The Boy Who Cried Bitch

“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as a Young Child.” “John Wayne Gacy: The Road to Manhood.” “How to Lose Friends and Kill People.” Any and all of these could have been alternate titles for this harrowing debut film from director Campanella, but I think we'll stick with what we've got. The Boy... presents us with 12-year-old sociopath, Dan Love (Harley Cross in a chillingly disquieting role), a young kid who refers to his divorced mother as “Slutbitch” and gets a kick out of leading his two younger brothers astray and into the realm of Kids From Hell. Sent to a prep school by a mother who can no longer deal with her wayward son, Dan befriends the maintenance man, a Vietnam vet who may or may not be a child molester. Trouble ensues, and Dan is sent to a children's psychiatric hospital, where he falls in love (more or less) with fellow patient Jessica (Moira Kelly), a young girl plagued with neuroses. As the psychiatrists at the hospital find more and more of their charges being withdrawn from their care due to Dan's disruptive behavior, they eventually decide he can no longer stay within the walls of the hospital, and so Dan's mother opts to take him home to live again with her. Bad idea. Harley Cross, as Dan, has managed to tap into a gold mine of talent. He's all ticks, stutters, gleaming eyes and mood swings, thoroughly convincing as a juvenile psychotic, while at the same time imbuing his character with a terrible inner sadness and confusion. It's rare to see a young actor come across so convincingly in such a deep and powerful role, but Cross is a master of the game here, and Dan Love is as believable as a gunshot in the night. Director Campanella has stated that he wanted to see what “Charles Manson, the Hillside Strangler, and John Hinckley were like as children,” and he has succeeded with stunning brilliance. This is no horror film, no splatter movie with a thin plot and even thinner female victims; Cross and Campanella work together to portray their ferocious main character as a sort of teddy bear kid gone awry, for inexplicable reasons. This film shocks, disturbs, and gnaws at you from the get-go, and then it follows you home and hangs around your head (especially, I think, if you are a parent). The Boy Who Cried Bitch is dangerously close to a reality few of us would like to admit to, and that's pretty much all we can ask for these days, wouldn't you say?