Second Coming (2014)

By CinemaSerf

Talk about a slow burn! “Jax” (Nadine Marshall) lives happily enough with “Mark” (Idris Elba) and their young son “JJ” (Kai Francis Lewis) in their well-appointed London home. When she starts to feel a bit poorly, she heads to the doctor where she is given some news that doesn’t stack up. Just how is she going to reconcile this news with “Mark”, her son and just as importantly herself? “JJ” is quite excited about the imminent prospect but his dad knows full well that something is amiss - and so becomes understandably suspicious that she’s been playing away from home. She knows that she hasn’t though, so just what is going on? Well my problem here stemmed from the fact that this latter element had the potential to be far more interesting to watch pan out. Some mysticism, perhaps? A quirk of medical science? Too few washes of the bedding? Sadly, though, none of that is remotely explored and instead we focus on a now rather contrived family drama that barely makes sense given the originating scenario. We’ve all seen plenty of relationship histrionics in films over the years and despite there being a degree of chemistry between these three characters, the story doesn’t develop and so neither do they - even after a denouement that underwhelmed. There is a great deal of dialogue, very little by way of humour and in the end I felt too much of the quirkiness of the story was left to our own imagination - assuming we could be bothered. The lacklustre scoring doesn’t really help it either, and I was just a bit disappointed. Sorry.