User Reviews

I heard about this film when going through a list of banned films. This film was banned in the UK because of the James Bulger case & still today. Though I caught this one on YouTube. The film didn't have much of a story to it but it was pretty dark & evil in most places!

The film doesn't waste much time & pretty much gets stuck in with 3 kills of his foster parents in the space of 7 minutes approximately! The kills are pretty disturbing! Especially the one where he kills the youngest daughter Beth, where he wobbles the diving board until she falls in & drowns. Although you don't see this, the sound of the splashing stopping suddenly implies that she died! I thought this was pretty evil & twisted! Then the mum who he plainly just electrocutes with a hairdryer whiles she's taking a bath! Then the father who comes home & sees his dead daughter lying lifeless in the pool & swiftly in shock, he slips on the marbles that Mikey laid out & he smashes through the door only for Mikey to brutally bludgeon him with a steel bat! This was a bloody scene! Nasty!

Police arrive & Mikey tells them it was a man who done it. They believe him & he gets adopted by another family! Uh Oh!

Then for the space of 40 minutes no deaths occur, which now would be bad considering this film is a horror, but he bonds well with the new foster parents hes been put with! He crushes on the next door neighbours daughter, Jessie & gets jealous when he sees her & with her boyfriend. He then kills him off after a failed attempt at getting her to dislike him by killing Jessie's cat, Rosie! Evil or what! He begins to worry the teacher at his school (whose friends with his foster mum) when he draws depraved pictures with blood in them & self harms himself at school. His teacher then begins to start digging deeper into his Mikey's past & find out about the murders of his previous family. It's only then after killing Jessie's boyfriend off (when Mikey embraces her) that she suspects that he killed him. His foster mum also suspects this after an incident & a slight death threat involving electrocution!

Mikey then starts to kill off the rest of the family! His step mum with a hammer & slitting her throat via a fall through the balcony. His gym teacher with a bow & arrow & his mum friend teacher with a slingshot! This is the point of the film which got crazy! He also at one point terrorizes Jessie & nearly kills her!

Then to top it off he blows up the house with his stepfather inside (not before using the same fashion of "Hi dad!" he did with his previous father) Then afterwards Mikey gets adopted by new parents & calls himself Josh & well...the whole thing starts all over again! Creepy...!

The film was pretty good & had a level of darkness & sheer creepiness about the kid who looked & was pure evil! The blood was alright in this fill as were the kills, though some could've been abit better! Story was abit simple, though it's not explained why Mikey was evil in the first place! But it was overall a good film with a twisted premise!

Overall, it was a good film! But it lacked a few things here & there! But it was a decent film! I recommend it to all Horror fans!

I came across this quite recently and was surprised to find that this movie is still banned in the UK, because of the Jamie Bulger case and this movie unfortunately got caught up in all the mist, and I can kinda see why, but it would be nice to see a long awaited belated release of this movie in the UK market as it is a fun little gem.

To be honest though it's this movie's banned status that got me intrigued to this and the killer kids genre of horror/slasher are always fun I personally enjoyed the Omen movies, The Bad Seed and The Children, but this is in a league of its own. The movie itself is like I said really fun and moves along at a quick pace, the opening we have the sweet little 9 year old Mikey killing off his current family in quick succession by drowning, hairdryer and baseball bat, talk about fun and then quickly moving on to a new family the Trentons who eventually along with many others meet a similar fate.

Yes this movie is totally absurd and unbelievable, I mean how can a little child overpower an adult and it doesn't seem that they try to hard to fend for themselves and therefore making it way too easy for him to kill them, but there are some scenes which are disturbing like the little girl in the swimming pool was unsettling and the beating with the bat was fun but totally unrealistic and that's pretty much the tone throughout the entire movie, at times it is disturbing and yet at other times I couldn't stop laughing and the marble slingshot murder was also cool.

But one of the failings is that we don't get to find out why Mikey is the way he is and why he freaks out of someone takes his shirt off, none of that gets explained, and some of the dialogue is corny as well, and some of the acting is quite questionable at the best of times. But the standouts are Brian Bonsall gives a hilarious and enjoyable turn as the cold blooded killer child Mikey and a special nod to Ashley Laurence as the teacher, who I also enjoyed in the Hellraiser movies, she really pulls you in and seems to be the only character on the ball, she's not fooled by him at all and makes her investigating scenes a highlight and rather interesting and Josie Bissett was simply stunning as the teenager next door who gets caught up in all the mess, she did okay and the Trentons played by John Diehl and Mimi Craven were likable and ideal as parents, but shame they weren't given much to do.

