Big Baby review
Spider One follows up Little Bites with a big bite out of the slasher genre.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Big Baby
Directed by Spider One
Written by Spider One
Starring Brandon Scott and Krsy Fox
Big Baby Review
We’re no stranger to Spider One films here. This will be his third straight directorial effort that we’ve covered. Big Baby is his fourth film…but his first, Allegoria, came out just before this website existed. I’ve heard good things about it and that’s no surprise given my feelings on his three films since. Spider One has a real knack for this. He’s not too shabby at his day job either as the founder and frontman of Powerman 5000. Spider One is the brother of another musician turned film director…Rob Zombie. While I’ve had some pretty harsh ups and downs with Zombie’s filmography…mostly centered around what I find to be an overly depressing world view…I have no such qualms about Spider One’s output. He doesn’t just find the humanity in characters…he finds some deeply personal and fascinating humanity in them.
Take his last film, Little Bites, for example. I really liked Little Bites. It’s the story of a creature who is slowly eating a mother alive. What’s not to like about that? But the premise isn’t what ultimately made the movie feel so special. Ok, it kind of was…that premise is amazing. The heart of the movie though was a quiet meditation on the sacrifices a mother makes for their child. The humanity, as it almost always does, makes the creature feature work. Even with a killer premise.
That brings us to Spider One’s latest release…Big Baby. It has an awesome premise too. One made infinitely cooler by having a meta angle without the story shoving that into every corner of the story. Big Baby is the story of a screenwriter who is disenfranchised by all the negativity in modern film criticism. Right from the get-go…Spider One has hit on something. It isn’t the New York Times or The Hollywood Reporter he’s taking his opinions from…it’s two young guys with a popular podcast. As a movie reviewer and podcaster, myself…it’s easy to see how this immediately spoke to me. Not the podcaster characters…the main character’s point-of-view. Scare Value (in all its forms) began because I had the same feelings Adam (Brandon Scott) did about film criticism. Specifically, horror film criticism.
You can’t find the good in everything. That’s a fact. I’ve reviewed more than my share of movies that I couldn’t find the positive angle on. But I try to meet movies at the level they’re aiming for. I try to understand what they intend to be and judge them on their ability to be that. To find the value. That isn’t a major part of online culture. It’s easier and more profitable to be negative. But negativity for clicks isn’t true criticism or commentary because you aren’t trying to engage with the material. Which is why I write about horror. Even some of our finest film critics still get it wrong about the horror genre. They refuse to meet the film at its level and engage with it on a genuine level. Long story short…I get it Adam.
But Adam is an interesting character. He derides those podcasters in a chance face to face encounter for failing to do exactly what I laid out in the last paragraph…but then quickly dismisses the idea of lowering himself to writing a slasher movie. It isn’t until Kate (Krsy Fox) tells him he can “elevate” it and do something new that he becomes intrigued by the idea. It immediately makes you wonder what Spider One, who also wrote the screenplay, was trying to say about himself. A writer doing something new in a subgenre often dismissed writing about a writer doing something new in a subgenre often dismissed. It isn’t a big leap to that connection.
But Spider One clearly understands and appreciates the horror movies he’s working on. Adam is a horror writer who seems to be angry about it. When Adam yells about wanting to win an Oscar and be acknowledged as great…I don’t think Spider One is telling his story through him. I’m basing that on the three movies I’ve seen…but no one who dislikes horror makes horror movies this good. A cabin in the woods movie that twists into a vampire tale (Bury the Bride). A creature feature doubling as an allegory for motherhood (Little Bites). And a slasher movie about the struggles and burden of the creative process (Big Baby). They can be “elevated” all you want but they still rely on a deep understanding of, and passion for, the subgenre they’re inhabiting.
Any doubts that Spider One enjoys slasher movies are laid to rest when Big Baby gets going. While much of it is about the creative process and the strange effect writing this movie is having on both Adam’s dreams and reality…when Adam sits down to finish the script Big Baby becomes a uniquely clever commentary on the subgenre. Instead of deconstructing it or trying to make it seem cleverer than it is…he just gives us what we want. Disconnected scenes of a killer in a big baby mask hacking characters we don’t know anything about into pieces. Big Baby’s coolest move is using its intriguing concept to justify what makes slasher movies great (despite what many reviewers will tell you) instead of trying to make them into something they aren’t and then telling you this is great.
The mystery behind what’s happening when Adam writes his screenplay isn’t something that the movie is going to settle in a way that closes a satisfying narrative loop…but it does close things in a very satisfying way. Adam is visited by his fictional killer and the potential final girl of his story…they have requests for how things should be going. Is it just a writer losing his mind? Or are his words bending reality to his whim? Brandon Scott does a great job with the fracturing mindset of a writer being crushed by an impossible task. A task that is making him seem more dangerous with every word he writes. Krsy Fox is great as always. The string of decapitations and purposely light setups surrounding them are worth the price of admission alone. There’s more going on, of course. But you, and Spider One, know what makes these movies work. Both on the page…and on screen.
Scare Value
Spider One keeps cranking out interesting and worthwhile horror. Big Baby examines the effects of writing it on its author…but offers an equally compelling case on the true meris of the slasher genre. By understanding (and caring about) the exact thing that is up for debate in Big Baby, Spider One does something his protagonist struggles to do. Make the case that no matter what you do to “elevate” a slasher film…you have to embrace the parts the audience truly wants to see.
3.5/5
Big Baby Links
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