History Film / TheBookOfHenry

* MoodWhiplash: A frequent criticism of the film is that it suffers from this. At first glance, it seems like a whimsical family film and it tries to pass itself off like that at points but the plot deals with the very big issue of Child Abuse and has Henry's way of solving the issue being murder not to mention [[spoiler:Henry a child dies halfway through the film.]]

* NonProtagonistResolver: [[spoiler:Janice the school principal finally finds the courage to call the authorities regarding Christina's abuse just in time for the cops (who were already going to Glenn's home because he called them to arrest Susan) to change targets. Glenn decides to blow his head off when he hears it on the radio.]]

** Susan's arc centers on herself realizing that Henry, for all his intelligence, is still just a child... except that Henry is portrayed as so absurdly hypercompetent and seemingly justified in all his legal and financial advice that his age is basically no factor. And as pointed out below, regardless of how it ended up happening [[spoiler:Glenn's death]] DID result in things working out perfectly.

** Minors are not allowed to do stock market exchanges. Henry probably would have been able to do work from his computer if the account was to Susan's name, but it's all but outright stated that it's all Henry's work, including calling a broker by public phone and having to order his mom to pay attention as he tries to explain how the online exchange works while he's in the hospital and she's understandably grieving by his bedside.

''The Book of Henry'' is a 2017 film directed by Creator/ColinTrevorrow.

** The two biggest flaws is that Henry's plan hinges on Glen going out into the woods in the middle of the night to investigate a random noise he hears from inside his house, during a very narrow time window. The plan utterly fails if Glen does ''anything'' that keeps him from doing that, like be asleep, taking a shower, watching a movie, be cooking., or just not be at home. And keep in mind that from Glen's point of view, this is an evening he's got free as his daughter's going to be out for most of it, so the plan hinges on Glen literally not doing anything out of his free evening. The second biggest flaw is that the plan revolves into Glen's body falling into a creek that seems to be maybe 2 feet deep at most and that creek sweeping the body away so no one ever can find out where Glen died.

** Webvideo/FoldingIdeas comments that, despite all the implications that Susan is an inadequate parent, we are told that the family has plenty of money (''before'' Henry reveals how much that he's made himself) and her video games/occasional drinking never causes her to make any huge parenting blunders; as a result, the film comes off like it's criticizing her for just having hobbies.

* FlatCharacter: Christina is this in spades. While her lack of emotion can be excused by her depression brought on by her abuse, she is given no agency or further characterization, and no other characters make an effort to empower her in any way, despite being the primary motivation for Henry, and later Susan, to go through a plot to murder her stepfather Glenn. In his thorough take down of the movie, [[WebVideo/FoldingIdeas Dan Olson]] makes the point that she could have been replaced with a sack of gems and nothing about the plot would've changed.

* RuleOfSymbolism: As pointed out in WebVideo/FoldingIdeas, [[MessianicArchetype Henry gets drawn with a lot of Jesus imagery]] for whatever reason: the title is based on the naming scheme of books from Literature/TheBible, Henry's family name is "Carpenter", his first "disciple" to spread knowledge of his word is named "Peter", and he even [[spoiler:dies in a [[PietaPlagiarism Pietà pose]].]] When [[spoiler:Christina is adopted into the family]], Susan reads to her and Peter a story of how a flower dies but fertilizes the garden with its body, which appears to be a metaphor for both Jesus dying to elevate mankind [[spoiler:and Henry who died but improved the lives of others. The ending with Peter's magic trick preaching the whimsy of Henry with the snow machine also seems to reference the baptism of fire]].

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Minors are not allowed to do stock market exchanges. Henry probably would have been able to do work from his computer if the account was to Susan's name, but it's all but outright stated that it's all Henry's work, including calling a broker by public phone and having to order his mom to pay attention as he tries to explain how the online exchange works while he's in the hospital and she's understandably grieving by his bedside.

''The Book of Henry'' is a 2017 film directed by Colin Trevorrow (''Film/JurassicWorld'').

Henry Carpenter (Creator/JaedenLieberher) is an eleven year-old [[ChildProdigy boy genius]], living with and managing the finances of his mother Susan (Creator/NaomiWatts) and his younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay). Becoming suspicious of the next door neighbor Glenn (Creator/DeanNorris), Henry discovers that his classmate Christina (Maddie Ziegler) is being abused by her stepfather. Impeded at every legal avenue, Henry hatches a plan to rescue Christina and punish his neighbor, but circumstances emerge to result in his inexperienced mother having to carry out the plot.

** The family is supposed to have money problems Henry is trying to fix, such that Susan must work as a waitress rather than focus on her passion of being a children's book writer, but they live in a nice house, ''can'' afford a new car but choose not to buy one, and [[spoiler: Susan does not worry at ''all'' over the cost of Henry's brain surgery, even though a waitress would not have health insurance good enough to cover that, assuming she had it all.]]

