User reviews

There's nothing outstanding about this movie, but it's a solid plot with a gripping delivery. Some acting was jilted and/or support characters were shallow, but the main job between the prodigal girl and the psychiatrist was good.

The psychologist Dr. Fonda (Richard Neil) is invited by his colleague and friend Dr. Olivia (Jolene Andersen) to analyze the girl Ellie (Savannah Liles) in a military facility directed by Mr. Birch (Emilio Palame). Dr. Fonda is monitored by experts and must decide the fate of Ellie, who is the result of a failed military experiment. Soon Dr. Fonda discovers that Ellie is an intelligent girl and also a menace since she has powerful abilities and the military intend to destroy her. But Dr. Fonda foresees a chance to control her. What will be Ellie´s fate?

"Prodigy" is a surprisingly good low budget film. The storyline is tense and attractive but the conclusion is predictable. The plot is not original and there are many other films with powerful kids (maybe "Carrie" is the most famous) and Ellie recalls Carrie associated to Dr. Hannibal Lecter. But the conflict between emotion and reason is interesting. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Prodigy"

This movie was a mixed bag with hokey moments throughout, some of the dialog seemed a little forced and tried a little too hard to be intelligent. A couple characters seemed superfluous and could have been left out entirely. That being said, there are truly beautiful moments in this film. Particularly dealing with trauma and the way we cope, or don't cope with it. Unfortunately, the ending just fell short and although I wanted to cry, it didn't quite come together well enough to allow me the catharsis that came with the conclusion. Overall, this film was engaging, intelligent and at times beautiful. Definitely one of my favourite low-budget films, and everyone involved should be proud of what they've accomplished.

It's amazing what you can do with a low budget, solid script and good acting. There are some things that could have been better, mostly if the secondary characters had been given some more to do and had more interesting personalities. But the acting and especially the writing of the two leads (Neil and Liles) were the strong point, and made it an entertaining, if short, feature. Recommended if you like psychological thrillers with a bit of sci-fi. It won't change your life but it's a fun way to spend an hour and a half.

For a low budget psychological thriller it wasn't bad at all. It's not that I will remember it in the future, but to watch once it's good enough. Especially for the acting of the little girl Eleonore/Ellie played by Savannah Liles. I think she did a good job playing the creepy teenager, not only with her vocabulary but also with her facial expressions. It's a low budget, with only four different places where they shoot the entire movie, and with only a handful of actors, but you didn't need more to bring this story. A story of mind games and a bit of supernatural. Not exceptional but good enough to entertain you during 80 minutes.

Richard neil was excellent.. the rest is hit and miss .... all in all it's worth watching

The quality of the movie set aside for the moment-- the plethora of obviously-bogus short reviews for this movie is astounding. One has to wonder at the motive behind such banal hoax. Do the directors/marketers really think anyone is going to fall for this stunt and buy their movie? The number of "thumbs down" responses to such reviews should give these clowns a clue.

Now the movie itself. At the risk of others probably pointing out the same things: Jurassic Park technician. Typical military booger-head. Female high-command-but-mothering type. Good-guy psychologist (actually rather well-acted). Totally wooden-performance PHD. Token throw-in-another-race acting part, completely unnecessary to the plot. Hannibal Lector rip-off (do they really use such devices? Probably, dunno). Emotional yet poorly-directed climax.

Despite all that, fairly decent ending, again due to fairly good acting. A movie that has a decent ending can be forgiven somewhat for its flaws.

Basic problem: in several places the vocalization by the child actress and poor sound editing makes it very difficult to understand what she's saying.

Some rave about the young girl's acting. In reality, what does it take to quote memorized lines with an unemotional face? When it comes down to the real acting near the end her performance falls flat. I accrue that to the director, not the actor. The scene could have been directed and filmed in a more convincing manner. The actor redeems herself in the final scene, but just barely.

I give this 5 stars because while mediocre and cliche, it does remain entertaining throughout. Some of the more jaded and critical viewers are far too harsh on this (it is by no means SyFy channel bad). Many give it far too much credit; such reviews (as previously stated) are repeatedly unbelievable. It's an interesting watch.

Major thumbs down for the totally gratuitous singular F-bomb; that is a contrivance of writers and directors relying on schlock because they're concerned the movie isn't strong enough to stand on its own. I was unaware of the "TV-MA" rating before watching it. This singular use was the only reason for such; nothing else in the movie would rate it above TV-13.

It's not a good movie, not a bad movie. There are better. There a far, far worse.It was almost-decent... and that's the shame of it. With a little better directing and a bit less cliche it could have been much better.

Quite a nice movie this was.

Good acting, specially from the main actors. The girl, yes, the more you act cold, the more vulnerable you are inside.

This is a movie without action, pace, change of location, change of story. It's close to Morgan, but does not take its action path.

It could be played in a theatre. It kept me interested from start to end.

Not that it was brilliantly clever, as the girl was, it has its clichés of stereotype characters, but clever enough not try to tackle my intelligence.

So if you are a person of self-inspection, you will enjoy this movie.

