It's been a tough end to 2025, at the risk of going on like a broken record, I was unexpectedly made redundant from my bill paying job, leading to life getting in the way of this blog. Adopted therefore (directed and co-written by Chris Stokes - The Stepdaughter 2) was the first film I had watched for review in a while. Thrillers where the antagonist is a child, really depend on the acting capabilities of the child. Sadly that isn't the case here, but that child actor isn't singled out, as a lot of the acting here was unfortunately sub-par, not helped by a weak script.
Carrie (Drew Sidora - Farm House, White Chicks) and her husband James (Daniel J. Johnson - The Stepmother trilogy) have decided to adopt a child, due to being unable to have children of their own. They think they have struck gold when they are matched with 10 year old Dylan (Jayden Aguirre) - the boy is intelligent, polite, and the couple are told he is a good person. What they don't know is that Dylan is a young sociopath, one who murdered his previous foster family, and who has no issues with getting rid of anyone who will interfere with him having the perfect family life.
Typically in these type of films, it will be a revelation that the suspicion that the innocent appearing child is actually a psycho. With Adopted, the prologue reveals this straight away to the viewer, showing Dylan telling the police how his foster family were murdered by an intruder while flashback sequences of Dylan being the one doing the killings is shown. His smooth way of talking reminded me a bit of Kevin McCallister from Home Alone, having the creepy child actor way of appearing much more grown up than a child their age should be. He acted so grown up that I was almost expecting an Orphan type reveal. He never once came across as sincere, though the by-product of this acting style meant that he fitted into his role very well. Most of the lines he says are the character being equally insincere, though within the film world people rarely pick up on that. No one within the film particularly stood out with their acting, and part of that is down to the often stupid story.
It was an issue that Dylan is so able to frame his murders as crimes or accidents, I'm sure the police would be able to tell from the location of wounds on victims how tall the perpetrator would be, so it seemed a bit silly he was constantly able to get away with his crimes without much suspicion. It was also never explained why the foster agency didn't have any record of Dylan's previous family all being murdered. The agency seemed a bit suspect, with the couple adopting the boy before they had even met him, and apparently not realising that he had huge scars on his legs from an abusive incident when Dylan was younger. The couple come across as really dense, aside from not knowing anything about the child they have decided to adopt, they also make the ridiculous decision to adopt a second child mere weeks after taking on the troubled boy. Sure he is a pint-sized maniac, but I kind of was on his side with his warranted anger and jealousy towards his new sister who he wasn't consulted on about, and how Carrie and James appear to adore more than him, almost forgetting their first adopted child existed!
Not too much really happened until the bonkers third act. There are a couple of suspicious incidents that the young boy causes, but the family are none the wiser. That third act is when things really ramp up, including an almost hilarious fight between a grown adult and a child. He might be armed with a lethal weapon, but a young boy wandering about with an angry scowl on his face was pretty funny, as was the ambiguous ending. All characters here make unbelievable decisions, the patchy script just came across as stupid, a film populated with idiot people who in the fake film world sense, deserved what they got for being so blind! Have to love easily accessible guns in the dystopian and increasingly fascist U.S of A!
Sometimes the sheer silliness of Adopted's story won through, but so much of it was so unbelievable that I found it increasingly difficult to get on with the unfolding story. This wasn't a great film, it was let down by a basic story and some suspect acting. I will give kudos to the flashback sequences, I enjoyed those, and I also found the third act thrilling, if also outlandish. Never my favourite sub-genre of thriller/horror films to begin with, but Adopted was one of the weaker entries of that type I have seen. It will be available on DVD and Digital in Q2 2026, and a sequel was made this year, reuniting some of the original cast.
SCORE:
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