Why ‘The Book of Henry’ Isn’t As Bad As Everybody Says — IndieWire’s Movie Podcast (Screen Talk Episode 153)

Sometimes, one movie can generate such extreme backlash in reviews that the reviews become a story even more than the movie. Such is the case with “The Book of Henry,” Colin Trevorrow’s followup to “Jurassic World,” which opened the 2017 L.A. Film Festival and faced immediate backlash. It’s hard to know what to make of the movie, which begins as a sentimental family drama and then turns into a dark, Hitchcockian suspense tale, but the pans would suggest that nobody should bother buying a ticket to find out for themselves.

Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson aren’t so sure. In this week’s episode of Screen Talk, the co-hosts discuss why the movie is, at the very least, an interesting failure — and how it’s facing a pack mentality that often crops up in the critical community. That leads to a broader discussion of the challenges facing the L.A. Film Festival as it attempts to build its audience and how it compares to another film festival that kicked off this week across the country, BAMcinemaFEST.

Stay tuned for the end of this week’s episode, which includes a hearty debate about “Cars 3” and updates from an Oscar season that is already starting to take shape.

Listen to the full episode above.

Screen Talk is available on iTunes.

You can subscribe here or via RSS. Share your feedback with Thompson and Kohn on Twitter or sound off in the comments. Browse previous installments here, review the show on  and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk. Check out the rest of Indiewire’s podcasts on iTunes right here.

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