* InformedAttribute: The movie is prone to telling the viewer about things, [[ShowDontTell rather than showing]]. The more egregious example is Christina's abuse, which is never seen on screen (we get Glenn entering Christina's room in two different moments and then a horrified ReactionShot both from Henry and Susan, but it could have just as easily be them reacting to an awful accident), nor is any evidence of said abuse ever shown to the viewer despite both Henry and Susan insisting that Henry has been collecting all of said evidence. Even the fact that she looks depressed in some scenes (including her dance recital at the climax, [[spoiler:which is all that Janice needs to see to finally have a HeelRealization and become the NonProtagonistResolver]]) could have just as easily come from being abused as it could have come from her mother dying with very little change to the plot. Susan being a neglecting parent, or at the very least apathetic, is also never shown to the viewer. Henry himself is subject to most of this - characters repeating how everyone loves Henry, yet Henry is never shown to have any friends, and tends to come off as abrasive, condescending and patronizing to everyone he talks to.

Henry Carpenter (Jaeden Lieberher) is an eleven year-old [[ChildProdigy boy genius]], living with and managing the finances of his mother Susan (Creator/NaomiWatts) and his younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay). Becoming suspicious of the next door neighbor Glenn (Creator/DeanNorris), Henry discovers that his classmate Christina (Maddie Ziegler) is being abused by her stepfather. Impeded at every legal avenue, Henry hatches a plan to rescue Christina and punish his neighbor, but circumstances emerge to result in his inexperienced mother having to carry out the plot.

* ShaggyDogStory: [[spoiler:Since Susan ends up not killing Glen and the Principal ends up reporting Glen's abuse causing him to commit suicide it ultimately means all of Henry's planning was for the most part completely pointless in the end.]]

* TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat: After Henry [[spoiler:dies from his brain tumor, he leaves a set of pre-recorded tapes and diary notes for his mother to listen to, with instructions on how to carry out Glenn's assassination. They turn out to be ludicrously precise, to the point that they can predict when she took a wrong turn on the street or is hesitating over a task. Even his notebook is just as exact, with the next page always being the matching response to Susan's questions. Only once does any of his tapes ever guess wrong what she was about to do.]]

* InformedAttribute: The movie is prone to telling the viewer about things, [[ShowDontTell rather than showing]]. The more egregious example is Christina's abuse, which is never seen on screen, nor is any evidence of said abuse ever shown to the viewer despite both Henry and Susan insisting that Henry has been collecting all of said evidence. Even the fact that she looks depressed in some scenes (including her dance recital at the climax, [[spoiler:which is all that Janice needs to see to finally have a HeelRealization and become the NonProtagonistResolver]]) could have just as easily come from being abused as it could have come from her mother dying with very little change to the plot. Susan being a neglecting parent, or at the very least apathetic, is also never shown to the viewer. Henry himself is subject to most of this - characters repeating how everyone loves Henry, yet Henry is never shown to have any friends, and tends to come off as abrasive, condescending and patronizing to everyone he talks to.

** Susan's arc centers on herself realizing that Henry, for all his intelligence, is still just a child... except that Henry is portrayed as so absurdly hypercompetent and seemingly justified in all his legal and financial advice that his age is basically no factor. And as pointed out below, regardless of how it ended up happening [[spoiler: Glenn's death]] DID result in things working out perfectly.

** A lot of viewers felt the ending scene [[spoiler: where Susan accidentally activates a Rube Goldberg Machine showing baby pictures of Henry was this. Because why would Henry have something like that set up?]]

* GambitRoulette: [[spoiler:Henry's plan, in the end, seriously depended on ''way'' too many factors going ''just'' right in a way that it's hard to believe he actually planned for ''every'' eventuality (which is a thing he actually liked to say), even after he made sure to take into account details like the field of view of the cameras on the gun shop. The plan completely falls apart at the very last second when Susan (thanks to the RubeGoldbergMachine that Henry set earlier) finally recalls that Henry was just a kid and decides not to shoot, which makes the fact that Gregg ended up becoming a SelfDisposingVillain even more of a DeusExMachina.]]

* MoodWhiplash: A frequent criticism of the film is that it suffers from this. At first glance, it seems like a whimsical family film and it tries to pass itself off like that at points but the plot deals with the very big issue of Child Abuse and has Henry's way of solving the issue being murder not to mention [[spoiler: Henry a child dies halfway through the film.]]

* TroublingUnChildlikeBehavior: Henry exhibits this when he jumps to a plan to murder his next door neighbor to save Christina from abuse rather than gathering concrete evidence.

