Runtime: 96 minutes
Directed by: Lew Lehman
Starring: Sammy Snyders, Jeannie Ellis, Sonja Smits, Laura Hollingsworth, Richard Alden
From: Amulet Pictures
Somehow even stranger than what I expected from “12 year old w/ implied autism & who thinks his teddy bear talks to him throws his enemies-children and adults alike-into a pit inhabited by Troglodytes!”
For awhile now I've known of this motion picture-it's been in my Shudder queue for ages. Last night the trigger was finally pulled and what a Canuxploitation effort this was—I've experienced some odd Canadian genre efforts and this stood out by those standards. Jamie is the 12 year old boy who has symptoms of autism yet that was never mentioned when it came to others explaining his behavior. He has no friends, is bullied at school, can't talk to people, is awkward to the extreme... lest you have too much sympathy for Jamie, he also is a pervert who lusts after adult women (including the new babysitter-caretaker that is there while the parents are away), literally keeps dirty magazines under the mattress, talks to his teddy bear-who talks back to him in his voice-and in fact he kills other children who are “mean” to him by luring them to fall into a hole in the middle of the woods that is occupied by several Troglodytes, i.e. small hairy bipedal creatures.
It's somehow even more peculiar than what I just described. For example, one scene is a YIKES as it hints at horrific abuse that has happened to Jamie... but it's never referenced again, let alone elaborated on. There's only a small amount of gore; the scares really come at seeing Jamie's behavior. There are some darkly comic moments which was unexpected for a motion picture where a per-pubescent boy acts highly inappropriate to an adult woman. It was a wild ride and among other issues, some distributor must have decided that this needed to start with a bang/a kill right away as the opening is in media res... a scene from the middle of the film is played. Admittedly, most of the first half builds the story which may not be exciting for all. Of course, the entire scene plays again as it was intended to. That's not the only question I had to this, whether it be logic-related or story-related.
The Pit is just so oddball in nature that I rolled w/ all those moments left unexplained, the taboo plot points, the tonal shifts. Allegedly, the original script was quite a bit different and was more psychological than the end product we received. This effort (which has to be the most famous picture set and filmed in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin; several hard Upper Midwest accents are heard throughout) has decent performances, a creepy score, a final act that goes in a particularly unexpected direction... thank goodness this did not flop and wasn't weird to the point of sacrificing the plot or its momentum. Of course this isn't the most flattering portrayal of autism—to reiterate that is never mentioned by name and MOST young autistic people don't have highly inappropriate interactions w/ the people they are sexually fixated on... or think their teddy bear is a sentient being.
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