The terrors of child-rearing raise their head in horror again as Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact, At The Devil's Door) traverses child possession and serial killer plains in his third genre film.

Sarah (Orange Is the New Black star Taylor Shilling) and her husband (Peter Mooney) realise that their young son Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) has above-average intellect at an early age. But after he starts showing signs of gross social inadequacy and violence, they soon discover that his body is hosting a reincarnated soul - the soul of a serial killer with unfinished business to attend to.

There are flashes of genius in both Jeff Buhler’s screenplay (2019’s Pet Sematary) and McCarthy’s execution in what is largely a subgenre-spanning, The Omen-meets-every-supernatural-child-killer-film effort.

Jackson Robert Scott, who stole hearts as Georgie in 2017’s IT, plays such a role as creepily and confidently as has been seen on-screen, nailing that dark-eyed, wry-smiled facial transition with the effortless efficacy of James McAvoy in Split. And Shilling’s committed horror debut as a doting concerned mother, and then strong-willed fighter, should – and no doubt will – see her take on future genre roles.

Ultimately though, The Prodigy is like a sandwich of bare lettuce leaves between fresh focaccia - top and tailed with brilliance but pitifully let down by a lacklustre filling.

The opener cleverly sets out the genre fusion by pitching parallel narratives - the serial killer’s death alongside the simultaneous birth of Miles. But that promising originality is both shortlived and underplayed, and its potential unfulfilled, as The Prodigy resorts to toeing the line of the common demon child narrative, and falling hard to predictable genre tropes that don’t bring anything new to the table.

You can see around every corner before turning it, and while a surprisingly left-field, rewardingly cruel final act harks back to the creativity teased in the pre-credit sequence, it isn't quite worth the hour of formulaic fodder that comes before it.