Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga) are well-to-do Manhattan parents whose idyllic lives begin to unravel after the birth of their second child. Baby Lily’s arrival is celebrated by Abby’s effete brother and Brad’s born-again mother, but the exceptionally precocious and well-coiffed nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan, above center) seems to harbor a swallowed resentment of his new sister — or at least that’s what the movie’s tremulous, piano-inflected score tells us. As Abby starts showing signs of wild-eyed strain that may or may not be an acute case of postpartum psychosis, Brad comes to suspect that the unnervingly mature and angelic Joshua may be the manipulative mastermind behind a series of increasingly unfortunate events.

This is another fashionably miniaturized sociopath’s tale, in the mold of last year’s remake of The Omen, but filtered tonally through the more cloistered disquiet of 2004’s Birth. To the nominal credit of director George Ratliff (the documentary Hell House, ha) and his co-writer David Gilbert, the film doesn’t load up on jump-scares and obvious music cues; its makers are reaching for a sense of accumulated domestic unease. Their methods, though, come across as indulgent of a whole other set of art-house clichés. Joshua may be unsatisfying in very precious, upscale ways, but it’s unsatisfying nonetheless. For the full capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.