However, Eastwood perhaps fares the worst with the children. Making us like them in a story such as this should normally be a cakewalk. But here they are cool, calculating and almost completely un-childlike.

The same Eastwood captured a range of emotions flowing beneath the surface of normalcy in Mystic River, also involving a father and a murdered child. Here, while he stretches himself as much out with a story that requires no embellishments at all, he only bobs on the surface.

The title Changeling itself is derived from West European folklore, and means the offspring of a fairy who has been secretly left in the place of a human child. They are not nice beings, and they take a heavy toll on the mother. Clever or not, the connotation perhaps goes all against what Christine stands for in the film.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com