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Jacob Chase’s horror film about an autistic boy who is pursued by a monster that lives inside his mobile phone is a mixed bag This uneven American-made horror film revolves around a young, non-verbal autistic boy named Oliver (Marriage Story’s Azhy Robertson) who finds himself pursued by a monster that lives inside his mobile phone – and any other mobile devices with screens to hand. His mother Sarah (Gillian Jacobs) and dad Marty (John Gallagher Jr) are going through a rough patch: their marriage has been clearly frayed in part by the challenges of parenting a child with such acute special needs, who needs to use his phone to communicate and who finds it difficult to look his mum in the eye.As a portrait of a family coping with a kid on the spectrum, this is very much a mixed bag: credible and well researched in some respects, but slipping up badly in other places. At times it’s as if the film-makers made a calculated decision to sacrifice verisimilitude in order to ensure Oliver always stays relatable and movie-moppet cute for a general audience. Continue reading...