Electric Children is an interesting debut feature from writer/director Rebecca Thomas focusing on a 15-year-old girl from a fundamentalist Mormon community in Utah, who mysteriously gets pregnant, causing her to launch off on a hastily convened road trip to Las Vegas, in an effort to find "the father" of her unborn child. This somewhat left of centre storyline is made more believable, knowing Thomas herself was raised as a Mormon. Clearly her religious experiences have undeniably strongly influenced the making of this intriguing, but ultimately uneven film.
The first act primarily set in the creepily small, remote Utah hamlet arguably features the best scenes in the movie. I use the word "creepily" deliberately, as despite the rugged attractiveness of the locations, plentiful sunshine and pollution-free natural desert environment and bed-time story sessions, the sect's embrace of biblical studies and accountability, at the expense of a normal education and social upbringing of children is quite unsettling. We can certainly accept that when 15 year old Rachel discovers she is pregnant, she is convinced that she has conceived miraculously, like the Virgin Mary, via an old cassette recorder, owned and hidden away by her mother.
Julia Garner is perfectly cast as the naive, ethereal, but determinately positive teenager, opposed to a hastily arranged shotgun marriage, by her shady father, the leader of this tiny group. Rory Culkin is also surprisingly good and effective as a rebellious teenage skater, come musician runaway, she meets after absconding from her village in a stolen pick-up.
I feel Electrick Children would have been a better film if Thomas had just concentrated on Rachel's story, with greater emphasis on her relationship with her mother, whose influence on the story behind the cassette player and ensuring events is greater than either her or Rachel realise. Instead Rachel's brother Mr Will and his experiences after hiding away in Rachel's getaway truck, is introduced as an unneeded sub-story, which arguably comes to dominate and unbalance the main narrative. On top of all this, the audience is asked to accept a huge contrivance in the third act to deepen the overall story and add more sense to earlier snippets we see of Rachel's dreams/visions. The climax to the film, whilst providing some amusement, also seems a pretty blatant rip-off from more accomplished films such as The Graduate.
Electrick Children is still worthwhile investigating however, if you're interests lie in getting a realistic peek at the type of closed community, whose collective, at times distinctly dubious, ethical actions, many might argue, should face more transparent legal scrutiny in wider mainstream society.