** Susan's arc centers on herself realizing that Henry, for all his intelligence, is still just a child... except that Henry is portrayed as so absurdly hypercompetent and seemingly justified in all his legal and financial advice that his age is basically no factor and as pointed out below regardless of how it ended up happening [[spoiler: Glenn's death]] DID result in things working out perfectly.

* InformedAttribute: The movie is prone to telling the viewer about things, [[ShowDontTell rather than showing]]. The more egregious example is Christina's abuse, which is never seen on screen, nor is any evidence of said abuse ever shown to the viewer despite both Henry and Susan insisting that Henry has been collecting all of said evidence. Susan being a neglecting parent, or at the very least apathetic, is also never shown to the viewer. Henry himself is subject to most of this - characters repeating how everyone loves Henry, yet Henry is never shown to have any friends, and tends to come off as abrasive, condescending and patronizing to everyone he talks to.

* RuleOfSymbolism: As pointed out in WebVideo/FoldingIdeas, [[MessianicArchetype Henry gets drawn with a lot of Jesus imagery]] for whatever reason: the title is based on the naming scheme of books from Literature/TheBible, Henry's family name is "Carpenter", his first "disciple" to spread knowledge of his word is named "Peter", and he even [[spoiler:dies in a [[PietaPlagiarism Pietà pose]]. When[[spoiler:Christina being adopted into the family]], Susan reads to her and Peter a story of how a flower dies but fertilizes the garden with its body, which appears to be a metaphor for both Jesus dying to elevate mankind [[spoiler:and Henry who died but improved the lives of others.]] The ending with Peter's magic trick preaching the whimsy of Henry with the snow machine also seems to reference the baptism of fire]].

* ComplexityAddiction: Henry seems to love making complex things to show off his genius such as {{Rube Goldberg Device}}s [[spoiler:and his convoluted plan to kill Gregg]].

* InformedAttribute: The movie is prone to telling the viewer about things, rather than showing. The more egregious example is Christina's abuse, which is never seen on screen, nor is any evidence of said abuse ever shown to the viewer despite both Henry and Susan insisting that Henry has been collecting all of said evidence. Susan being a neglecting parent, or at the very least apathetic, is also never shown to the viewer. Henry himself is subject to most of this - characters repeating how everyone loves Henry, yet Henry is never shown to have any friends, and tends to come off as abrasive, condescending and patronizing to everyone he talks to.

* LostAesop: The movie seems like it's trying to set up a message about apathy but thanks to various factors listed above in BrokenAesop the film loses it's message.

* InsufferableGenius: Henry. All over. He spends a lot of screen time with his mother calling her out for being a bit aloof, for not wanting to change her car, for spending some time each day playing games, and his opening scenes have him improvising a school show-and-tell just to turn it into an insulting rant to a student and then snark to his teacher how being around the other kids is good to his social development. And then it turns out that he could curb-stomp the lunch lady at checkers any time he wants but he plays with her just to have something to do during lunch hour.

* DeconstructedCharacterArchetype: Henry deconstructs the "Child Genius" by being insufferable, thinking what whatever solutions he can think of are the only solutions available, that said solutions are perfect, and ultimately still sticking to a childish vision of the world -- one where MurderIsTheBestSolution is actually applicable. [[spoiler:Even if everything else comes out A-OK thanks to Glenn killing himself, had she followed Henry's plan to the letter and it had actually worked, Susan still would have had Glenn's death on her hands and there's no telling how well she would have been able to cope.]] He also deconstructs TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth by the sheer fact that Susan, led at least partially by grief, accepts Henry's crazy plan as gospel truth up until the last possible second.

* ShaggyDogStory: [[spoiler: Since Susan ends up not killing Glen and the Principal ends up reporting Glen's abuse causing him to commit suicide it ultimately means all of Henry's planning was for the most part completely pointless in the end.]]

** The movie tries to end with this idea that [[spoiler: Even though Henry died he improved the lives of others...except the last act of the film involves Susan learning to disregard Henry because he's a child and Glenn ends up dying through something Henry had no factor in. Meaning that aside from the adoption papers Henry forged Christina ends up being adopted by the Carpenters by pure chance!]]

* {{Hypocrite}}: Henry spends his first scenes monologuing about how people can be jerks or good... and then he insults a bully, snarks to his teacher about how being among other students is good for his social development, and goes on to play checkers with the lunch lady.

* InsufferableGenius: Henry. All over. He spends a lot of screen time with his mother calling her out for being a bit aloof, for not wanting to change her car, for spending some time each day playing games, and his opening scenes have him improvising a school show-and-tell just to turn it into an insulting rant to a bully and then snark to his teacher how being around the other kids is good to his social development. And then it turns out that he could curb-stomp the lunch lady at checkers any time he wants but he plays with her just to have something to do during lunch hour.