Wednesday’s Child

“Meet nine-year-old Kelly Marble. She never really meant to kill her parents.” Rocco Cataldo’s short, Wednesday’s Child is a quirky yet dark examination into the child psyche, shrouded in mystery from the beginning right through to the end of its nine-minute run. Exploring themes of neglect, innocence and psychological torment, Wednesday’s Child plays out eerily through the mind of a nine year old (Meredith Droeger), in an effective way.

The film follows a simple narrative of the young girl trying to understand her parents and their strange behavior by recalling all her major life events where things had seemed out of the ordinary. As she slowly learns the reasoning behind why she was allowed to eat and do whatever she wanted for two weeks, or why she was taken home by a different family in the park one day, or even her father’s year long disappearance, things only seem to get stranger for young Kelly. Eventually she does learn the truth behind her parent’s mystery and with elements of the sinister coming into play, she plots how to expose the truth.

Cinematically, the film lacks in certain area’s that could have been created differently, for example the unnecessary use of very child-like, comical props (e.g. giant tin of ‘RAT POISEN’) which although fitted in with the theme of childishness and innocence well, did not provide the correct gravity the situation that killing your own parents deserves. That being said the film does have its merits as mentioned and does hold a very clever plotline with twists, all leading in a crescendo like fashion to a very sudden ending that hopefully, if the film has succeeded, the audience will not be expecting.