A few thoughts: What would you do if you had reason to believe your daughter was a killer? Luckily I don't have to answer that, but how well this movie poses that question is enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Perhaps the first great "evil child" movies, The Bad Seed has a simple premise executed in a simple way, but manages to work thanks to some great performances and pacing. It establishes certain truths early on, slowly revealing more and more as it goes along. Posing questions of nature over nurture, there is a bit of half-cocked pseudoscience to play here, but it all works within the context of the story. I like how 90% of the movie takes place within one building, allowing the dialogue and interplay to tell the story. For a movie that's almost entirely dialogue, I was particularly impressed at how detailed the descriptions are, conjuring up images far more disturbing than anything they could have actually shown. Patty McCormack is wonderfully evil, and Nancy Kelly is tremendous as a mother at the end of her emotional tether. Sick, twisted, and excellent.
People who like older horror/drama movies. It's practically a bottle drama, and never "shows" anything, so it has a pretty wide appeal.
My grade: B+
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