Man watching Joshua get beaten up was pretty great, i'm against child abuse but that kid deserved it.
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"They're crabs, they're eating him... nature sucks."
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shorts.
shareHe didn't deserve it. What he deserved was a good father and mother who loved him, but he didn't get either of those things.
Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.
You missed the point. Joshua was a sociopath.
He didn't even care about or want love. He told the dad "you don't have to love me." The mother was rather cold towards Joshua, I'll give you that. Then she became mentally ill, which the kid intentionally exacerbated (screwing with her head, screwing with her pills). So of course then she was an even worse mother.
But the dad. He clearly loved Joshua. He never judged the kid's weirdness. He stuck up for him in many instances. Even with the mummies, for example. At first he was (rightfully) disturbed by the mummyifying of the toy, then he still accepted and loved his son, buying him the mummy book and whatnot. He may not have "understood" his creepy intellectual weirdness, but he loved him. I could also see his love in how he reacted to the boss joking about just sending in a nanny to a child-parent conference. He clearly felt that was an irresponsible, bad parent move...meaning again he DID care about his kids' lives, being involved, loving them...etc.
It's only when he witnessed the kid physically harming his other child, and attempting to push her down stairs...and, oh, that's right, conveniently being there right when his own mother is shoved down stairs... that he began not to be so kind and accepting. He realized his kid was a sociopath.
I felt bad for the dad. the stupid creepster kid almost basically told him NOT to love him, probably because the kid knew he shouldn't. The kid wanted to be with the uncle because the kid liked him better. Plain and simple. This was in spite of his dad's love, which the kid told him he didn't have to do anyway.
Don't delude yourself..at first I felt maybe the kid was just sad and jealous of the new baby but by the end he clearly was just a sociopath.
He told the dad "you don't have to love me" because he didn't feel as if he did. The dad said he loved Joshua, but just because he said it does it make it true. Kids can tell when their parents say something and don't really mean it and that is the case here. The mother was always cold towards Joshua and didn't want him even while he was still an infant, as we saw in the video. It didn't just start when he hit 9-years-old, it was always that way. Because of her nervous breakdown when Joshua was a baby, one can assume she always had a mental disorder. You can't tell me that he was a manipulative sociopath as a baby.
I don't think he loved him at all. I've seen interviews with parents who's children are in prison and have raped and murdered people, but they still love them, they just hate the crimes they did. If you truly love someone, that love will never stop no matter what they did or what you think they did; and the second he thought Joshua had a mental illness, the love stopped and he treated him like a monster. So I don't think he ever truly wanted to love Joshua, he just pretended because he felt he had to. He was a wonderful parent to the baby girl, but he had more than one child and it looked as if he forgot that.
He was jealous of the baby and had every right to be because the baby is the only thing that mattered to the parents. If Joshua did want his sister dead, it's his parents fault for showing preferential treatment. Joshua reasoned that if she were gone, his parents might show him the love and affection he deserved. He wanted to be with his uncle because he felt his uncle was the only one who truly cared about him. He didn't appear to have any friends at school and his parents were fakes all along, so the uncle is the only one who was willing to form a true bond with him. As you said, Joshua was weird, eccentric, and highly intelligent and I don't think his parents were the right people to take care of a child like him to be honest.
Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.
Ehhhh I think you're taking Joshua's side too much here. I've seen your other posts too.
I agree with some of your points -- the mom was cold and to be honest, seemed very absent from both him AND Lily. For example, her stress and angst probably antagonized both babies, whereas the dad was actually able to calm Lily down. (I presume probably Joshua too, who even told the dad he was better at it). She also had a mental illness, the extreme form of post partum. So it's a little odd to me that you're so defensive of Josh having a personality disorder (in my opinion, antisocial personality) but so harsh on the psychotic mom. :)
But the main points of yours I just frankly don't agree with at all. That the dad was faking his love, and that he only cared about the new baby. Can you give an example of him only caring about the new baby?
I'll grant you that the dad didn't totally understand Joshua. BUT in spite of that, he still loved him. Like I said, he bought him the mummy book to embrace his son's disturbing interests. Not shunning him or rejecting him or ignoring him. And the fact he listened, went out, bought a book show's he's not just thinking about Lily. I really didn't see any preferential treatment of the dad, wanting the baby over Joshua. Think about when Joshua threw up...who came later to see if he was okay? The dad. What about when he pulled his little attention seeking fainting stunt at the recital? Who asked him later how he was feeling? The dad. I saw him going out of his way to include Josh, remember Josh, ask him how he was doing, be nice to him time and time again.
