#212 -- Daddy's Girl (1996)

Rating: 3 / 5
Director: Martin Kitrosser

There's something about killer children that's terrifying; everyone knows that. But there's something about this child that was annoying. I thought it was going to be better than it was; from the synopsis Netflix gave me, I thought it was going to be about a scary little killer child killing everyone in sight. But I was wrong.

It was about Jody, a sweet little 11 year-old girl with some dark secrets. When she was four years old, she watched her mother shoot her father. After that, she was between foster parents. Her first foster mother was killed when she fell down the stairs. She was taken away from her family and sent to a new one. Her new family loved her very much, especially her new father (William Katt, Greatest American Hero). She really loved her Daddy too, and she would do anything to make sure that she didn't lose him like she lost her last daddy. Jody got in trouble a lot at school for fighting with other kids and  misbehaving. Her principal was going to try to send her to boarding school so they could help her. But that meant that she wouldn't be able to live with her Daddy anymore, and she didn't like that idea. So she snuck into school and pushed a bookshelf over on her principal.

Her grandmother didn't like her father, because he was a toymaker trying desperately to make his first sale. He wasn't bringing any money into the house, and Grandma wasn't happy about it. It took her a few tries to kill Granny, but she finally got it right after a while. Her mother wasn't happy with her dad either, because she was tired to being the only person bringing in money. She was talking to her friend, who was a divorce lawyer, because she wasn't sure she could handle the marriage any longer. Jody knew the lawyer friend had to go as well. But Mommy still wasn't sure if she still wanted to be with Daddy, and she was thinking about leaving and taking Jody with her, so Mommy had to go too. And the social worker who was probably going to take Jody away again? Well, he had to go too, of course.

The only person who really thought Jody was up to no good was her father's niece, Karen. Karen did some digging on Jody to figure out if anything in her past could help figure out what was wrong with her. Jody didn't like that Karen was causing trouble. Instead of killing Karen, she told lies about her to make it look like Karen was the crazy one. She said that Karen wanted to be her mommy, and that Karen was killing all these people so that she could have Jody all to herself.

This movie was okay; it definitely wasn't great by any means, but it wasn't horrible either. Jody wasn't really terrifying, as I'd hoped. She was just a badly behaved little girl, and her fear solutions were irrational. The only reason she might have been taken away from her family was because she misbehaved; so everything would have been fine and she just started being a good little girl. But instead of behaving herself, she decided she'd just kill everyone. That's why I thought she was a bit annoying. She was just a little brat who didn't want to behave. Of course, she was troubled by watching her mother kill her father, but she was given more than enough love by her new family. With some help, she would have been able to learn to deal with that.

The end was disappointing, because nothing really happened. I don't know if Jody got to stay with her family, or if she was maybe sent to an institution. I don't know what happened to her, or what happened to her mother (because, like Granny, the first murder attempt was not successful). It was abrupt and gave no resolution to the problem. Overall, it was an all right movie that could have been a lot better.