User Reviews

"The Book of Henry" has the potential to become a cult classic. There's a subset of people for whom the shambolic plot of this film will scratch their itch. Underneath all the autumn leaf clutter and heartwarming kitchen scenes, there's an unfortunate message about girls and about sexual assault victims.

Warning: this review will reveal the ending of "The Book of Henry."

TBOH starts out in one of those idyllic towns you only see in middlebrow American films. No one has a regional accent. There are wooded hillsides all around, and scenic waterfalls, and quilts on couches. You can tell that characters are meant to be coded "poor" or "working class" because they are wearing Goodwill clothing, but they manage to live in big Victorians on lots of wooded property. If this were a real town in contemporary America, I'm afraid it would be one of those places with a high opiate abuse rate.

Susan (Naomi Watts) is a single mom of two adorable boys, Henry and Peter. Susan is a waitress, she drinks too much, and she is addicted to video games. Susan's best friend Sheila (Sarah Silverman) is a sharp-tongued lush with a heart of gold and cleavage so low we can see her heart beating.

Henry is a genius and has the personality, not just of a mature man, but actually of a saint or a Bodhisattva or Cary Grant, the angel character in "The Bishop's Wife." Henry spends his time hanging out in a treehouse designed by Norman Rockwell on acid, creating Rube Goldberg machines, and amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars – and he talks to his broker on a pay phone. Where are there still pay phones? Wouldn't a boy genius have a cell phone?

At first you think, okay, this is going to be like a Steven Spielberg boy's true adventure film. An "ET" crossed with a tad of homebound Thelma and Louise. But no.

Henry looks out his window and concludes, from what he sees, that the next-door neighbor, Glenn, is sexually molesting his step-daughter, Christina. Uh, oh. This has just turned into an educational film about the horrors of child abuse and incest. Or maybe a Eugene O'Neill style family horror story. Well, there's a fleeting few seconds of that, but then Henry is hiding in a gun store, learning how to buy illegal weapons. Okay, this is quite the roller coaster ride. You don't even have time to make sure you have fastened the safety latch when Henry suddenly develops a bad headache and worse vision.

Henry goes into seizures. It's a disease of the week movie! No, wait! A handsome surgeon steps in to operate, and to make eyes at Naomi Watts who, yes, is still in the movie. Is this going to be a romance film? Where does this train stop?

Henry dies. Just like that. The titular character is dead, halfway into this PG family story / unsuitable for children incest story / true crime story. His death is so quick and so subtle I didn't realize he was dead until Susan is shown mourning by obsessively baking brownies while wearing a chocolate-stained apron.

This is where the "Book of Henry" of the title comes in. Note that "Book of Henry" sounds like a Biblical book. That's because Henry is now dead and doing good deeds from the afterlife. Susan discovers that Henry left a notebook with a detailed plan for her to murder her next- door neighbor, Glenn. So now we are back to this being a Hitchcockian story. But it never goes there. It never does what suspense or true crime or horror films do. It continues to play as if it were a wholesome, small town Americana comedy. The sight of Naomi Watts going from chocolate-stained apron to staring down the sights of an illegal automatic weapon with a silencer in a PG movie chilled my blood.

Susan comes within seconds of following her dead son's macabre / wholesome plan to its final, murderous / humanitarian end, but then she can't bring herself to pull – or as Henry would have it – squeeze the trigger. She merely informs Glenn that she is on his tail, and Glenn kills himself.

Susan then adopts Christina and puts Christina in the same bedroom that Henry had previously occupied – with her other son, Peter. No doubt there will be a sequel on how one of these two needs to be killed for a subsequent incest flare-up.

And the whole thing is meant to be heartwarming and kind of funny.

Sheesh.

It's hard to talk about this train wreck of a film in any serious way, but. Christina, the incest victim, says almost nothing in the movie. She is silent. The obvious thing for Susan to do, even before buying a high-powered rifle, would be to get Christina alone, away from her stepfather, with an authority figure and encourage her to tell her own story. In this Hollywood movie, a dead boy is the master puppeteer for his adult mother, who is merely a marionette, and that dead boy is more verbal than a live girl. And that's a disgusting and dangerous message.

I have been watching movies for 8 yrs or less now and didn't expect that it will happen to me.I like that Henry is a genius and a inventor plus that he thinks himself that he is a grown man even though he's just a 11 yr old kid and his Mom relies on him on every parent should do and Henry should have fun playing with his brother etc.

