Not a big fan of Renee Zellweger. Kind of a boring actress to me... But my mom wanted to see it.
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She seems to be playing a social worker for lots of children [her name is Emily]. She currently has 38 cases she is dealing with when she gets case 39 [hence, title of movie]. There is a picture of a little girl, kind of dressed in an old school fashion, with long, brown hair. Obviously, this is going to be the focus of the movie.
Miss Zellweger heads home, listening to her answering machine that leads her to meeting up at a bar with a guy friend, Doug [Bradley Cooper]. Basically, he offers to have a friends with benefits relationship, since her workload seems to inhibit a real relationship. He says he'll only give her a month... And maybe another... And another. But that's it.
We wander back to looking through the case. Nothing seems overly suspicious from the case file so a visit to the home is in order. The woman she meets with is awfully creepy and seems to not keep track of time [she doesn't know that it is the 17th, the day of their meeting]. Eventually the woman lets her in and we meet Lily, the little girl from the picture. Emily tries to talk to the whole family, with the father not being happy at having to be a part of it.
Apparently, Lily has been showing signs of severe neglect and Emily basically points out that there is a problem in the family if these things are happening. The father, Eddy, won't speak directly to Emily. He speaks to his wife who in turn, talks to Emily. When questioned, the wife says that he doesn't like to speak out in anger. There is something off with this family.
Eventually, the family is brought into the social work place and they appear a little more normal. A case can't really be brought if they can't find a good reason. Emily goes to talk to Lily, who is very shy and closed off. The little girl opens up, saying that they hate her. She says that they go into the saw room and talk about how they are going to hurt her. When trying to get it on tape, she changes her story, that they didn't say that.
Emily goes to a guy towards Mike in order to get some help.
We go back to Lily, who is watching her father using a sledgehammer in the basement.
Emily visits Lily at school. The girl says a rather disturbing thing "If I disappear, will you look for me?" Before the bus leaves, Emily gives Lily her home phone number in case of an emergency.
One night, Lily calls. She says they're going to get her. She's falling asleep and Emily is frightened and races off to Lily's home. We see a scene where Lily is lying under her bed and her parents find her. We watch as she is placed in the oven by her parent. She wakes up just as they shut the door. She tries to escape but they get her back in the oven.
Emily and Mike [an officer] get into the kitchen in time and get Lily out of the oven. Mike takes down both the parents.
We fast forward to court, where the parents [both in orange jump suits] will put under psychological testing. It will be determined if they can even testify in court. Emily is upset with this but there is nothing she can do. After being taken out of the hospital, Lily is taken to a group home. The girl wants to live with Emily, but it just would never work with the busy schedule that Emily has and the fact that she's not a foster parent.
It touches Emily and she works to get the right to take care of Lily until they can find a good home for her. And all is good... But this is fairly early in the movie, so obviously that can't be all. I suspect there is something wrong with the kid [Think the movie Orphan with that creepy woman who looked like a kid].
We watch Emily go to the house to get some things of Lily's. It's a really creepy place. Emily wanders downstairs to the basement and sees a hole big enough for a child in the cement floor. After gathering some thing from Lily's room, Emily wanders into the parents' room. There is a crack in the floor... Emily closes the door to the room and we move on.
We are watching the children in the group therapy with Doug. Emily comes by after wards and tells him that the parents seemed to barracked themselves in their room at night.
The head guy wants to see Emily in his office... Turns out that Diego, a young boy that was one of Emily's clients, had killed his parents with a tire iron. When Emily goes to meet with him, he's distraught with the fact that he killed his parents. He seems to honestly be upset and probably doesn't even understand why he did it. If I remember correctly, he was at group therapy.
Emily and Lily have a little talk on the beach, where it is revealed why she is a social worker [never knew her father and her mother had many problems]. At a later point, we find that Lily has been snooping and found a picture of Emily and her mother. We go into the story of Emily's mother dying in a car accident.
Emily and Mike go out to eat and we see an article about the parents, who may be able to get out with the insanity plea. But there is something different he wanted to talk about. Diego's house received a call right before he killed his parents... From Emily's house. The two talk to Lily, who claims that she didn't call Diego.
Mike says she's lying. Lily asks Emily if she believes that she didn't make the call. She says she does.
We jump to Emily who is visiting Diego. He has a panic attack and eventually nods when Emily asks if it was Lily. Then we get him saying something about a man.
Emily is suspicious but pretends that everything is fine. We go to Doug who is talking to Lily. He notices that she said that nothing on his survey scares her. Eventually, Lily says that she scares herself. Some of her thoughts are not so nice. She gets this dark persona, where she intimidates and acts superior with Doug. And lightens up a little when she asks him if he wants to talk about school now.
Naturally, Doug is freaked out, telling Emily that he will call a specialist in the morning.
With Emily and Lily at dinner, the girl tries to prod into whether or not Doug has told Emily about their meeting. Emily says no but it takes a few tries for Lily to be convinced.
After being tucked into bed, we see what Doug is doing. He is researching things such as multiple personality syndrome when he gets a mysterious phone call. With no one seemingly on the other side, he hangs up. Suddenly, there is a buzzing in his ear. After going to the bathroom, he finds out it was a wasp [something her told Lily he was afraid of]. And then wasp after wasp after wasp is coming out of his body. Eventually, he gets a cut on his head and falls over. He's dead.
We see Emily and Lily at his funeral. Emily lets go of the girl's hand, which makes Lily suspicious. Apparently Emily is a very good liar.
Emily tries to talk to Mike, saying that Lily had to have something to do with it. She confesses to him about the bolts on the parents' bedroom door. She thinks something had gotten into the room and the parents didn't want it in again.
