Big Baby, 2025.
Written and Directed by Spider One.
Starring Brandon Scott, Krsy Fox, Torio Van Grol, Kate Freund, Adam Marchinowski, Jordan Elsass, and Radek Lord.
SYNOPSIS:
A successful screenwriter is struggling for inspiration until a masked killer sparks an idea for a new script. The lines of reality begin to blur, and he finds himself a part of the story.
Ah, the perils of writer’s block—the truly disturbing phenomenon of staring at the page or screen with all inspiration sadly gone. This has been given good airtime in horror features like The Dark Half and The Shining, which were based on Stephen King’s experiences with the elusive spark of ideas and the demon drink, as well as the writerly impulse gone sour in Sinister. All of these stories, and Spider One’s Big Baby, also have a bit of a battle of the bottle going on as well. Alcohol and writing are a bit of a cliché, and for good reason.
Anyway, in Big Baby, Brandon Scott excellently portrays the pitfalls of getting too deep into a story. His Adam literally lives his new piece as he is writing it—such as it is, and it isn’t a whole lot, to be fair. The parts of the story we, the audience, see are basically randomised kill scenes played out without us really knowing how Adam is going to piece them all together.
And that, for me, didn’t really matter. Big Baby is about how the writing process affects the writer, especially one who is feeling particularly sensitive and cut off from the rest of the world.
Adam’s fragility is brought to the fore right away. He listens to a pair of conceited shock-jock movie-review podcasters who slate his new movie. Rather than letting it go, he obsesses over it. He gets worse and worse, even confronting the podcasting idiots in a local coffee bar. Just when he’s getting so stressed he is becoming a proper concern, his girlfriend Kate (Krsy Fox)—also mega-stressed—loses her temper and tells him to stop being such a big baby.
Cue nightmarish visions of a killer in a baby mask acting out all sorts of grisly carnage. But is it really happening, or is it all in Adam’s mind and computer?
I can see why some might be put off by Big Baby. It piles on idea after idea with satirical meta-horror delight, not caring too much how it will be taken. Some might feel it’s trying too hard to be clever.
But personally, I enjoyed the examination of the torturous creative work of bringing an idea to the page.
A lot of this has to do with the striking performance of Scott. His nervous energy is at the heart of the best things in this movie, with Fox adding excellent support. It is fair to say that the movie is at its most interesting and insightful when it’s looking at the strain on their relationship, rather than Adam’s Big Baby film within a film, which does not actually relate to reality at all.
As the film develops and we see Adam trying to write the scenes, which we see on screen, it does become less focused. It is still entertaining enough, but the first two-thirds make more of an impact than the finale, which, without giving anything away, seemed a little forced for want of trying something different
That being said, I found Big Baby an intelligent and disturbing take on the writerly experience. It also has a revealing take on the courage it takes to actually let an idea out into the public sphere, which is pretty brave in itself. Especially when there are people wearing baby masks and up to no good!
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert W Monk
