Pretty bad movie which, to make things worse, takes forever to get going. It initially tries to build a case that the girl's parents are abusing her. The completely credulous "Child Protective Services" (hitherto CPS) functionary swallows the bait whole, only to find out that she has fallen for what appears to be Satan himself. Indeed, given the slow buildup, her turnaround is amazingly quick with the perhaps unintended object lesson that "intuition" is often unreliable. In fact, the movie is unconsciously a critique of the whole state CPS apparatus as composed of bureaucrats trying to remotely judge, using the hyper rationalism of clinical psychology and diagnostic criteria, what can only be properly judged by the family itself. It inadvertently suggests that the diagnostic criteria employed can completely miss the mark as we see so graphically in the movie. Sometimes the parent's judgment that their children need a good thwacking is the right one! From that perspective the movie was, as they used to say, a hoot! The ending is stupid however, which is a major fault with American movies generally.
Review of Case 39
