‘Big Baby’ Holds Big Promise [Panic Fest Review]
Thirty years ago, if you called your local video rental store and asked if they carried Big Baby, they’d probably laugh and hang up on you. Gamestop has Big Yoshi, but Blockbuster carrying Big Baby? No dice, because that couldn’t be a real movie name. Which is a shame, strange as it might sound, because Spider One’s (Rob Zombie’s younger brother) Big Baby would have been right at home alongside the metafictional horror slashers of the early-to-mid 1990s. I raise you one I, Madman, and one The Dark Half.
Adam Lewis (Brandon Scott, Channel Zero) is a horror screenwriter who, truly, is his own worst enemy. He subjects himself to podcast bros dissing his latest scripts, adorns himself in Teflon when it comes to compliments, and projects his own mounting insecurities onto his girlfriend, Kate (Krsy Fox, Terrifier 3). Kate, one of the realest there is in this genre, is adept at communicating through whatever Adam’s most recent insecurities are. Oh, two bruhs don’t like your latest movie? What about the… thousands of others who do?
Her patience is that of a saint as she endures a delightfully scripted tirade from Adam about the death of the modern audience, how they must hate his movie because they didn’t understand it. The movie in question features werewolves, for what it’s worth. Adam, my man. Come on. Stress, even self-imposed, can wreak havoc on the body, and it does when Adam starts dreaming up the titular Big Baby every time he closes his eyes.
He’s suitably rattled, but since his first dream featured Big Baby hacking Kate to bits, and Kate remains very much alive, he dismisses the manifestation as anxiety getting the better of him. And, hey, wouldn’t that giant, axe-wielding baby make a great subject for his next script?
It does. Even though Adam dismisses slashers, Kate reassures him by regaling the tortured writer with compliments about his Big Brain and capacity to elevate the subgenre. Big Baby is in, baby. Yet, the more Adam scripts, the more frequent and real his nightmares become. Is there really a giant toddler killing folk, or is it all In the Mouth of Madness, simply in his head?
Spider One’s greatest strength is his script. Movies about writers are tough because, well, movie writers (writers in movies, not those that write them) are often insufferable, and it invites a constant, nagging comparison. If your protagonist is an acclaimed writer, your own script better match that energy. Luckily, this one does. For as exploitative as Big Baby sounds as a conceit, it’s really anything but. Yeah, there’s some third-act gore, but largely, Spider One’s quasi-slasher is principally meditative. It’s slow, delicately written, and convincingly staged. Remove the baby, and Scott and Fox might be leading a prestige cable drama—they’re remarkably good, Fox in particular.
Big Baby’s thematic cache expands beyond scripting. Alexander Lewis’ score could have gone the easy ‘80s synth homage route, but he opts for a much more stirring and fitting arrangement. Andy Patch’s cinematography never mucks around for too long in the pool of homage, and the result is much more singular and distinctly Big Baby because of it. Yes, there are clear sources of inspiration, but while the title suggests a riff on grindhouse slashers, it’s refreshing to see Big Baby shoot bigger and better than pantomime.
Still, I wish it had gone just a little farther. In the gore department, or with the melodrama. By the end, Big Baby has two big, competing ideas, and while they regularly mesh well—an interpersonal drama with slasher tendencies—they never fully coalesce as successfully as I’d had hoped. Both parts are independently effective, but the tonal control of the first two-thirds evaporates somewhat when Spider One has to tie it all together, bow and all. But, with a Big Baby, can you really complain too much? Life is stressful as is, all the more so when infants want to kill. The movie might be Big Baby, but it’s a Big Win for all involved.
Big Baby premiered at this year’s Panic Fest.
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Big Baby
Summary
Big Baby’s meta-riff on tortured artists and big, uh, killer babies packs a mean and uncharacteristically mature punch.
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