeppelin." Uffda. Shots fired.
New name for this genre - Ukulele-core.
How did Henry register the car? Did he tell the dealership to just drop it off in a random lot and leave the keys in the ignition? Did Henry know timing of the talent show down to the second?
What really happened - the daughter/lamp suffers from horrible nightmares and stepdad just comes in to comfort her. Stepdad feeling depressed and helpless because he could not prevent the death of his wife kills himself even though he knows the abuse allegations are false. The intended takeaway was that the audience should not believe such an unreliable witness and that the whole book/Bible is false. The reappearance of Henry is just a cheap magic trick.
PS never say die
I see the new Saw reboot is really taking the series in a bold direction
So this ISN'T the prequel to Hardcore Henry?
I wish to thank you for taking this one "for the team", as it where. It means I don't need to waste what little time the good Lord has afforded me on this Earth actually watching what, by all accounts, sounds like the cinematic equivalent some kind of rare, untreatable, and extremely painful, bowel cancer.
"It's not suspicious when you're rich." - Foldable Ideas
You were way kinder to Suicide Squad than to this.
This.. might... just be worse then suicide squad.
Strange as this had better acting, story construction, pacing, dialogue and so on and so on. But its execution was just so poor and the subject material so serious that I think I agree, it's worse. Would have fared far better as a dark comedy than whatever the hell it was trying to be. I can't believe how many people thought it was a great, not just good, film.
He pointed out that suicide squad was rushed, reshot, slashed to ribbons, and stitched back together, so I think that influenced the difference.
Book of Henry was being written for 18 years. You'd think something good would come from that
This is a very old comment on a very old video, but I wanted to genuinely thank you for putting subtitles on a reaction video like this. I can hear, but it's tough for me to understand what I'm hearing sometimes, so the subtitles are really helpful. Thank you, genuinely, for doing this.
For what your are describing, this is Life of Timothy Green's level of bad
Ned Crosh oh thank God I'm not the only one who thought that movie was awful everyone else I know said they liked it or it was okay
At least Timothy Green didn't try to murder anybody.
At least Timothy Green wasn't an actual psychopath, but yeah, they're comparable. A child must be a Gary Stu in order to be "emotionally intelligent"
Henry sounds like a terrible Mary-Sue. A film which was similar about a gifted kid who was realistic, and all that comes with that, might be really interesting.
Little man Tate is kinda like that. Tate is really smart but he's still a kid. The gifted school that he goes too and the woman who takes over as his guardian can't replace his down-to-earth mother or his need to have a normal balanced childhood.
There's actually a movie called Gifted that came out earlier this year about a little girl who's this genius math prodigy, and while it's not perfect, it handles the subject so much better and much more realistically. It's good at showing how smart she is, but she still acts like a normal kid. I recommend it, it's a decent film.
Much better than this garbage.
have you considered watching y o u n g s h e l d o n on c b s
Obviously it isn't grounded in reality but Malcolm in the Middle did a good job of portraying a smart kid. Malcolm was smart, but he was also a kid who thought getting a zit would ruin his life
I want a movie called Mary Sue. It’s about a perfect girl who can’t do wrong, even if she tried. She’s cursed. She wants 2 be normal but instead everything she does is perfect. everyone hates her, except they don’t because she’s Mary sue and just so darn like-able, but Mary sue hates them. Just pure, unadulterated nonsense. Shoving Mary Sue down everyone’s throats. Here is a Mary Sue character that highlights the imperfections of all other Mary sue’s. Maybe it’s a horror?
Here I am commenting on a two year old video but it's amazing to think how much impact this movie had upon the fate of the star wars series
Now I'm just picturing Naomi Watts running in a movie theater with a cane Crazy Steve style screaming "WHO TOOK MY ENCHILADA!"
You know, I'd never heard of this movie. I had no idea what to expect from it, not even the genre. So when you got to the whole "and the book is a step by step instructional for murdering their neighbor," it was really exciting and unexpected, and what started out sounding like a boring Phenomenon-meets-Powder thing suddenly became REALLY interesting. The tapes were reminiscent of The Doctor's recording in the (famous, excellent) Doctor Who episode Blink, and the whole setup got more and more interesting.
So the question for me became "how does he know all this stuff? Is he a time traveler? A PKD Precog? A failed military experiment??" And even though you were criticizing the film, you managed to make it sound pretty fascinating... Until the "emotional" direction of the ending.
So here's what I was hoping for as I was drawn into the movie:
If, instead of "snow" raining out of the talent show box, it had been BLOOD, and the gnarled bestial hand of her son clawed its way out, demon horns and fire, and hissed at her "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM... YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO MURDER HIM... THEN WE COULD BE TOGETHER!" followed by, like, a Glen and his boys gun down the monster, followed by some logical tie ups like "everything going wrong was being faked by Henry and his infernal machines" or something... This would be the greatest movie OF ALL TIME.
.. Just saying. For a long while there, this movie sounded GREAT.
Michael Reed Honestly, it would have been the best movie ever. Henry sounds like a demon or evil psychic. He has his mom wrapped around his finger. It sounded terrifying. Just a few tweaks and it would've been great.
"I think there will be questions about Star Wars"
Cut to September, yup, Colin Trevorrow is given the boot.
The instructions through the headphones immediately made me think of "Primer." The plot actually makes way more sense if you assume that Henry had a time machine.
> “It makes Henry out to be a poltergeist, a haunting spirit, who possesses people and overrides their free will.”
That suggests an alternate Book of Henry directed as a horror movie, where through his notes he possesses his family members and forces them to enact his horrifying murder plot.
not too sure why I was watching this at 12 am while falling asleep but now i am w a k e bc HENRY'S ASHES WERE SCATTERED ACROSS THE AUDIENCE
The movie would have been great if in the end, Mom does kill Glen, but the aftermath is just that Henry was wrong. Glen wasn't an abuser, neighbor girl was just an angsty preteen, and despite Henry's intelligence, he didn't have the depth of experience to make rational decisions. Then the movie could have had a good message about treating children like children and the dangers of forcing them to grow up to fast, coupled with societies unhealthy inability to deal with anguish and loss in a constructive manner.
That sounds like it could be a Twilight Zone episode tbh
From how the first part was going, I would've thought the movie would be a slice of life type movie. But after Henry's death... what happened?!? Attempted murder? Spraying ashes over an audience?
but did he scatter henrys ashes over the crowd though
Henry is kind of like if they threw Dexter from Dexter's Lab and Mandy from Billy and Mandy in a blender, hit blend and tried to make a story around the result. Also: For those keeping score, this is the THIRD So Bad It's Good Disasterpiece (after 2013's double whammy of Diana and Adoration) Naomi Watts has had the leading role in. Three more, and she can redeem her "So Bad It's Good Movie Card" for a free jar of jellybeans from Nicolas Cage.
bruh your fidel Castro hat is amazing !
he's also on his way to a castro beard
Came for film analysis, stayed for the proletariate.
facking Reds and their gaddamn communism
The Animayor *commulism
I'm struggling to find a reason why Henry had to be 11. It wouldn't have changed much but being in school if he was an adult, and would have made leaps and bounds more sense.
Amazing call on the "Colin Trevorrow gets _fired as hell_ from Star Wars because of this movie" front.
I think henry would be a pretty perfect example of the "gary stu" trope in that the story seems to snap its spine trying to bend over backwards to make him look perfect, logic and believability be damned
"Go experience this."
They might put that on the poster...
33:09 Dan is a prophet of things to come confirmed.
the way he predicted star wars so casually