All in all I found Mikey highly enjoyable with inventive deaths and highly entertaining and not meant to be taken seriously I don't think.

Following the James Bulger murder in Liverpool in 1993, Mikey was banned from the UK. Unlike plenty of other movies that have been since re-released (like, for example, our three different Video Nasties articles - follow the links for 1, 2 and 3), this movie is not allowed to play across the pond.

Mikey (Brian Bonsall, who was Andy Keaton on Family Ties) starts the film off by drowning his sister Beth and throwing a hairdryer into the bathtub while his foster mother Grace is just trying to let Calgon take her away. If you're like, "Mikey, top that!" he soon answers by tripping his foster dad with marbles and beating his brains out with a bat while videotaping the murder. Oh Mikey - you've won me over before the credits even ran!

He gets a new family and plenty of friendly victims, which include Josie Bisset from Hitcher In the Dark as a 15-year-old girl who he falls for and Ashley Laurence from Hellraiser as a teacher who pays the price for caring about Mikey's emotions. Lyman Ward - Ferris Bueller's dad - and Mimi Craven - second wife of Wes - appear, along with Mark Venturini, Suicide from Return of the Living Dead.

If you've ever yearned to see a pre-pubescent child annihilate people with slingshots, crossbows and shoving them through rails and off the second floor of a house - not to mention Molotov cocktails - then you should pretty much watch this one.

'Mikey' is a controversial film. I understand that, considering its strong subject. It is a well made movie with almost perfect pace, but one can't deny it is disturbing to see a child doing those horrible things.

Likely 'The Good Son', which came out the year after this one, must have (to a degree) took some inspiration from this. They are both about a murderer child. However, 'Mikey' is considerably more violent than 'The Good Son'. The kid from 'Mikey' is more dangerous and brutal than the kid from 'The Good Son'. Just so you get an idea, Mikey punishes and kills a total of 8 people with no mercy (and we can add the fishes which deaths he is responsible for). In the very beginning of the film, Mikey already shows how much of a disturbed child he is by killing 3 people.

However, we never really get to know how did Mikey become so evil, what made him turn out to be a mentally ill child. 'The Good Son' has the same issue. But likely it was to due to a past of strong childhood abuse.

Unlike in 'The Good Son', however, here the villain doesn't die. Instead, he escapes, pretends his own death and changes his name for Josh so that he won't be caught.

Brian Bonsall portrays very well the killer child. I also enjoyed Josie Bissett's performance as Jessie. Plus, Josie was hot in this.

But, back to the main subject, Mikey is cute and apparently lovable. However, this makes him the perfect actor, because thanks to that he disguises very well his true nature. Mikey is one of the best examples of a «wolf in sheep's clothing».

For people who find interesting the theme of psychopath children, I recommend this. But for those who get disturbed with it, I advice them to avoid this to all costs, especially at night - more sensitive people might have nightmares with this. People should beware: they are going to see things that will shock them.

That said, the movie is interesting, thrilling, scary and intense. A reasonable movie. Funny it isn't. It is about a serious subject, not something to make fun of.

A horribly disturbed film, especially in light of youth that were actually murdered in Britain where it is still banned, this is beyond morbid. Brian Bonsall is genuinely creepy and devious as the films antagonist, a perverse brat who will literally kill for what he wants and/or doesn't get. He falls for a local girl, and murders her boyfriend, and he sees her expectantly as if to replace him. A natural born killer, all Mikey does is murder and kiss up to the authorities after wards. At the end, it's easy to see how it will play out after, more adoptions, more murder. In conclusion, teen slasher flicks are always great, I don't know about toddler slasher flicks though.