Now...when he sees Josh has been torturing his baby sister and trying to kill her by pushing her down stairs, and then 99% chance he purposefully murdered his mother...really, he should have been just as lovey dovey as before? Really? He just finally caught on to what his son truly was and was then doing what he had to try to protect his daughter, who was literally an innocent and defenseless baby.
I don't think he should have railed into him with punches once he realized that the kid had purposefully baited him into abusing him in public. But I do think you're being way too harsh on the dad.
The kid didn't give a sh*t about the dad, didn't love him, didn't care about all the nice things he did. He just wanted to destroy him and push him beyond his limits so he could move in with his piano playing uncle.
As for him being jealous of the baby-- yes this did seem to set it off. However I still don't think that's the dad's fault. That's a common thing, a new baby can be extremely stressful for a kid. Especially an older kid (meaning not just 2-3). Any disruption to one's normal, routine life can be awful for a kid. So that was inevitable with just the mere fact of the baby being born, no matter what the parents did, and that's what tipped the kid into his chess board, sociopath plot. I remember having nightmares that my mom was pregnant when I was prolly 10-12 yrs, thinking how awful it would be. Not because I felt she didn't love me...just because, it would really suck haha.
I interpreted the fainting at the piano recital and vomiting as desperate attempts from a child to get attention because he felt he was being deprived of it. Yes, the father did come to him during these events and that was exactly why he did it because he wanted his father to come to him and show him the love he needs.
No, if the father knew that Joshua wanted his sister dead because he felt he felt she was getting more love and affection than him, he should've gotten him the help he needed and went out of his way to show he did matter to him. Abandoning his child at the first sign of a mental illness is not the right solution though. Of course their relationship wouldn't be the same, but as I said before, if you truly love someone, you will be able to forgive them no matter what they do. They may make decisions you hate, but you can still love them as a person.
I think he would've loved his father if he felt his father loved him. As I said, his uncle was the only person he felt close with and the only person he connected with, so that's why he wanted to live with him.
Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.
thought the little psychopath was going to fall off the statue and die. wish he would have, could have saved the movie
shareI'm glad that didn't happen. I don't think anyone deserves to die no matter what they've done. He did do horrible things, but he was obviously sick and his parents weren't the right people to take care of such a child with an eccentric personality. The dad worked so many hours and the short time he was home all his time went to taking care of the baby. He didn't really have the time to be a proper parent to Joshua, and the mom was out of her mind and Joshua probably inherited the mental illness genetically from her. I still feel sorry for him each time I watch the movie. I have a weird, unique personality kind of like Joshua and was interested in Ancient Egypt as a child so at times I felt they wrote me as a character in the movie.
Burn, witch! Burn, witch! Burn! Burn! Burn!
And it's a well done scene, THE best scene in the film. The camera angles are special (near ground level with the sharp up angle). The production took their time with this movie and it shows. They took extra time here. The cops coming in just before the scene ends is the cap off. Got to have it. Lends credence and some form against all the madness.
I love this movie. It's truly frightening because of this child and is up there with the original "Wicker Man" in quality of lethal threat.
Yes Joshua was weird and his parents might not have totally understood him but hey they were good parents especially the dad who loved Joshua unconditionally. This was made very clear. His behavior toward the baby went way beyond normal sibling jealousy. And there was no reason to kill his grandma he did it to hurt his dad. The kid was clearly a sociopath and evil despite his nice dad. Oh and as soon as he gets tired of his uncle or his uncle makes him mad he will kill the uncle. If this movie was about a weird kid who was not accepted by his dad but not a killer I would understand the empathy but it's not the case. It's about a different kind of kid who had a dad that did his best to be accepting and the kid reacts by being a sociopath.
shareThey were not good parents. There was a scene where Joshua talks to his dad about being weird and the days said nothing. No ‘who would say you’re weird? Why are you bringing this up?’ Nothing to get to the bottom of why the kid felt this way. There was also a scene with the mom (at the beginning) when she didn’t try to get to the root of this thing the kid was saying about himself. Yes, later we learn about his crying jag when he was a baby but at his current age, before the sister was born, it did seem like their relationship was supposed to have improved since he was a baby.
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