The Kid Detective

Komorebi. The scattered golden light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees. It is familiar to those who spend time in nature. Seeing it invokes memories of summer holidays when time would stand still. It is sentimental, it’s nostalgic, and it’s littered throughout 2020’s ‘The Kid Detective’. Written and directed by Evan Morgan, these shots anchor the film in the world of yesterday and fittingly so, as our titular kid detective is psychologically and geographically a man out of time. In 97 minutes, Morgan weaves a tale that while at times stumbles, ends up a convincing exploration of the weight and burden of the past.

Blessed with an ability to figure out a movie’s twist by its second act, Abe Applebaum solves the minor mysteries of the town of Willowbrook. Hailed as the ‘kid detective’, he achieves a level of fame. His celebrity reaches its zenith with an official office and an assistant (Gracie) before crushing down when he fails to solve her subsequence disappearance. The consequences continue to plague Abe now 32, played with charm and pathos by the always excellent Adam Brody. He embodies the platonic ideal of rock bottom. Accompanied with a substance abuse and concerned parents with whom’s patience he’s overdrawn. Despite suggestions to move on, Abe continues his childhood predilection for sleuthing and continues his practice. Restricted to cases broadly inconsequential until the arrival of a young woman. Tasking him to solve the gruesome murder of her boyfriend, Abe is given his first real case and motivated by a desire to right the wrongs of the past he dons the proverbial deer stalker.

Morgan reinforces the theme of the movie via a series of parallels. The first has story beats, scenarios, and even literal shots mirrored throughout the movie. As with any good mystery, a second watch is almost essential with seemingly throwaway scenes given new meaning. This cinematic rhyming underscores the change in Abe and Willowbrook’s relationship. While they’re doing the same dance, it has lost the joy and verve of the past. At times it loses any semblance of subtlety, the flashbacks are brighter, and Brody’s cynicism darkens the present. He’s confined in a maze, fated to run it over and over again. Each time, a little worse for wear.

This in itself is nothing special, but the theme is given further depth when the movie begins to deviate.

Drawing both Abe and the audience into this rhyming pattern allows the subtle differences to stand out. Our kid detective, seeing his circular life, attempts to leverage this to be one step ahead of the world. He’s been here before so he knows what will happen. Time after time, the film rejects this, ripping the rug underneath. Before, a young Abe could avoid detection by hiding in a closet. Now as an adult, he recognises the pattern and with a knowing look, attempts the same trick. Instead of the sense of adventure and tension it gave his young self, a now adult Abe is sat in a police station, explaining why he was hiding in a young girl’s room.

These variations are peppered throughout the film, progressing the theme from positing that Abe is stuck in the past to suggesting that only Abe is stuck in the past. The residents and indeed world of Willowbrook have moved on. His maze has been changed, but he’s the last one to know. Here we see and really feel our protagonist as a man out of time. This realisation imbues both his motivation but also that of those that surround him with a kind of depth. They are Nick Carraway listening to Gatsby rave about repeating the past. No character exemplifies this dynamic better that Abe’s father. Who, recognising the lengths to which Abe sees the past as holding ‘some idea of himself’, cannot in good consciousness prevent him from this tragic cycle. Jonathan Whittaker, upon that realisation provides a scene stealing performance.

Indeed, scenes like this are made more poignant with the choice to prioritise medium close ups. It is rare for a conversation to be frame both participants especially if one of them is Abe. Instead, cinematographer Mike McLaughlin prefers the shot reverse shot template. Perhaps, to further isolate our protagonist within the frame or to create a halfway house to subjectivity; allowing the audience to see the emotions on offer by the actors while keeping some distance from their characters. Broadly, the visual choices made in The Kid Detective are far from exciting; you get the sense that economy rather than storytelling won out. Too often it feels surface level. However, there remain moments, like the dinner scene above, where it all falls away and the sentiments on show are given real depth.

One such scene is one of its final, a real treat that will remain unspoilt, but is built upon the third layer of its story structure. As he interweaves the rhymes and variations, Morgan sows the seeds of The Kid Detective’s theme of most complexity. If the present is not how we imagine it, what’s to say the same doesn’t apply to the past. Upon this rests its final act, which is in equal parts tragic and understated and surprising. The maze was built on a lie. One can draw parallels to Christopher Nolan’s Inception, where a similar undercutting of a character’s reality ripples to catastrophic conclusions. Abe is both Mal, discovering his identity- his reality- is built upon a lie, and Cob haunted by the repercussions of that realisation. This framing allows Morgan to explore ideas: unfulfilled potential, the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia, and the burden of trauma.

It is impossible to watch the film removed from the ex-gifted and talented discourse. Where those who were conditioned to believe they were special children are forced to deal with the mediocrity and disappointment of adult life. It is difficult to say each idea is given sufficient depth, but they elevate The Kid Detective from a forgettable tale of arrested development to a potent narrative. It reminds us that nostalgia does not so much turn our heads back and remind us of better days. It can, too, obscure and envelope in a golden cage.