THE YOUNG POISONER'S HANDBOOK Movie Review

In The Young Poisoner's Handbook, Hugh O'Conor plays Graham, a young misfit whose chemistry set provides him endless hours of consolation and companionship. After a bit of experimenting, he begins poisoning his stepmum and tracking her progress toward death in a series of charts and journals. Graham is a true sociopath; his worries and anxieties all center around being caught, and he's able to watch his stepmother's increasing agonies (and his family's accompanying worry) in a purely scientific light. He's a little Nazi doctor, pretending at first that he's interested in some sort of scientific study, but in reality is quite calmly prepared to annihilate anyone who causes him the slightest insult. What's astounding about The Young Poisoner's Handbook is that Ross and his extraordinary star Hugh O'Conor (he was Christy Brown in the childhood sequences of My Left Foot) have turned this material into very dark comedy, and have brought it off with style and grim wit. The movie is a nightmare (it's based on an actual case), and it never softens Graham's deeds or motives, yet like like other classic movie monsters, Graham is weirdly sympathetic. There's a kind of purity about his drives and ambitions that might be admirable were it not for what his drives and ambitions actually are. The movie becomes a kind of Horatio Alger story about succeeding at being monstrous—pulling yourself up by your own bloody bootstraps. You almost root for him until you imagine that it's your tea he's bringing you, complete with two sugars and one cyanide. There are similarities to A Clockwork Orange and the director acknowledges this by staging one or two obvious homage scenes. He didn't need to, though; The Young Poisoner's Handbook is a stronger, smarter, vastly more frightening film.

NEXT STOP … A Clockwork Orange, M, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

1994 (R) 99m/C GB Hugh O'Conor, Anthony Sher, Ruth Sheen, Charlotte Coleman, Roger Lloyd Pack, Paul Stacey, Samantha Edmonds, Charlie Creed-Miles; D: Benjamin Ross; W: Benjamin Ross, Jeff Rawle; C: Hubert Taczanowski; M: Robert Lane, Frank Strobel. VHS, Closed Caption CAF