“Invocation”
Opening: We open on an elementary school in Oklahoma… that has pony rides
and cotton candy stands… what the hell? Oh, I guess it’s carnival day or
something. Anyway, a little boy is on the swing set, while his pregnant mother
talks with another woman. Lurking in the shadows is this shady character who
looks like a cross between Josh Hartnett and Sam Rockwell. Anyway, the kid is
suddenly gone and the mother is left to run around screaming, “Billy? BILLY!”
My parents still call me Billy - it’s childish, but that’s what you get when
you have the same name as your dad.
ROLL CREDITS
Ten years later, the same mother arrives at school to pick up her now ten
year-old son, Josh, and, shockingly, finds Billy, still seven years of age, on
the swing set. Later, he is examined by Scully, who concludes that he is most
definitely the same boy, yet he won’t speak, and is clearly not a day older
from the day he was abducted. Doggett sort of glosses over these biological
impossibilities because he’s so intent on tracking down whoever the kidnapper
was. I know he’s not the “believer,” but isn’t this a bit extreme? He
tries to interrogate the kid, but his efforts prove utterly futile.
The parents bring Billy home, and by this point, he’s beginning to creep me
out with his Children of the Corn dead-eye stare. Josh is clearly freaked
out by him, as is the family dog, who barks viciously when Billy draws near.
Scully, meanwhile, informs Doggett that blood tests show that Billy is,
physically, the exact same boy as when he went missing (same enzyme levels; same
baby teeth). Doggett still seems intent on writing these things off as he shows
Scully a lead he’s developed. He broke open some court-sealed records (a
BLATANT disregard of the law, I might add) and found, who else, but the shady
guy from the beginning.
Doggett goes to visit this guy, Ronnie, in his bottom-of-the-barrel trailer
park. Turns out that Ronnie has grown himself a goatee and now looks like one of
the Backstreet Boys (you know the one I’m talking about). When Doggett
suggests that they go have a talk with Billy, Ronnie gets weirded out and
refuses. As he runs off to his trailer, Doggett removes a photo of a boy from
his wallet and stares at it with, well… no particularly discernable emotion.
That night, Billy’s father tells the mother that there’s something wrong
with the kid and she refuses to see it. As they argue, Billy walks towards Josh’s
room, knife in hand. I’m telling you, this is Children of the freakin’
Corn!
The next morning, the mother walks into Josh’s room to find her son cut
into a thousand bloody chunks of meat! Well, actually the bloody knife was
simply stuck into the mattress, but Josh himself is okay. And then they turn and
find Billy standing in the corner, with that same damn dead-eye stare. The
sheriff tells Scully and Doggett that the knife has Billy’s blood on it, even
though Billy was not found cut, and there’s a weird symbol on the handle that
a police psychic located at the crime scene ten years ago. Scully, astute
observer that she is, retrieves the drawing that Billy did earlier and finds the
same symbol, copied over and over again. Back to the trailer park, where this
burly redneck named Cal (the very definition of po’ white trash) taunts
Ronnie, who scampers off into the woods and unearths a human skull (insert
foreboding music).