Emily goes against the rules and pries into the case file that the new social worker has [she had to let the case go due to conflict of interest]. There is a video tape of the mother confessing... Telling the person that her "daughter" is the devil. That all their family had been killed since she had been born. Emily goes to visit the parents in the psychward. The mother is indisposed but she talks to the father. He asks her right off the bat who died. He says that Lily brought something with her when she was born.
Emily is terrified and hides all the potential weapons, phones, and dangerous things... But she takes one knife for herself and hides it in the couch. Lily comes home from the bus and asks what happened with all the phones. And then she brings up her mother, asking if Emily how her mother is. Emily never mentioned visiting her to Lily.
When Emily goes to pick up Lily, she sees the girl whispering something in another girl's ear. Fearful that Lily has done something, she drags the Lily out of group [and is reprimanded by the new psychologist]. Emily tells Lily that she can't go to group anymore. As they go down in the elevator, the wires supposedly snap. Emily is terrified while Lily is indifferent. Eventually, they reach the first floor fine. The wires didn't snap.
Emily tries to convince Mike that the parents aren't crazy. Mike is concerned for his friend and tells her to go get help. Emily adds bolts to her bedroom door. Eventually, in the office, Emily completely freaks out at a woman. Wade hears this and tells her to go home... But she doesn't want to go home. His cell phone rings and he says it's for her. It's Lily saying that Emily should leave her home alone. And suddenly, no one is there. No Wade, no anybody.
When she gets home, Emily immediately locks herself in her room. A rain storm comes and Lily begs Emily to let her in. It starts with just childish pleading but turns into loud, almost scary [if they weren't coming from a child] demands. Hearing something in her closet, Emily opens the door [knife in hand] and finds nothing in there. When she walks in a little further, a zombie-esque person chases after Emily. The woman runs out of the house and finds a bus driver who eventually lets her in. But the creature has disappeared. When Emily tries to drive away, Lily is in the back of the car and tells Emily that she is to let the girl do whatever she wants.
Emily meets with the woman who is suppose to find Lily a family. And apparently she's found one... Which makes Emily scared.
Emily meets with the father again. He says the only way to to get rid of her is when she sleeps but she doesn't sleep much. The night they came a busted in was the first night she had slept in 3 months. After wards, the father attacks a man who relays some sort of message from Lily. He subsequently dies in all the fighting.
Emily goes back to Mike who has something to tell her. Lily made the phone call to Doug from her cell phone. He has the message recorded. So they make a plan to get Lily. Emily gets some sleeping pills from the doctor.
We see Mike walking to a parking garage and there is a mysterious dog popping up everywhere. When he gets in his car, the dog is there and he attempts to shoot the dog. Instead, he shoots himself. Emily finds out when Wade calls her. Emily tells Lily to get out of her house and makes Lily get very upset. We see the girl's face change slightly with her anger.
Eventually, Emily runs to her bedroom, terrified. However, Lily breaks down all the barriers. When asked what she wants, the girl replies that she only wants to be loved by he
r mother. Emily agrees to this and goes to tuck Lily into bed. She makes the girl a cup of sleep pill laced tea. While the girl supposedly is sleeping, Emily sets the house on fire...
Lily escapes and this terrifies Emily. The cops lead Emily and Lily by car to a place where they can stay the night... But Emily deviates and loses them. Lily gets nervous and Emily begins to see things. She sees the accident with her mother all over again, except she's her mother. However, she manages to break Lily's hold and sees that it isn't real.
Emily asks Lily if she is scared and the girl monster has a terrified look on her face. Emily drives the car off into a body of water. When they hit the water, the back seats fall down and both females are thrown into the front of the car. Eventually, Emily manages to throw Lily, who is changing, into the trunk. Emily manages to open the door [The car was fully submerged for all you mythbusters out there] and begins swimming up. A large, somewhat grotesque hand reaches out [I think from one of the headlights] and grabs her ankle. Emily manages to break the montster's grip and swims to the surface.
It's that whole damn rebirth thing when she breaks through the top of the water. She emerges from the water a new person. We close watching Emily just watching the sunset from the area she drove off the car.
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Overall... Not spectacular but probably better than most of the movies I've seen with Renee Zellweger. I honestly wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless you are interested in thriller movies. It's kind of psychological but honestly, the only thing that got to me as people popping out of no where. I can't stand that and it gets me every time.
They've got some special features, which kind of has me excited... Probably because the last few movies had next to none. We get to see the general background of the movie. All the main actors get some talking time about what it was like. Jodelle Ferland [the girl who played Lily] has actually been in a lot of things. Wiki it. And for die-hard Twilight fans, yes, it's the girl who played Bree Tanner in the third film. Though I doubt this happened, sorry
We also get a glimpse of some of the scenes, such as Lily's mother screaming because she is in the oven and her arms are on fire and the death scene by hornets of Doug [which they spent 2 days on O.o; ]. We also see how they did the whole torching of the house. It was a pretty extensive rig up they had. If only I wasn't science-handicapped, this would be an awesome career to have.
In the area of deleted scenes, we mostly see unneeded scenes or scenes that are explained somewhere else in the movie. It doesn't surprise me that there were a lot of these extra scenes cut from the movie. Sounded like the director or writer or whoever does storyboards went crazy with it.
There is one alternative ending, where Lily and Emily are saved by a stranger. As Emily is loaded into an ambulance, Lily looks on. We go to Lily's mom, who is watching the news of the incident. We switch to Emily, who demands to talk to whoever has Lily. Next we see Lily, who is with her new family, who welcomes her with open arms. Honestly, I'm glad they didn't go with it. Left it open for a sequel and bleh. It really wasn't as intense.
The best part: My mom rented this movie and fell asleep... She does during most movies so it was really no surprise to me.
Well, the end of yet another thing watched. Until I watch and write again.
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