Maggie Gyllenhaal goes from caring to creepy in this Netflix release about a precocious 5-year-old (Parker Sevak) and the teacher (Gyllenhaal) who believes she’s the only one taking his giftedness seriously.

Floundering in a continuing-education poetry class (her teacher’s played by Gael García Bernal), she finds the spark she’s been missing in the soulful poetic ramblings of little Jimmy, whose parents and baby sitter just think he’s a “weirdo.”

Gyllenhaal, a master at conveying a conflicted inner life, is pitch-perfect as she allows her concern for Jimmy to slowly slide off the rails of appropriateness. By the time she’s illicitly taken the kid to recite at the Bowery Poetry Club, you know things are headed south. But director Sara Colangelo excels at nuance: Jimmy’s poetry is quite beautiful and seems destined to be buried by his screen-obsessed, fast-paced world. Gyllenhaal has a resting sad face that sums it all up perfectly.