2025 Popcorn Frights Film Festival Coverage
King Baby review
Two men leave society behind to live the life of a King and a servant. What could go wrong?
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
King Baby
Directed by Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing
Written by Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing
Starring Neil Chinneck and Graham Dickson
King Baby Review
I was apprehensive about King Baby after watching the trailer. How could someone make a feature length film about two guys who are hardcore larping in the woods? Technically, they’re larping at an abandoned castle. Or, at least, the ruins of one. Mostly…they’re just playing outside. You can understand my apprehension. There’s a trailer linked below so you can experience for yourself.
About twenty minutes into King Baby my fears had not subsided. It truly was just two guys playing outside. They have no names…at least none that the narrator can recall. We’re told that they discovered the location and abandoned their lives to stay there full time. They are known simply by the roles they hold in their two person kingdom. King (Graham Dickson) and Servant (Neil Chinneck). They never break character…no one else ever appears with them on screen. There are a couple of characters who appear in the King’s nightmares…which are the inciting incident of King Baby.
The first act of King Baby establishes the tiny world that King and Servant live in. We watch their daily routines and understand their relationship completely. The King gives a speech. The Servant sings him a song. The King is incapable of taking care of himself…relying on the Servant to feed, clothe and bathe him. The King is a conceited, selfish man. The Servant is a hapless but oddly content employee.
Oh…I should mention that there actually is a third character in King Baby’s story. The Queen. The Queen is a mannequin created out of wood to give the King a mate. Her “arrival” is the big event of King Baby’s opening act. You can understand why I was still concerned about what this movie was going to be by the time the story turned to act two. Thankfully…my fears turned out to be misplaced on King Baby. It turns out that there are plenty of interesting things that you can do with two guys playing make believe in the woods.
The King’s nightmares make him take notice of the Servant’s cheery attitude. They discuss why the Servant’s dreams are happy ones…discovering that his harder life gives him a sense of accomplishment. The King decides to learn how to do the things that the Servant does. Which means…a montage of a grown man pretending to learn how to wash himself and other common sense things. This is the moment where King Baby’s strange story really clicked into place for me. Watching an adult man pretend to struggle to understand basic concepts is genuinely funny. It retroactively made earlier interactions funnier. It also made what would happen next more interesting.
The King decrees that he and the Servant will switch roles. The Servant will sleep in the King’s bed and give the speeches. The King will feed and wash him and, hopefully, make the nightmares stop. Watching the pair grow into their new roles makes King Baby work extremely well. The King’s anger…on display in every early interaction…begins to subside. He finds a life of hard work breeds happiness and contentment. The Servant begins his reign with a kindness and understanding that the King could never have brought to the role. For a while. The power he has over the kingdom (of one guy and a mannequin) goes to his head. It hardens his demeanor. He begins to have the nightmares.
I wasn’t prepared for how much King Baby had to say about identity. It presents us with two men purposely stripped of any…and shows us how an easy to understand world of zero consequences shapes who they are. The story lays it out brilliantly. It establishes their archetype…flips them…destroys them…and then builds them back up again. Each interaction where their inverted arcs meet becomes more interesting.
Dickson and Chinneck are incredible in their roles. Each nails the pompous, angry King…and the kind, weak Servant. The actors get to play a full range here…reversing each other’s courses and, inevitably, find themselves in the same place. A place they couldn’t have expected to end up…but the appropriate place for two grown adult men who have abandoned the real world to play pretend in nature. It’s a mad world.
Scare Value
After roughly twenty minutes of King Baby I began to wonder what the film was planning to say about any of this strange situation. With only two characters (playing characters themselves) it seemed like depth of story might be hard to come by. I’m happy to report that King Baby knew what it was doing all along. It becomes a fascinating study of identity and happiness. A much deeper and more enjoyable experience than a fitting log line of “two men live in the remnants of a castle” would have had you believe.
