Electrick Children (Rebecca Thomas, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Jeffrey J. Englert. Viewed at AFI Fest Nov. 5th, 2012.

Electrick Children was a stellar director debut for Rebecca Thomas with incredible acting and a heartfelt storyline.

In the beginning of the film, the audience becomes familiar with the Mormon village that little Rachel -who was played by Julia Garner – grew up in. It doesn’t take long before the story gets rolling and Rachel finds herself pregnant by a “tape cassette.” Because of these struggles, Rachel escapes the village and goes on a journey to find the man who was singing in the cassette tape, so Rachel could marry him. Little did Rachel know that she would actually find the man who sang on the cassette tape.

At first, I fell in love with the art direction, costuming, dialog and context of the Mormon village, which felt extremely authentic. These aspects were continued when Rachel escaped from the village, which was one of the first times the audience became to see the mis-en-scene of Director, Rebecca Thomas. Some of the aspects that helped to create this mis-en-scene was her choice of rich, contrasting colors, impeccable characterization and exciting locations.

While this film as a whole was great, especially as a director debut, there were a couple of things that really stood out to me and are worth mentioning.

-When Rachel escapes the village as a small 15-year old girl, she drives away in a truck and magically finds her way to Las Vegas. This was just one of the times though that Rachel was driving around for one of her first times and magically knew all of the directions to all of these places that she ended up at. I just couldn’t believe that as a new driver and an in-experienced young-adult without a map, could find her way around a large city like she did.

-Also, Clyde who was played by Rory Culkin, was an outcast individual who quickly fell for Rachel, a point that I never fully understood as an audience member. It seemed as he fell for her too quick and the audience didn’t get to see enough interaction or sparks between the two, to validate the actual relationship that was formed because of such.

-Lastly, as this film plunged into the third-act, it had a lot of “black screen” moments where Rebecca Thomas roughly settled all of the problems; it was not a smooth third-act but instead a period of time that had a lot of “black screen moments.”

All in all, it was a heartfelt story that told a great tale with impressive acting, visual moments and rich dialog.