First off I wanna say I found this movie on tubi and it covers a very heavy and disturbing topic that deeply troubles me so I was worried going in. I think the characters are very good, the mother, and teacher and little boy are all great characters who I cared about. And I don't think the plot is bad at all at least in the beginning, however once the teacher started using facilitated communication the plot kind of lost me a bit. My main issue with the film is I don't think its plausible. What I mean is, the child is portrayed as severely autistic to the point where he cannot communicate and the film shows that the boy has a severe learning disability. In the beginning he can't even spell or seem to read. A regular child who is getting groomed is not going to understand what is happening to them is wrong, much less a child with a severe learning disability so that part just didn't feel realistic to me. How would he even understand what happened to him or know it was bad? I felt the plot would have been more realistic if the boy had been older at least where he could understand the concept of what happened. Secondly even if the child knew what happened was wrong, I don't believe the jury would believe him because he isn't able to really communicate properly. I feel the beginning and middle are good but the ending just feels incredibly contrived. I get the film makers probably wanted a feel good ending but in terms of the way the child is portrayed and his circumstances the ending just isn't realistic, and because of that I couldn't fully enjoy this movie. All that being said it is a decent film and the boy playing the character Michael did a amazing job, I would've really believed he was autistic.
Review of Cries from the Heart
