It takes a special kind of movie to make you root for the guy who wants to abandon a child. Usually, that’s a cue for audiences to hiss at the screen and start Googling the number for child protective services. But in The Godsend—a film whose idea of suspense is watching a man stare thoughtfully into the distance while another one of his kids dies—you quickly realize the child in question is less “innocent waif” and more “blonde bob-cut harbinger of doom.”
By the time the credits roll, The Godsend has managed to murder three of the Marlowe children, ruin the parents’ marriage, and convince you that maybe, just maybe, some babies really are better left in the woods.
The Plot That Kills Off Its Own Characters Like It’s on a Deadline
Alan and Kate Marlowe are a happily married couple with four kids, because this is the early ’80s when contraception apparently didn’t exist in British horror films. On a wholesome family walk, they bump into a pregnant stranger who radiates “unresolved witchcraft subplot” energy. Instead of calling the police or at least backing slowly away, they invite her home like she’s a long-lost cousin who smells faintly of grave dirt.
Before Alan can politely throw her out, she cuts the phone line—always a promising sign in a houseguest—and promptly goes into labor. Kate delivers the baby, and the next morning the mysterious woman has vanished, leaving behind the child like a cursed item in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. They name her Bonnie, because “Omen-ette” was too on the nose.
From here, the plot becomes a grim countdown of which Marlowe kid will die next. First, baby Matthew mysteriously expires in his playpen while Bonnie sits nearby looking like she’s wondering what human skin tastes like. Then Davy wanders off during a picnic and is found drowned in a creek, with Bonnie sporting suspicious scratches. Third, Sam turns up dead in a barn, and Alan finds Bonnie’s ribbon nearby—because if you’re going to be a pint-sized serial killer, you might as well leave calling cards.
The parents, instead of connecting the dots, write each off as an “accident,” proving they would lose every round of Clueeven if the killer confessed directly.
The Parenting Olympics: Gold Medal in Denial
Alan starts to get the vague sense that Bonnie might be a problem—probably around the time the family’s mortality rate spikes like a bad stock portfolio—but Kate won’t hear of it. She insists Bonnie is sweet, innocent, and definitely not an unstoppable murder engine in patent leather shoes.
Alan tries reasoning with her using the cuckoo bird analogy: how cuckoos lay eggs in other birds’ nests, and the chick shoves the other babies out to get all the resources. Kate stares at him like he’s speaking Swahili. Apparently, in this marriage, “basic biological metaphor” is grounds for outrage.
This is where the movie accidentally stumbles into comedy. Alan kidnaps their last surviving child, Lucy, to keep her away from Bonnie, and gives Kate an ultimatum: “It’s her or Lucy.” Kate refuses to choose, which is admirable in a hostage negotiation but idiotic when the other option is a child-shaped grim reaper.
The Film’s Definition of Suspense: Watching People Ignore Murder
The Godsend’s pacing could charitably be described as “leisurely,” like the director thought this was a period drama about antique doll collecting. Instead of tightening the screws, the film drifts between tragedies like a half-interested obituary writer. Each death is treated with the same level of urgency you’d apply to finding a stain on the carpet.
Worse, the film avoids showing Bonnie actually doing anything lethal. This is probably meant to keep things ambiguous—Is she really evil? Are the deaths just bad luck?—but instead, it feels like the movie is shy about its own premise. You don’t give us a murderous child and then cut away when the murdering happens. That’s like Jaws where the shark only sends postcards.
The Performances: Overacting, Underreacting, and One Smirk Too Many
Malcolm Stoddard plays Alan with the constant facial expression of a man who’s lost his car keys but suspects the toddler ate them. Cyd Hayman as Kate delivers all her lines like she’s auditioning for Masterpiece Theatre, not a film where half the cast are under four feet tall and homicidal.
Wilhelmina Green, as Bonnie, spends the entire film doing what’s essentially a masterclass in creepy stillness—she’s all wide eyes and faint smiles, like a cherub on a Victorian tombstone that you just know comes alive at night. It’s effective, but the script gives her nothing to do except be ominous in doorways. You half expect her to start floating.
Angela Pleasence, as the mysterious birth mother, is onscreen for maybe five minutes total, but she still manages to out-creep everyone else, delivering her lines with the energy of someone who already knows your death date.
The Ending: Because We Needed to End on a Shoulder Shrug
By the time we limp to the finale, Kate has had an accident (which feels less like “tragic mishap” and more like “cosmic punishment for bad decision-making”) and a miscarriage. Bonnie is left alone with Lucy, and Alan frantically calls to warn her. Unfortunately, Bonnie uses… mind control? Jedi powers? The script never bothers explaining… to make Lucy jump out a window. Alan lunges to kill Bonnie but is stopped by the world’s most unhelpful neighbor.
In the final insult, Kate chooses to stay with Bonnie. Yes, after burying three sons and watching her daughter fall to her death, she decides that the murder-elf is the hill she wants to die on. Alan wanders off, presumably to drink himself into the next decade. The last shot has him spotting Bonnie’s birth mother, pregnant again, about to ruin yet another family’s life. He tries to warn them, but they vanish—because apparently The Godsend is angling for a sequel that, mercifully, never happened.
Technical Merits (Or Lack Thereof)
Visually, the movie has all the style of a BBC Sunday night drama about rural sheep farming. The direction is functional but bloodless—literally, since the film is terrified of showing anything too violent. Deaths happen offscreen, soundtracked by the British countryside and your own growing frustration.
The music is a weird mix of lullaby and doom, as if the composer couldn’t decide whether we were watching a horror film or the opening credits to The Waltons. The editing moves with the urgency of a pensioner browsing a charity shop. And the cinematography seems dedicated to making every scene look like it was shot through the bottom of a teacup.
The Real Horror: Missed Potential
On paper, The Godsend could have been a nasty little gem—a “killer kid” movie with a British gothic twist. Imagine The Omen stripped of the budget and religious overtones, but still committed to psychological horror. Instead, what we get is a tepid domestic drama occasionally interrupted by “accidents” that are only suspenseful if you’ve never heard of foreshadowing.
It tries to be subtle, but subtlety only works if your audience is engaged enough to fill in the blanks. Here, the blanks are so large they feel like plot black holes, sucking all tension into a void of polite conversations and tea breaks.
Final Verdict: A Murderous Toddler Couldn’t Save This Snooze-Fest
If you’ve ever wanted to watch The Omen but wished it took place entirely in well-kept living rooms with minimal screaming, The Godsend is for you. For everyone else, it’s a glacially paced PSA about the dangers of taking in random pregnant strangers.
The biggest mystery isn’t whether Bonnie is evil—it’s how Alan managed to stay married to a woman who defends her like she’s a misunderstood kitten while their family tree is being pruned with alarming precision. By the end, you’re less horrified and more exasperated, silently rooting for Bonnie to just get it over with and finish them all off.
