Bad Little Kid (Collected Within Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
Dream Director: Daniels (Swiss Army Man)
Much like From a Buck 8, “Bad Little Kid” wields a masterful structure that makes an already good story pop even more. The story sees a man on death row, not long before his execution, recounting the situation that got him here to his attorney. Our protagonist has murdered a young boy, but King plays him as a stoic, empathetic individual that we want to believe in. The man explains that over the course of his life, at several opportune moments, a little shit of a boy (picture Dennis the Menace on bath salts) would appear and harass those that he cared about. The boy continues to appear, never aging, and always being able to find and hurt him. King does a great job here with building tension wherein you know that a very big conclusion is being built up to, as well as not attempting to explain the horrors here. Is the boy in fact the Devil? A ghost? Or maybe just some evil little kid that never learned manners and is incapable of aging. There’s nothing too extravagant in “Bad Little Kid,” with it depending much more on fear and mystery to keep your attention, making it great adaptation material. The Daniels came onto the filmmaking scene recently with their surreal, touching Swiss Army Man, and displaying that same sort of tenuous hold on reality would work super well here. “Bad Little Kid” plays like a haunted fairy tale that slowly begins to rot on you and Swiss Army Man is drenched in that feeling.
