The Art of Storytelling and The Book of Henry

Clickbait title: 7 Reasons The Book of Henry FAILS

The Book of Henry is pretty close to an ideal awful movie. There's dimensions to watching the film that I can't convey fully in a condensed video, like how stop-start the plots are, how Henry gets sick and the movie basically stops what it was doing for twenty minutes waiting for him to die, and how watching the film is to go through a rolling process of trying to figure out what the film is trying to actually tell you. People who are familiar with Jurassic World should catch the similar ways that Book of Henry demonizes a woman for not behaving exactly and precisely as the mother figure that the filmmakers think she should be. Susan gets off light, though, since she isn't executed by dinosaur for the crime of texting.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

[schmiddi]

Say what you will, but it's an incredible achievement in character writing to make a movie about a child dying of brain cancer where the audience ends up rooting for the cancer.

[themocaw]

This movie features a wealthy person's idea of poverty, a stupid person's idea of intelligence, a sociopath's idea of empathy, and a mall ninja's idea of tactics.

[bookshelfhoney]

"he's not going to sell a gun to an 11 year old" Dan he's ALMOST TWELVE

[sactownsacrament]

"3 extra 10-round detachable mags" It's incredibly funny to me that Henry thinks Susan will need to take 40 SHOTS to kill Glen.

[zleep]

Just want to point out that the same kid Henry makes fun of is the kid shown being bullied during Henry’s opening monologue. What a likable protagonist.

[aachaion]

If Henry's such a genius, why didn't he realize he could just tell Susan to hire an accountant after he died? There was absolutely no reason for him to try to teach her finances. She can pay someone to do that for her, and she won't risk screwing things up that way. And for that matter, I fail to see how a sniper rifle in the tree fort is a better idea for the murder than just hiding behind a tree until Glenn's back was turned and shooting him with a handgun. So much less evidence to dispose of that way, and you have plausible deniability if you get caught with the gun before the murder. Admittedly, this sort of overengineering does seem like the kind of thing a child prodigy without a lot of practical experience would come up with, but the movie seems to show no self-awareness that it's a sign of immaturity, not genius.

[gabby]

I dunno which is worse, supplanting your dead brother as Enchilada #1 because he died or staying Enchilada #2 as a constant reminder you'll never be better than your dead brother who died.

[FTZPLTC]

It's funny(ish) how suicide at the end of a movie always means "guilt confirmed, no further questions", even though suicide at the *start* of a movie almost always means "investigate the shit out of this because it's never just suicide".

[Azkadelya]

movies like this baffle me not just because they're bad but because they could SO EASILY be fixed. And with 18 years to write the script it- boggles the mind. Just get rid of the mom.
Mom abandons kids. Henry, a child prodigy, is now the Adult of the house. He cannot call CPS on his neighbor because then they might look into him and his brother's situation and he's terrified of the two of them being separated. He makes money in order to keep their house and the appearance of hard working parents who can never be around. His notes on this "perfect murder" aren't instructions, they're the reflections of a kid who is angry, forced to grow up much too soon, and can't figure out how everyone seems to ignore kids suffering. After his death his younger brother finds the notes and takes them to be instructions because he's a tiny kid grieving the loss of his only parental figure whom he thought the world of.
Guess I'll just have to save this script for Home Alone 9: This Time He's Got A Sniper Rifle.

[LexieDi]

As a teacher, I need to say that Goddamnit Janice doesn't need any kind of concrete evidence. In fact we're trained to report any form of suspected abuse no matter why we think there may be abuse. Making a report that turns out isn't true has absolutely no repercussions.

[ADVBCAT]

Here's a nitpick.

The writers seem to like using the word "contingency" to sound smart, but obviously have no idea what it actually means. A contingency is an unlikely future event that can be accounted for and mitigated. So while "accounting for contingencies" is a real concept, the movie doesn't actually understand what that means, just that it's something smart people say. For instance:

A Rube Goldberg machine works because it is completely deterministic. Although it may have the appeance of being "random" and working anyway, the beauty of one is how it highlights the predictable nature of, say, how far a ball will travel in the air when you control for every other variable when you launch it. You don't set a "contingency" for when it lands somewhere else, because you know it won't. The idea that "accounting for every contingency" in a Rube Goldberg machine is therefore self-defeating nonsense dialogue.

Similarly, Henry doesn't actually have any contingencies in his plan, aside from "things will just work out perfectly anyway because the writers are hacks", which is what happens in the end when he fails to account for the contingency of his mom not having the heart to shoot someone. In fact they set up scenes the way you would if you were trying to convey "the planner is such a genius here that complex human behaviour is reduced to predictable clockwork", like if you were shooting a prison break movie and you showed characters lifting a manhole just as the guards both turn away during a shift change.

TL;DR the writer is a the worst kind of moron, the pseudo-intellectual type.

[crazycatlady]

Henry: "violence isn't the worst thing ever, Apathy is."
Also Henry: Trades stocks on the phone instead of protecting Peter from getting beaten up.

[tamar]

Am I the only person who thinks there's kind of an idea for a horror movie here? A terrifying bad seed type continues to control his sheeplike, unstable and grieving mother to carry out his will even after his death?

[nickkuroshi]

Teacher: "why don't you go to the advanced classes?"
Henry: "Cause it's important for my psycho-social development."
*proceeds to not have any healthy interaction with his peers at school*

[ElizaGlide]

I know this is kind of a minor point in the grand scheme... But does anyone else notice the amount of technological inconsistencies in this movie? Henry buys and sells stocks over the payphone based on what he reads in the financial pages of the newspaper and records his master plan on a Walkman, but does the family's financial planning on his Apple laptop while Susan plays Gears of War on their XBox? This isn't really a narrative problem, but it is heavily indicative of the way this guy had certain parts of the plot set in stone early on and just never changed them; lots of editing little pieces happened, but there was never a real overhaul of the whole story to make it consistent.

[VirtualBoy]

Y'know, something just occurred to me: isn't it kind of contradictory to have a character who is presented as a Christ allegory while also being obsessed with material wealth?

[DerAnanasKing]

I can´t belive this movie actually has a "and then everyone clapped scene"

[travisjicorcoran]

"Oh Jesus, they think they nailed it."

DYING

[emb]

It's been years and I finally watched this movie. I'm really disappointed that no one ever mentioned the best part of this entire thing. When Susan is frantically driving to go shoot Glenn, dramatic music in the background, and it intercuts with clips of a child burping the alphabet on stage.

[afernandezafaf]

The biggest lesson I learned from this: as a writer never think you're smart, because that's when things fall apart