Featuring the voices of Jeffrey Evan Thomas and Lauren Ashley Carter. Rating not available.

The concept of the bad seed, like that of the extra-gifted child, has long been a staple of movies and literature. After watching The Prodigies, I had to wonder if that cultural notion was familiar to Antoine Charreyron, a French animator, director, and video-game designer who comes up with some sharp, if sometimes computer-stiff, images here but has no sensible story to offer.

Based on a novel by Bernard Lenteric, this confusing tale—given an American voice cast—centres on Jimbo, an electronic tinkerer with abusive parents who go ballistic in the first scene and either murder each other or are killed by their teenage son. Stuck in an asylum for years, the older Jimbo (now voiced by Jeffrey Evan Thomas) is rescued by a business tycoon called Killian (Dominic Gould) who recognizes his “gift” and suggests they are part of some super race, or something, that is sprinkled among mere humans.

The young inventor’s underdemonstrated brilliance makes a fortune for Killian, who tasks the lad with unearthing others of their kind. (Jimbo’s wife, voiced by Lauren Ashley Carter, is clearly not one of them, and he never talks nerdy to her.) He eventually finds five teens with untapped powers.

Again, it’s not clear if their special skills are connected with their bad situations, even metaphorically. The filmmaker fails to differentiate these characters or explain why they turn murderous after appearing on a wildly popular TV contest called American Geniuses (yeah, like that’s gonna happen). Still, he obviously enjoys depicting their graphic group rape at the hands of leonine thugs, also of unexplained origins.

The supposedly prodigious participants in this Quiz Show of the Damned subsequently utilize exactly one form of violence—making other people fight each other, zombielike, to death—and this occurs ad nauseum. Speaking of nausea and bad seeds, when have you seen a cartoon studded with product placement? Forget Hal: the talking computer here is named Sony Ericsson.

Watch the trailer for The Prodigies.