‘Big Baby’ Review – Spider One’s Latest Horror Film Is A Stockpile Of Ideas That Go Everywhere

A writer on the verge of madness is familiar territory, practically marked and guided like a sightseeing trip. Arguably, Stephen King’s and later Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, is the seminal spin on this particular kind of story. Sinister vibes spread like an uncontrollable wildfire. Creativity becomes a virus, coursing through the writer’s veins until the muscles pump and produce nightmare fuel. This idea serves as the basis for the new horror movie Big Baby, which attempts to spin a familiar yarn of creative self-destruction. While intriguing, the story runs out of mojo, falling back on jump scares and slasher-movie chicanery.

First and foremost, Big Baby ruminates on some ideas that are at least compelling. First, we begin with Adam (Brandon Scott), a screenwriter in search of his next idea. One night, a dream and later a nightmare of a maniac in a baby mask inspires his next script idea. Yet, as Adam begins to put words on the page, his life takes a dramatic turn. Images haunt him, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Kate (Krysy Fox), grows distant. And worst of all, the nightmarish creation known as Big Baby may be more real than fictitious. Reality becomes indistinguishable from fantasy, plunging Adam into the dark recesses of his own breaking mind.

The movie boasts initial promise. Adam is reeling from listening to a podcasting duo trash his latest horror film. Creatively frustrated and searching for an idea, the podcasters become the first of rage-bait dangling before this writer. For the initial half of the story, there is a flirtation over the question of reality. Is Big Baby a figment of Adam’s imagination, or is his creation somehow being manifested into reality?

Once the story makes a choice, everything else falls apart, rather than falling together. The initial premise of a writer on the verge of a breakdown proves tantalizing, given the interesting meta commentary on horror movies and the creative process vis-à-vis the Hollywood industry. Yet the story seems to run out of things to say, or rather, rushes to its conclusion.

All at once, Big Baby, the character, serves as both a literal plot device and a metaphor. When the character is a plot device, there is a bit of intrigue. Director and writer Spider One focuses on telling a story less about a monster or slasher and more about the effects monsters have on those around them. Audiences or creators give the monsters power; they fuel them through consumption of the media. This element is particularly effective, but it suffers when it becomes a stand-in for a psychological breakdown or a folie à deux.

Again, the difficulty is that the story offers many ideas, but zigzags from concept to concept, thereby preventing anything from sticking or making a point. In this case, the knife is effectively dull, and no amount of sharpening can fix it.

On the one hand, the movie tries to be a commentary or even a cheeky satire, and yet the infusion of psychological uncoupling, mixed with slasher movie tropes, becomes too much to handle. The story has the same effect as a crying baby at a funeral, loud and out of place.

Now, performance-wise, Scott and Fox are the two main focuses, and each plays off the other well. In the quieter moments, particularly when Adam questions his skill as both a writer and a creative, Kate is there to provide unvarnished feedback that is both authentic and helpful in his attempts to push the narrative forward.  

While the character Big Baby serves as both a plot device and a stand-in for x, y, z trauma, the character’s look is quite shocking. And though this is not a slasher in the truest sense of the word, the character is compelling visually and certainly would fit well in the pantheon of slasher icons.

Big Baby is frustrating because it has the potential to be a gripping story. Certain elements are stronger than others, and while it is not an outright failure, it is more disappointing. In a way, a screenwriter might stare at the blank page; the words are at least here, but the order is all over the place.  

Big Baby is currently available on Digital platforms courtesy of Brainstorm Media. 

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