It’s not everyday that a teenage girl finds herself pregnant by cassette tape, but in Electrick Children, a realistic slice-of-life story about naivete and faith, that is what she’s up against.
I have seen a lot of films that involve pregnancy. Single mothers, single fathers, adoptive parents, gay parents, hetero parents, trans parents – many experiences that are unique, but they typically follow a similar formula in terms of conception. So, that being the case – and most cases – this movie hits a little differently.
Electrick Children is the story of Rachel, a 15 year old girl being raised in a fundamentalist Mormon group in rural Utah. During a right-of-passage interview with her father (a religious leader in their faith) and witnessed by her brother, Mr. Will, Rachel sees that she is being recorded by a tape deck. Never having seen one and being very curious, she goes into the basement in the middle of the night, discovers other tapes, and listens to a rock song for the first time in her life. Mr. Will discovers this and wrestles with her to get it back. Their mother enters the room at this time and breaks them up, questioning both teens about what happened.
Within a few weeks, Rachel discovers that she is pregnant and believes that it is an immaculate conception through the rock song. When her parents arrange a quick marriage for her and kick Mr. Will out of the home (assuming he is the father of the baby), Rachel escapes to Las Vegas in hopes of finding the singer whose music got her pregnant.
This is an incredibly interesting drama that all hinges on the gentleness and naivete of Julia Garner’s Rachel. She knows very little about her body or sex, and Garner plays her with a soft likeability such that you understand why she believes what she believes. It is charming and sad at the same time.
Rory Culkin enters the story as one of various rock and rollers that Rachel meets, and he is a welcome addition. There are a few extremely intimate emotional moments that pushed me to a new respect for his skills. Raw, honest, and broken, but also wanting to believe in someone desperately.
At the beginning of the movie, you have no idea what era you’re in. It could easily be the 1800s until you spot the tape deck. But when Rachel enters Las Vegas, you can see what a difference a setting makes. She and Mr. Will are awkward and lost in a world so unlike their own.
This is a small film with an incredibly intriguing and sad premise, but it’s absolutely worth watching. Rachel and her quest are both charming and the journey she goes on opens her eyes to truths and possibilities that some of us (who live in this modern world) are still trying to figure out.
Runtime: 95 minutes
Motion Picture Rating: R
Languages Spoken In The Film: English
Should You Watch It? Yes
Did I Cry? Nope
My Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Available: Free on Prime Video or may be available for free on other streaming platforms
I have seen a lot of films that involve pregnancy. Single mothers, single fathers, adoptive parents, gay parents, hetero parents, trans parents – many experiences that are unique, but they typically follow a similar formula in terms of conception. So, that being the case – and most cases – this movie hits a little differently.
