Electrick Children is the best kind of indie film, about characters unlike any you've probably seen before, experiencing genuine human relationships under intriguingly unusual circumstances. The scenes and characters stay with you in an almost haunting way long after you've watched it. More than just about any other film I've seen, Electrick Children "got" the true essence of a mother-daughter relationship, and there is much more to the story than that. You get the sense that the director genuinely cares about these characters and offers the viewer an honest, almost voyeuristic view of their lives. This film is no slapstick comedy, but it does have humor and warmth.

Electric Children is an interesting debut feature from writer/director Rebecca Thomas focusing on a 15-year-old girl from a fundamentalist Mormon community in Utah, who mysteriously gets pregnant, causing her to launch off on a hastily convened road trip to Las Vegas, in an effort to find "the father" of her unborn child. This somewhat left of centre storyline is made more believable, knowing Thomas herself was raised as a Mormon. Clearly her religious experiences have undeniably strongly influenced the making of this intriguing, but ultimately uneven film.

The first act primarily set in the creepily small, remote Utah hamlet arguably features the best scenes in the movie. I use the word "creepily" deliberately, as despite the rugged attractiveness of the locations, plentiful sunshine and pollution-free natural desert environment and bed-time story sessions, the sect's embrace of biblical studies and accountability, at the expense of a normal education and social upbringing of children is quite unsettling. We can certainly accept that when 15 year old Rachel discovers she is pregnant, she is convinced that she has conceived miraculously, like the Virgin Mary, via an old cassette recorder, owned and hidden away by her mother.

Julia Garner is perfectly cast as the naive, ethereal, but determinately positive teenager, opposed to a hastily arranged shotgun marriage, by her shady father, the leader of this tiny group. Rory Culkin is also surprisingly good and effective as a rebellious teenage skater, come musician runaway, she meets after absconding from her village in a stolen pick-up.

I feel Electrick Children would have been a better film if Thomas had just concentrated on Rachel's story, with greater emphasis on her relationship with her mother, whose influence on the story behind the cassette player and ensuring events is greater than either her or Rachel realise. Instead Rachel's brother Mr Will and his experiences after hiding away in Rachel's getaway truck, is introduced as an unneeded sub-story, which arguably comes to dominate and unbalance the main narrative. On top of all this, the audience is asked to accept a huge contrivance in the third act to deepen the overall story and add more sense to earlier snippets we see of Rachel's dreams/visions. The climax to the film, whilst providing some amusement, also seems a pretty blatant rip-off from more accomplished films such as The Graduate.

Electrick Children is still worthwhile investigating however, if you're interests lie in getting a realistic peek at the type of closed community, whose collective, at times distinctly dubious, ethical actions, many might argue, should face more transparent legal scrutiny in wider mainstream society.

In a Mormon community in Utah, the fifteen year-old Rachel Angela McKnight (Julia Garner) discovers that she is pregnant. She believes in Immaculate Conception by the music of a blue cassette tape that she had listened to in a cassette recorder. Her father and religious leader Paul (Billy Zane) blames her brother Mr. Will (Liam Aiken) and expels him from home; he also arranges a marriage in the community for Rachel. However she decides to go to Las Vegas to seek out the father of her baby. She steals Paul's pickup truck and heads to Vegas, and Mr. Will that is sleeping in the trunk goes with her. They meet the skater Clyde (Rory Culkin) and his friend, the musician Johnny (John Patrick Amedori),and Clyde invites Rachel and Mr. Will to go with them in their van to the place where they live. Rachel and Clyde become romantically involved and Clyde offers to marry her. However Rachel wants to find the musician on the tape.

"Electrick Children" is an absurd story about a naive and innocent girl that was raped by her religious stepfather and believes in Immaculate Conception by the music of a blue cassette tape. The film keeps an ambiguity but what has happened is clear. Rachel is not moron, but Mormon, and certainly was induced by her stepfather to believe in Immaculate Conception. When she listens for the first time a cassette recorder, she commits a sin and concludes that the baby was generated by the music in the cassette tape. Her brother knows that Paul is the father and maybe that is why he is expelled from home. The plot is made to please the viewer but is offensive to the Mormon community and how she finds her biological father is unbelievable. But most of the characters are nice and this Indie film entertains despite the absurd. Just as curiosity, Rachel's mother is the Libby from "Lost". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Fita Azul" ("The Blue Tape")