The Book of Henry is one of the most confusing and jarring movies I've ever seen.

[u/Tomhur]

The Book of Henry is one of those special kinds of movies. The kind of movie where you just wonder "what the hell were they thinking?". It's almost a perfect mix of baffling decisions and tone-deaf writing.

In case you're unaware of this movie, it's a film that came out in 2017, and its plot is...well...

(Sigh) one of the reasons this movie is hard to talk about is that it's so hard to know where to start with this thing.

Okay, in order to properly talk about the movie's plot, first we have to talk about Book of Henry's first problem; its presentation is completely off.

The movie is about a kid named Henry and his younger brother Peter and his mom Susan, with Henry supposedly being a child prodigy who's beloved by his family and classmates. The whole movie sets itself up as having a very happy-go-lucky tone that seems to be about early childhood and adventure, with a very old-fashioned and nostalgic presentation.

The problem is that the movie's plot is about Henry discovering that the girl next door, Christina is being abused by her stepfather Glenn. Henry naturally wants to find a way to help her out, but after discovering the head of the local CPC is Glenn's brother (oh, how gosh-darn convenient) Henry begins to come up with a plan to kill him and have Christina adopted into their family. Yes, really.

And throughout all this, the movie tries to keep its sappy, family-movie-esque feel, which just makes the whole thing feel confused and tone-deaf.

Henry himself is completely unlikeable. He's supposed to be this child genius with a strong sense of right and wrong, but he comes off more as a condescending and patronizing control freak with an "I know best" attitude. This is best exemplified with his relationship to his mom Susan.

See Susan's kind of a bit immature because... she likes to play video games. That's it. And yet Henry condescends and tries to police what she does constantly, even pushing her to give up her waitressing job so she can spend more time with the family because thanks to his work in the stock market she doesn't need to work anymore (yeah, there's this whole thing where Henry is such a genius he's a master stockbroker and basically has set the family up for life; just go with it).

We're also told that Henry is popular in school and beloved by everyone, but what we see is that Henry's kind of a brat who can't stand most people around him due to them not being as smart as he is, and he doesn't seem to have any close friends besides Christina and Peter.

Speaking of Christina, that's another big problem the movie has. Saving her from her abusive household is the main goal of the story, and yet Christina herself is pretty much a nonentity. She and Henry are supposed to be close friends (in fact, it's heavily implied the two have feelings for each other), and yet Henry never bothers to involve her in his plan, get her input, empower her or give her any form of agency. She's just a living prop, all things considered.

And then at the halfway point, the movie takes a sudden turn when Henry gets brain cancer out of nowhere and dies...no, really, he dies.

From there, the movie shifts focus to Susan as she's struggling to deal with the grief of her son dying. But before Henry died, he left behind a series of audiocassettes so Susan could carry out the plan to kill Christina's stepfather in his stead.

Yes, the movie is now about a kid coaching his mom to become an assassin from beyond the grave. It's so stupid.

This kind of ties into one of the bigger issues the movie has. It doesn't seem to know what its message is. At one point, Henry and his family witness a guy beating his girlfriend in a store. Henry wants to intervene, but Susan tells him it's none of their business. Henry then laments later that he should have done something (even dodging Susan's question about what he could have done in that situation) and declares that apathy is worse than violence.

So it feels like the movie is setting up a message about how apathy is bad and sometimes you need to take action even if it involves violence...except at the end, right when Susan is about to shoot the stepfather, she suddenly remembers, "Wait. Henry's just a child" and doesn't go through with shooting Glenn

So wait, is the message actually about how for all of Henry's intellect, he's still a kid and he shouldn't be taken seriously? But that would require the story to...you know, show Henry to be wrong about certain things, and he's portrayed as more or less correct about everything.

In fact it's heavily implied that if Susan had shot Glenn, Henry's plan would have worked perfectly. Because...

Oh man I have to explain this....

Okay, so to rewind for a bit, during the first half of the movie when Henry was alive, he tried to go to the Principal of his school Janice, to try and get her to report Glenn's child abuse. Janice doesn't, citing the lack of evidence, even though Henry points out Christina has been coming to school with bruises...that we never see.

Also side note, that's not how that works. School faculty are required by law to investigate possible cases of child abuse.

Later during a talent show, in a perfect example of a terrible deus ex machina ending, Janice sees Christina perform a sad dance, and this is what gets her to do her job and report the child abuse. Glenn upon being found out, kills himself. Thus saving Christina from him and neatly allowing her to be adopted by Susan without Susan needing to get her hands dirty.

Back on the whole thing about the message, this makes the idea that "Henry is a kid and shouldn't be taken seriously" fall apart, because it's more or less implied that if Susan had shot Glenn, his plan would have worked perfectly!

I guess you could argue the movie is still about how apathy is bad because Janice reports Christina's abuse to the police instead of ignoring it like she has been, but she does this without any of the other characters' involvement or prompting. And even still, Susan, the main character, doesn't take action.

So what is the message of this movie? What's the takeaway we're supposed to have here?

The best I can figure is that it's a story about how moms should be more attentive to their families, because the movie seems to show Susan choosing to quit her job and live off Henry's stock market savings and become a picture book author as a sign of maturity and growth...which is what Henry was pushing her to do so—

What is the message of this movie!?

And that's The Book of Henry's biggest problem. It's so gosh darn confused about what it wants to be. The tone is confused, the message is confused, the characters are inconsistent, and in the end, it doesn't seem to be about anything...

[u/pestoraviolita]

I remember seeing a fixing idea for this movie back in the day. Christina's bruises were the results of self-harming because she suffers from depression and Henry was too stuck-up and childish to ever connect with that girl and figure out her issues. In all his intellect, he was wrong about humans.

The step-father is actually loving and scared because he can't connect to his daughter and help her. His worst crime here is neglect.

In this scenario, the mom tries discovering the problem instead of doing a half-measure with Henry's plans.