‘Case 39’ Trailer Puts a Bug In Your Ear to See the Movie

By  · Published on August 21st, 2010

If you or someone you know works in child services, then you already know how hellish it can be. It’s emotionally draining, mentally challenging, and the people that do the work are often balancing a dozen eggs on a spoon while traveling across a high wire with no net. Only, those eggs have to grow up; you can’t just recall them.

And that’s without having to deal with a potentially supernatural killer with shark’s eyes and barbie dolls.

Case 39 stars Renee Zellweger as a case worker who saves a little girl from what looks like an abusive mother and father, but soon they’re love of locking her out of their bedroom at night and threatening to send her to hell seem pretty level-headed. The trailer just hit online, and it’s got just a touch of The Ring to go with its unnerving goodness.

Stop when you feel resistance:

It doesn’t look phenomenal, but it doesn’t look too shabby either. It lands definitively somewhere in the middle. The concept is a tried and true one dressed up in new raggedy clothes, and a lot will ride on what Pandorum director Christian Alvart has done to make this unique. Admittedly, the fly coming out of Bradley Cooper’s ear feels a lot like The Ring, but that’s not such a bad thing.

Especially if you’re a marketing department trying to create buzz.

There’s a joke about buzz and flies there, but I’m not looking for it.

Just like I won’t be searching for a creepy little child to bring into my home anytime soon.

Speaking of which, that particular creepy little child is played by Jodelle Ferland who was in Seed, and The Messengers but was definitely at her most off-putting in Tideland.

The film itself has had a bumpy ride. They started production on it in Canada in October of 2006, but a fire destroyed most of their sets, so they started over at the end of the year. Its release date has been pushed at least 5 times since 2008, but it’s finally seeing the light of day in the United States on October 1st.

What do you think?

Watch the hi-def version at Apple.

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.