This early 90's chiller is about a 5 (!) year old serial killer. Well, that's disturbing. He murders people without a visible change in his facial expressions. I'd say he's gifted. Only Michael Myers was able to pull that off so far. Although the basic subject is original, the whole movie is rather average. I'd even say passable and not recommended. The young Mikey has a wrong way to deal with his emotions. After being punished by his parents he doesn't obey them...he slaughters them !! Because of his very young age, he isn't suspected of course so the police closes up the case as a robbery with deceased victims. Mikey is adopted by a new family and it all starts out fine. He especially is keen on his new neighbor girl played by Jodie Bisset (the blond chick from "Melrose Place") One problem : she's about 15 years older than he is so he can't handle the fact she has a boyfriend. Overwhelmed by hate, the little psychopath inside Mikey comes alive again... I didn't regret watching it but still I have the feeling something better could have been done with it. Mikey is a standard thriller with the right amount of suspense, nudity and humor but it could have been a lot more if you ask me. I loved seeing Ashley Laurence acting again,though. She was the leading actress in my favorite film Hellraiser and here, in Mikey, she plays the teacher who first starts to think there's something wrong with the little brat. Mikey is a good film to watch if nothing better appears on TV or if you've seen everything else in the videostore already. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't have a lot to say about this movie, except that people who actually found this film entertaining or gave it a good review are the sort of people that really do scare me.

Mikey is a miniature psychopath who frankly, doesn't actually have a reason for the development of his psychotic behavior! He kills a little girl by luring her into a swimming pool and letter her drown. This grotesque murder of the innocent in and of itself is what I found truly despicable! Of course naturally this miniature psychopath gets away with it, but thankfully no sequel was ever made! Good riddance!

This is not to say that young killers can not be justified in any sense- it just means that the young killer in this film was tasteless. It seems to me that the development of the psychopath child in "Friday the 13th: The Orphan" was more worthy of viewing.

The film is worth a watch (if you like slasher flicks or creepy kid films that is), but is far from perfect. Some things don't add up, like a ten year old kid bashing an adults skull in with a metal bat, or when Mikey throws a hair dryer at his adopted moms' full bath tub, she catches it, and it somehow still manages to electrocute her. Like I get that her hands were wet but come on. Not to mention that many of the characters were killed primarily by their own stupidity in the third act. I mean this is a 10 year old boy mom, stop screaming and start beating him up! I have noticed that out of all genres, horror is by far the biggest mixed bag. It has absolute schlock as well as masterpieces, along with dozens of sub-genres. And for this film being in the slasher sub-genre, with their being 2 bad films for every good one in it, I say this is a good slasher movie but mainstream audiences pry wouldn't watch it more than once, if that. Final verdict: if you like slashers, watch it. If you like thrillers, watch it. Other wise, don't.

Brian Bonsall of 'Family Ties' fame plays a nine year old Bad Seed who murders almost anybody who rubs him the wrong way. In the opening minutes of "Mikey", he's hard at work slaughtering his current foster family. Soon, he's adopted by well-meaning couple Neil (John Diehl, 'Miami Vice') and Rachel (Mimi Craven, "A Nightmare on Elm Street"), and to them he's a perfect little angel. But we all know it isn't going to be long before he's resuming his murderous ways.

Bonsall gives a creditable performance in this hilariously trashy, silly, nonsensical early 90s addition to the "killer kiddie" genre. Written by Jonathan Glassner, it enacts an unsurprising scenario wherein some adults and older people get wise to Mikey, and attempt to do something about him, while Rachel and especially Neil prove to be stubborn dummies. This is also the kind of movie where victims are pretty clueless and don't do much to try to save their own lives. People may end up rooting for this psychotic brat by default.

The cast features a couple of familiar faces: also appearing are Lyman Ward (the title characters' dad in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off") as the principal, Ashley Laurence ("Hellraiser") as a concerned teacher, Josie Bissett ('Melrose Place') as the sexy teenage neighbour upon whom Mikey crushes, Mark Venturini ("The Return of the Living Dead") as a detective, and Whit Hertford ("Jurassic Park") as a neighbour boy. These people give a straight-faced go at this exploitative story, which dishes out some fairly amusing kills and half-hearted attempts at suspense. It builds to one of those grand finales that truly brings the house down.

If you're looking for familial thrillers or horror films, you could do better (yes, "The Stepfather" is a better example of this sort of thing), but ultimately "Mikey" is good for some mild chuckles, thrills, and titillation. It works best if you do NOT take it seriously.

One of the most twisted but amusing touches: Mikey takes the time to videotape all of his misdeeds, later watching the tapes and enjoying his own handiwork. He dubs them "Mikey's Funniest Home Videos".

Six out of 10.