SPOILER ALERT:

I didn't expect to cry a f***ing lot even though I got spoiled, Seriously, I cried like a baby and i'm a grown man. I liked the characters so much and I really like the plot. The only bad thing is,it is too much focused on Henry ( the main character obv ) and I wasn't expecting that much action but I knew that there'll be an action but I just didn't expect that Henry ate the 1hr more or less of it but IT WAS WORTH IT ( to me ). I don't watch this type of genre a lot, but when I watched the trailer, it took my attention and been wanting to watch this since the trailer was released.

My conclusion, I really liked IT even though like I said I don't watch this type of genre ( drama ) a lot. Now, Go watch it and see for yourself, If it was too cliché for you- I think you will still like it, but we all have different opinion. For me it is a GOOD MOVIE and one of my favorites this whole year of 2017.

The first half of this film was okay. All actors fine except for Maddie playing Christina.Almost no dialogue or acting required...just look sullen, sullen and more sullen.

The second half of the movie has more holes then Swiss cheese. It was unbearable to watch utter nonsensical scene after scene.

School principal says nothing more can be done to help Christina regarding the suspected abuse by her step dad. Yet, when she dances at the talent show the principal seeing tears of sadness/joy??? decides to call the authorities, not the next morning, but supposedly that night. Christina has never confirmed to anyone that she's being abused. Views from Henry's house never show actual abuse, just sinister lighting. In fact, there is no frame in the film that shows Christina alone with her step dad inside the house. The thought of assassination where Christina has never uttered a word confirming it and neither Henry or Susan witnessed it was too far fetched. Much better would have been a Henry plan to prove his guilt and see him imprisoned forever.

Police cars, lights glaring rush to Glen's home after the Principal supposedly made a phone call. Since Christina never confirmed step dad's abuse the principal could say only that Christina, at the show, looked sad. This is somehow sufficient for an night time arrest warrant sending flashing police cars to make an arrest. Nonsensical.

In the end, Henry's 'plan' to save Christina is trashed by mom Susan. Then the worst of scenes. Women, unarmed, tells dangerous armed felon to look at her as she tells him: I'm the woman who will put you away forever if it's the last thing I ever do. Middle of woods, no witnesses... you think Glen might take her out to avoid a forever prison sentence? Naw, he just walks away, so that Henry's plan is a total bust.

If mom Susan had shot Glen there was no time for her to deal with a body, she had four minutes to get back to the show. Forensics would know the shot came from the tree house leading back to Susan. The gun store owner knows Susan's face.

Henry's famed red book, with all kinds of Henry's writings and sketches plus his 'plan' is tossed by Susan into the fireplace. No need to cut out the 'plan' pages and save Henry's precious writings/sketches.

Henry was such a 'brain' it is not possible he would've come up with a simple assassination plan instead of an exotic high tech plan to bug Glen's home with audio/video to easily gather evidence to put him away.

For those of us who watch forensic files Henry's plan would have insured Susan's tenure in the state pen.

On the plus side Henry's plan for mom Susan to become Christine's guardian did work but only after the Principal not mom Susan intervened.

I picked this up at random along with "Boss." This was by far the better choice. It's surprising to hear that critics didn't like it. The filming was beautiful and the acting was great.

SPOILER ALERT (I reveal all the major plot points so don't read this if you haven't seen the film)

I went to this film particularly from watching the trailer which had some promise but also some worries to what was the 'plot'. The trailer gave me the impression that a unusually smart child is trying to save 'the girl next door' from abuse (potential murder?) from her step dad and somehow the smart kid's mom is showed with a high powered sniper's rifle like she is going to kill him.

The film's first half is fun and pretty dramatic with the medical fate of our lead character. Very moving. I didn't expect that level of sadness. I had to literally ask both of my guests if the lead character really just died half way through the film!

But then the film takes a ridiculous turn: Henry leaves a book behind (hence the title) with a plot to assassinate the stepdad and instructions for his mom to carry it out (now that he learns of his own terminal illness).

The second problem is Henry's reasons (and his mother's belief in these reasons) for why the murder of the stepdad by his own mother is the only option. IMDb user stevepat99 is right when he says that the plan is full of holes and puts the mom in serious danger of prosecution and that being a "genius" Henry could have found a way to entrap the stepdad instead of having his naive mother (who Henry doesn't trust to balance her own checking account and having no criminal background or experience with guns) commit murder.

