Kid-Thing

Beneath the affectations, there’s poetry in Kid-Thing, and truth in its depiction of how absolute freedom can be a kind of trap.

Spearheaded by phenomenal pint-sized lead Sydney Aguirre, this challenging third feature from the Zellner Brothers retains much of their provocative trademark idiocy but navigates darker waters.

Kid-Thing proves as disturbing for what it is as for what it's not.

Aguirre is a find—she has none of the precociousness of the typical screen tween—but the movie’s magical-realist elements don’t jibe with the unstudied naturalism of her performance.

The film is, if nothing else, an interesting meditation on how a child who grows up without guidance might react to a situation that requires judgment.

Its main character's moral predicament with a woman inside a pit becomes a muddle of confused symbolism and trite psychoanalysis.

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.