JOSHUA

In a breathtaking New York apartment, the seemingly perfect parents, Brad and Abby Cairn, are celebrating the birth of their second child, Lily. She already has a brother, 9 year-old Joshua. Exceptionally intelligent and frighteningly precocious, Joshua is no ordinary boy. He has an angelic politeness and an easy cool that belie his young age. And now, he seems increasingly unhappy with his new life in which his parents dote on Lily while he quietly plays the piano in the corner. The mood starts to darken in the Cairn’s apartment. Lily cries incessantly and an upstairs renovation drives Abby almost insane. Stressed to the limit and living on no sleep, Brad and Abby find themselves wrapped up in an escalating chain of domestic terror. But what is the cause of their torment ? Is it all a series of eerie coincidences or are they in the midst of an unimaginably evil mind ? George Ratliff, who previously directed the documentary Hell House, successfully transitions to narrative features with a horror story disguised as a sophisticated family drama. Eschewing dark shadows and recherché camera angles, he compensates for the sinister content by favouring daylight over night-time and preserving a straightforward, natural approach that defies expectations. Thanks to complex performances from a top-notch cast, including Sam Rockwell ( The Green Mile, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind ), Vera Farmiga ( The Departed, Running Scared ) and Jakob Kogan as the child prodigy, Joshua transcends the genre to create a modern horror story that demonstrates how the potential for evil exists in the everyday.