The Bad Seed (Spoilers? Maybe. But I don't tell the endings.)

So I saw The Crush. Then I read lots of reviews that liken it to Fatal Attraction and Lolita. For me, it was an obvious, teenage retread of The Bad Seed from way back in 1956. I'm surprised none of the reviews mentioned it.

In The Bad Seed, the villain is a precocious, supposedly sweet five-year-old girl, who can turn on the charm and the tears, whichever is most manipulative. All the while she does horrible things to everyone in sight except her parents (if memory serves) who would never suspect a thing of their darling angel. This little girl even drowns one of her playmates.

Sound familiar? The moral of both movies seems to be that some people are born bad and cannot change. There is no hope for them. They can't help that they are sociopaths, but there is no cure, and society must be protected from them. They are inherently evil. It's almost like a physical part of them that can't be amputated. Hint: Compare the endings of the two films. They are also virtually identical.

Sure, there is no romantic angle in The Bad Seed, but I don't see that as necessary to The Crush. Wow! I just said that the driving force of the plot was inessential! I guess that should tell you how trifling I found the plot. Sheesh!

The Crush is not among the very worst films I've seen, but in light of a reasonably good film like The Bad Seed, I guess it's on the level of Cruel Intentions.

Has anyone else seen The Bad Seed? If so, did you see a connection, or have I got it all wrong?