A dreadful, pointless movie. Now I know I have to write some more text just to have this post allowed..... but it's not easy to find anything redeemable about this shambolic exercise in 'how not to direct or act. Normally, it's usual for there to be a weak link in the cast, as far as acting goes - despite the miniscule cast (below ten), In this instance, they are all equally as bad. The purpose of 'acting' is, I believe, to make the watcher believe that every word you say is real and spontaneous - this bunch of amateurs fail dismally in that regard. Every word spoken sounds like it is being read from a cue-card, for the first time. there is no emotion, no pauses, no mixed-dialogue, just robotic reading from a script. Is that the actors fault? or the director's? Either way, I would perhaps have expected this from a young girl, but the whole cast are equally as wooden. An incredibly limited script and story-line is bad enough! So the gripes about the acting and script aside...here is the premise of the movie. A young girl is imprisoned in a room in a straitjacket, although we are not initially party as to why. She is apparently super-intelligent, and knows it. It transpires that she has supernatural powers,although, incredibly, she cannot escape the bonds that keep her prisoner in the room. I only stayed with this movie, as I was hoping there would be some special effects...but....no. The cast have the chemistry of several strangers given the script two minutes beforehand; we never hear more than one person in dialogue at any given time and it's all completely emotionless. The majority of the movie takes place in said locked room and an adjoining viewing room - only once do we see the outside world. It involves a psychiatrist and a young girl in an apparent battle of intellect and the odd game of chess. I won't spoil the ending - the movie is quite capable of that on it's own. There isn't anything to recommend about this aberration, apart from staying well away from this movie. If you must waste 80 minutes of your life, go clip your toenails and then search for them, it will be so much more fulfilling.

For a straight to dvd type movie, this is actually pretty good. Most of the acting is up to par and the special effects were better than a lot of indie movies I've seen. My biggest issue is the movie starts off slow, but eventually it picks up and the ending made it worth watching. Other than that, this was better than I expected from something so low budget.

This movie is genuinely awful. Stilted acting, terrible script, predictable from the first minute. Even the camerawork is fourth rate. It does get two stars for reminding me that I liked the infinitely superior Morgan (2016). Watch that instead.

There are lots of movies with creepy or scary kids but this film is worse since the little girl is a Ginger. Watch the South Park episode titled Ginger Kids, season 9 episode 11 to get the full creepiness out of this little girl with deadly powers. All in all not a bad movie.

Not a terrible movie but the D list actors are horrible, especially the colonel. The actors who play James Fonda and Eleanor (Ellie) had good working chemistry.

I actually made an account, after years of just reading reviews, just to review this. I have no idea how anybody gave this a good review. I went in expecting to like it. The dialogue from the very first scene was just awful. Stilted, horrible writing and subpar acting. This movie is so bad I honestly wanted to do a Mystery Science Theater 3000 bit with it. I'm not even talking about the story or premise or anything else. That's all bad too. But it's not even watchable because of how badly it's written.

This was a decent movie. It is only an 80 minute movie and I think that took away from it. There didn't seemed to be enough character development. It just seemed to lack some depth. It was low budget and there were times when the acting clearly indicated that but the little girl did an amazing job. There was only one scene where she seemed to lack authenticity. Maybe I'm not the only one who noticed it.

For low budget this was pretty good. Check it out on a day when you aren't doing anything else and it will pass the time.

Nothing earth shattering great and really no scifi just a solid thriller with some drama and a phenomenal performance by the lead young girl. Its definitely worth watching but not bluray worthy to own. It was on Netflix so it's a no brainer to watch if you have Netflix. We watch 3 movies everyday so we are pretty good judges on what to watch. If you like an interesting story without the action, CGI, and effects but excellent acting then this is for you.

This was a low budget film with a predictable plot, canned dialog and bad acting.

The cast are caricatures, not characters. Bad acting delivers trite lines from a worse script on the same set for most of the movie.

Prodigy is a solid movie that happened to have a small budget. It has the feel of a theatrical play move than a big screen movie. Wonderful dialogue, some thrills and lots of emotion make this a must watch. A job well done by all involved in this production.

Richard Neil and Savannah Liles carried the entire movie for me. The others, save maybe Jolene Andersen, blunt whatever edge the movie has in way of an X-factor. Top marks for script, especially the dialogue between the two principal characters. It is really a story of hope.

Mainly because of amazing actors this little movie is not bad at all!!!

This movie is worth a watch, despite its notorious low budget and evident flaws. These flaws include: a) An idiotic and uninspired musical score that makes itself noticed when it shouldn't, though it is just a sequence of long-sustaining and uninspired A and G notes; b) A couple of blatantly wrong choices in the casting department (the girl does a great job, the guy delivers competently, but the rest leave somewhat to be desired, specially those two dried-up tree stumps that were mistakenly and miserably cast as the lady agent and the army colonel... and don't even get me started on the ridiculously appalling figure of that African biochemist who acts like a retired old janitor who had a few 100 Xanax pills too much, probably dropped by mistake in his jello dessert in some Florida retirement home); c) Absurdly cheap-looking location: even I could have scrumbled a better location for less than $100.

A couple more plus point: 1. It features chess games, but at least these are pictured according to chess rules (unlike such films like "The Girl Caught in the Spider Web", in which the characters that play chess don't even know how the pieces are supposed to move). 2. The ending is really good.

Advice to big studios: secure the rights to this, then clean some of the BS, then get a real good cast, a great director and a few million $. The plot is solid gold.