Electrick Children (2013)

People are voting emotionally.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Rebecca Thomas' Electrick Children is a generally obscure 2012 film that received very little attention from critics or the general public. Whether or not attention was deserved, Elecktrick Children is a bizarre and sometimes charming visuals-driven story of teen curiosity and adventure in an unknown world. It's quite literally a personal story for director Rebecca Thomas (who was a mainstream Mormon raised in Las Vegas) and it shows as Electrick Children is more of a feast for the senses rather than a cohesive narrative-driven story.Electrick Children features a cast of talented teenagers with Julia Garner playing the lead. She does an excellent job portraying a naive and curious Mormon experiencing elements of the outside world for the first time. She is perfectly awkward when she needs to be as her innocence and purity makes her character easy to like. The cast includes many other rebellious teenagers but her character is really the only one that gets built upon and developed. This isn't too much of a flaw as the story is really supposed to only be focused on her and her mission, but some development to these supporting characters wouldn't have hurt. Overall, Julia Garner was fantastic and I look forward to seeing her in future titles. The story, albeit quite simple, is full of wonder but sometimes uneven. The film is heavily stylistic as we witness things through the Mormon teenager's eyes as she gazes in wonderment at things she has never seen before. There is a heavy emphasis on lighting and music, helping to immerse us in the world that this girl is experiencing for the first time. We feel just as lost as her as we meet many different types of people and engage in nefarious juvenile actions. While the film is mostly entertaining, there are noticeable slumps in the pacing. Sometimes there are quite long stretches of slow and tedious drama, and while these sequences are infrequent, it still hurts the films pacing quite a bit. Another issue with Electrick Children is the unsatisfying ending. We get a pretty great third act filled with interesting interactions but all this builds up to an abrupt and inappropriate ending. Many important questions are not answered or even acknowledged, making the film feel unfinished. Despite the few issues, Electrick Children is a charming and strangely intriguing story of teen curiosity that resonates quite personally with the director, who clearly showed passion in their work here. The story is interesting and mostly well told when it isn't treading too lightly. The great acting from the lead actress and the colorful and dreamy narrative makes Electrick Children an experience that is easy to enjoy despite uneven pacing and poor ending. The themes of teenage angst and rebellion makes the experience a deeply personal one as we can all understand what our lead character is going through. Except for the "pregnancy through music" part.

'Electrick Children' is a small American Indie film that I decided to watch because the synopsis of the film seemed interesting. The film is about a teenage girl named Rachel living in a Mormon Community who gets pregnant and his brother Mr. Will is accused of being the father, which Rachel denies as she believes the baby inside her is the son of God.Although the film is a small budget, somewhat obscure indie film, but its storyline and the themes that are at work are very ambitious. Writer/Director Rebecca Thomas's script certainly has various layers running through it. But her visual style of storytelling is also pretty impressive. The cinematography deserves to be admired as the film looks great. Lights and bright colours are an important part of the film and its themes and they shoot out of the screen due to the vibrant nature of the cinematography. Thomas intentionally keeps the film relatively ambiguous throughout. It is open to diverse interpretations, but the main themes in the film that I think to be at work are the themes of awakening (both psychological and sexual) and embracing others(who might seemingly be different to you) and your own self and live the kind of life that you want to live instead of being forced to live the life of someone else's choice. The ambiguous nature of the film keeps it from being too preachy as most of what is being conveyed is through visual hints and metaphors that may imply something or the other. It does get a bit predictable at times, but for the most parts the script is solid.Julia Garner's performance as Rachel is one of the main reasons why 'Electrick Children' works. She is brilliant as the naive, innocent, yet infinitely determined girl who is searching for something or someone in a spirited quest of biblical nature. Rory Culkin as Clyde also is impressive in a number of scenes."Electrick Children' isn't groundbreaking cinema, but it certainly is ambitious with its content and is sure to make you think about it after its conclusion.

I found this one on Netflix streaming movies. Frankly the title intrigued me, and after seeing it I am glad I did. It isn't a real clear and linear story, although most of it happens linearly. It is about a girl raised in a traditional Mormon family in Utah, just turning 15, and finding out she is pregnant. Her dad's reaction is to quickly arrange a marriage with a nice young man, but she steals the family truck and runs away to Las Vegas.Julia Garner is the 15-yr-old girl, Rachel, and she is absolutely perfect and believable. She has taken in all the bible stories as she grew up and instantly decided hers was an Immaculate Conception, she believes by listening to a certain song, and she intends to find the "father", the singer of that song.Billy Zane is good as her dad, Paul. Rory Culkin is good as Clyde who she meets in Las Vegas, and who says he will marry her if she can't find the man who sang the song on the blue tape.Most of the story here is indirect and some will not like it for that, but I found it totally absorbing. Who is the father of her baby? In a sense it is left to the viewer to decide but it is not the primary concern of the story.SPOILERS: Reading interviews with Rebecca Thomas, writer-director who herself was raised Mormon, she doesn't really clarify it but hints that it is intended to be a modern day Mary and Joseph story, someone coming forward to accept the pregnant Rachel without judging. Many viewers however believe that several clues in the movie point to her dad, Paul, as being the father, maybe because on her search finding her biological father who had a tryst in the red Mustang with her mother, and Paul knew this was not his own daughter. I myself had concluded Paul was the most likely father but it is indeed left unclear.

Different, worth a watch, however confusing. Obviously beliefs and doctrines are not the same for all.As for Catholics, Immaculate Conception is that Mary was born without original sin, and was a virgin before giving birth to Jesus and after the birth as well (perpetual virgin?). Quote "Mary's perpetual virginity after Jesus' birth was proclaimed as dogma for the Catholic Church at the Third Ecumenical Council of Constantinople of AD 681"Having said that, Jesus existed before Mary gave birth to Him (go figure}, so down deep it's what your belief is and how each Christian denomination interprets the teachings.