And he is also right about the confrontation scene with the stepdad and the Henry's mother in the dark, woods. She harshly threatens him, to his face, to take him down. She stand there with no protection or backup and purposefully leaves the gun behind her! Now he walks away, but we learn in the end, (when he kills himself) that he's a bully and a coward so of course that's why he didn't harm her.

But then the Principal turns him in to the authorities the same night just because she saw 'something' in the victim's school talent show dance performance that now makes her believe she truly is a victim (even after multiple attempts by Henry to have the Principal report the abuse). My guess is that she talked to the victim after her moment of 'dance routine sadness moment of clarity' and got the victim to confess finally, but SHOW that or indicate it in an explanation in the film.

And then there's the fact that we never see the abuse. Although, they cut to the mother's face at one point and the look of horror on it indicates to us that something bad is happening or about to... (she subsequently interrupts it by calling the stepdad at the moment). Even an artsy, shadowy fight scene or some other visual indicator to leave us with a definite impression of what is happening to the young girl. The film lead me, at points, in the first half, to wonder if Henry is wrong about the Stepdad and maybe there is a 'twist ending', which there really isn't.

And why does the mother burn Henry's book at the end? She could just remove the 'assassination plot' pages, but keep all the other wonderful things he drew. Or at least show her removing the good pages before burning the bad.

Anyways, I felt insulted, unfilled and emotionally flat at the end of this movie that I wished had ended at Henry's death scene. It would still be an unfulfilled movie but at least it would have ended on powerful emotion.

Book of Henry (2017) The tale concerns a plan hatched by a young genius to save the girl next door from abuse. His mother takes on his plan when his health deteriorated. Critical reviews have been bad, claiming it just didn't know what it wanted to be. Even so, the general publics reviews have been quite different, with many enjoying it. I actually enjoyed this film for the most part. Critics shouldn't be excessively hard on films like this. If they do, the film industry will continue to churn out the same old cookie cutter films with profit motives completely overtaking good story telling. Sure, this film needed to be tightened up a slight bit. It may have tried to be too much. Adaptations are difficult, you have to nail it, for it to work. Still, I don't believe this film completely botched it either. They attempted to tell this story through multiple styles. They just fell a little short of the mark. Give this one a chance. If you aren't enjoying it, you can always turn it off.

I'm not sure if I'm amazed or appalled. Maybe a bit of both.

As I sit here, after seeing The Book Of Henry, I feel like I've just experienced something truly unparalleled. This is the rare movie that makes you lean back and wonder for all the wrong reasons. Director Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World) dusted off Gregg Hurwitz's 20-year-old screenplay and filmed what can only be described as one of the most disastrous sentimental Oscar-bait family dramas ever put to film. Why was there no one around to stop him?

It's hard to even begin putting this madness to words. I just have to start at the beginning and hope I can convey a semblance of the catastrophe I just witnessed. This has to be more spoilers-heavy than I usually like, because there's no way to convey just how absurd this movie gets without detailing it.

Henry (Jaeden Martell) is your typical movie-genius 11-year-old kid. He's quirky and wise beyond his years - building random Rube Goldberg machines, acting as a master in day-trading on the stock market ($680k cash, more than that in stocks, though no one uses it) and as an advisor to his mother Susan (Naomi Watts) and younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay). His mother respects him as a genius but sometimes struggles to be a parent to him - spending her evenings playing Gears Of War on XBox instead (...seriously). The Book Of Henry starts off as something innocent - a slice-of-life story with a touch of imaginative whimsy, but with grounding in Henry's morality on being concerned for other people. In particular his concern for his neighbor's daughter Christina (Maddie Ziegler, a Dance Moms alum who has under 10 lines despite being central to the plot). Henry might be a genius, but he doesn't really understand how people work.

Now we get to the thriller part of The Book Of Henry. You may want to sit down for this, I'm not kidding. Henry's concern for Christina is rooted in the fact that her father Glenn (Dean Norris), the police commissioner and 'upstanding citizen' according to the school principal, is abusing Christina (note: they never show the abuse or even bruises). Henry had previously tried to get the local authorities involved, but it turns out Glenn's ties run deep in the local area and no one is going to stop him. Rather than trying to find concrete proof of the abuse, Henry just jumps straight to the conclusion that murder is the only option and begins planning out how to kill Glenn without getting caught. But oh no, Henry gets sick and can't do it himself! Thank God for stopping this madman!

