#28. "Baby Blues" (2008, Jacobson/Kaleka)
By Eivind Langdal
15th December 2009

The baby cries nonstop. The father doesn't realize something is wrong with her wife, even though she looks quite distressed. Then, a close-up of her slicing a tomato. The baby is still crying in the background, but the father isn't able to put the pieces together (a characteristic he still has by the end of the film). Then, there is another close-up of the mother slicing a tomato. I don't know about you, but I think the director is trying to tell us something here. Maybe... I don't know... maybe there is something very wrong with the mother?

Her oldest son, Jimmy, like his father, doesn't see it at first, but one night when he walks in to the mother's bedroom, he gets the cold facts. On the bed is the baby. He isn't crying anymore. Jimmy realizes something is not right. "Mama, something is wrong with Nathan", he says. Well, Jimmy, something is wrong with your mother too. She is suffering from a heavy depression, and if you don't get from her, she is going to kill you. Wow, that's a lot of information to digest at once. Let's rewind for a second there.

.ouy llik ot gniog si ehs ,reh morf teg t'ond uoy fi dna ,noisserped...

Uh... let's rewind a little more.

yvaeh a morf gnireffus si ehS .oot rehtom ruoy htiw gnorw si gnihtome ,ymmiJ ,lleW

There! Now we're at the start. The location is a rural farm, where the father (only credited as "Dad" in the credits) is a truck driver who has to leave for work for several days. The aforementioned Jimmy wants him to stay so he can come and watch his baseball game, but that doesn't happen. Still, Jimmy seems to understand, especially when his father him gives a speech about how he has to look out for his siblings. Little does he know about how much responsibility Jimmy is actually about to get.

Which brings me bring to the psychopathic mother (who, like her husband, is not identified by her name in the credits). She has become overwhelmed with too much stress, and seems to be losing her mind (brilliantly shown in an extremely well-edited scene which sees her practicing a weather gal routine in the mirror, with little rewarding results). She takes her anger out on her kids, and when Jimmy and his sister realizes exactly how far she is willing to go, their brother has already been brutally murdered by the mother.

And so ensues a game of life and death as the kids have to protect each other from the last person they thought was ever going to turn against them. Uh, hold on, wasn't that the plot from The Shining? And isn't that shot of the mother being locked in on a room and seen from below taken from that film too? Now, I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of that film, but I still think it is better than this one, for a large number of reasons. Firstly, Baby Blues is simply too short. At a mere 75 minutes, it doesn't give itself time to build up the mother's descent into madness. And yet, oddly enough, when it finally comes, it takes too long to end.

It is also not nearly as scary either, even though it's clear that it tries very hard in that department. Occasionally, it gets close to delivering some true shocks, like when the mother's face suddenly appears in the hole in the hen house, or when Jimmy thinks he sees her in the reflection of a knife, but ultimately, it is not particularly tense and, despite having a potent theme, it failed to engage me. There was also one thing I would have done different if I made the film: I wouldn't cut to scenes showing the father, as it stops the momentum and removes the mystery if he is close to returning home or not.

There are some plus points, though. A scene involving Jimmy and a neighbor where the neighbor tells him (after his dog killed a snake), that it isn't age that counts in dangerous situations, but instincts, is well-written and a great way to hint to the way Jimmy has to fend for himself later in the film. The actors too, are great, especially Ridge Canipe as Jimmy, who shows true skills that seem to belong to someone far older than him, and Colleen Porch as the mother, who turns what could have been a pantomime role into a realistic one. The two of them are the best thing about the film, which is why it's so sad they can't save it.