You can't have a family drama without dying children, or at least that's what most Oscar bait movies have taught me. Unfortunately, Henry's mild headaches that he's been suffering through turn out to be something far more serious: death by plot contrivance. The tone immediately shifts into pure drama and the whimsy stops dead. With the prognosis of imminent death due to brain cancer (hello Dr. Lee Pace!), Henry uses what little time he has left to try and make sure his struggling mother and brother will be okay after he's gone. When he finally does pass it is a sad moment that reminds you that even if he's an adult-talking genius that he's also just a child with a mother who loved and needed him. It's a rather well done sequence of events showing how grief can overcome us, no matter how hard we deny it.

Then, the last 45-minutes happen. If you weren't sitting down before, please do so now.

This is where the titular Book comes in. Henry, knowing Susan will better cope with his death if she has something else to focus on decides to give her one last task from beyond the grave: murdering Glenn so she can adopt Christina via a forged custody document. If you have to pause for a second, I understand.

The plan written in Henry's book is basically a step-by-step guide for a targeted assassination, including pre-recorded audio instructions down to the minute! Susan is dismissive at first, but after finally seeing Glenn hurt Christina (again, we only see Susan's reaction) she immediately jumps on the murder train. I am not kidding, this really happens. A sentimental story of a small family struggling with grief within a few minutes turns into a story about a kid's elaborate plan to murder a police commissioner. I was on the edge of my seat for all the wrong reasons.

Oh, and this assassination climax, shot as an action-thriller now, is cross-cut with a school talent show featuring burping the alphabet and tap dance. Thankfully Susan starts using her brain again - aided by a random Rube Goldberg contraption showing her kids photos - so no murder, but the result is basically the same. As the movie ends, with the clear expectation that the audience should feel uplifted by this "moving" tale, the only thing I felt was bewilderment and disgust.

This is the kind of mind-numbing insanity that one cannot believe is happening. You just give in to the madness that plays in front of you. Colin Trevorrow plays this story so straight that it does legitimately come across as if it he's advocating this murder for the longest time. That first hour wasn't anything overly special, perhaps your standard award-chasing screenplay that hopes to find its way to some film festival Jury prizes while some reviewer calls the film "profound and moving." The last half of the movie, though, is so ill-conceived and mystifying that it almost transcends taste.

The Book Of Henry has no business attempting to hide behind the guise of a quirky family drama. It's almost disgusting to think about the way Trevorrow attempts to manipulate the audience into siding with Henry's plan. I had to just laugh when the pieces of the murder plot were being put together - how much thought went into this one act of violence arranged by an 11-year-old boy for his own mother to complete. With a less competent director this might have played out more as a dark comedy, but it does feel like Trevorrow truly thought he was making something profound. The key tip-off for Trevorrow's love of this screenplay is in its use of technology, or should I say, lack of use - Henry uses a Polaroid camera and never video tapes Glenn's crimes, despite cellphones, laptops, and iPads being around - all because Trevorrow didn't want to change a thing. Trevorrow makes this the best movie he can; this earnestness is the movies most worrisome aspect.

In a way I have to praise The Book Of Henry for its madness. Where other films might have just stopped at having Henry collect evidence, this film goes out of its way to make the manipulation of a grieving mother by their dead child seem right. It's just bizarre to see so many skilled actors, in a pretty well made movie, never bat an eye at what they are doing. When young Jacob Tremblay, who at the time of filming was 8-years old, literally ran down the stairs and proclaimed to his mother "I think Henry wants us to kill Glenn," I burst out in laughter even before Susan's 'comedic' response. This movie is in so many ways morally reprehensible, but it's an unbelievable experience to watch it.

The Book Of Henry is something I'd say you have to see to believe, but only those die-hard fans of bad cinema can ever appreciate how off-the-rails this movie gets. The ill-conceived message it presents is flabbergasting to sit through. The Book Of Henry is so tonally inconsistent and at times repugnant that I honestly feel sorry for all the actors in this movie. One can easily rewrite this movie into a murder mystery thriller, or just a straight family drama about grief; it should not be both of those things. In terms of misguided efforts, The Book Oh Henry is in the top-tier of disasters. The Book Of Henry is a total catastrophe wrapped in the disguise of a noble message, done in by a lack of ability to just be one thing.

Really interesting plot. I loved the characters and i thought the ending was sweet. Only thing i thought was odd was that henry was diagnosed with cancer and then died like an hour later. I'm not sure but it seemed unrealistic and a little rushed.