Spoonful of Sugar review.
A great lead performance carries Spoonful of Sugar pretty far. It almost overcomes the film’s inability to mesh its two big ideas. An interesting movie, and a pretty good one…you just wish its payoff made a little more narrative sense.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Spoonful of Sugar
Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Written by Leah Saint Marie
Starring Morgan Saylor, Kat Foster, Myko Olivier, Danilo Crovetti and Keith Powell
Spoonful of Sugar Review
There is no shortage of subgenres in horror. Slasher, zombies, vampire, paranormal, possession, comedy, found footage…one of the great things about horror is that there is something for everyone. Monster movies not your type? Well…maybe you’ll like Gothic horror. Can’t stand Body horror? Try some psychological horror instead. We’ve had some fun on the site with some Investigative horror movies…usually in the Cursed horror category. Spoonful of Sugar probably fits into a few different categories itself…but like the movie Pearl last year…I walked away wanting to call it Performance horror.
Is Performance horror a thing? Hell if I know. There’s too much to keep track of. I just find it easier to label movies by the attribute that makes them most stick out. Mia Goth’s performance in Pearl was so dominant that your mind can’t help but default to it when the title comes up. Rebecca Hall in Resurrection comes to mind for this as well. And now we have Spoonful of Sugar. A movie that isn’t as good as those two examples (especially Pearl) but one that is completely driven by its lead performance.
Without Morgan Saylor’s fascinating performance at its center, Spoonful of Sugar would be a mess. I mean…it’s still a mess you just don’t notice it as much because Saylor is dominating your attention. She isn’t the only good actor in the cast, mind you. Everyone does a good job with the material. Saylor just hit home run after home run as the disturbed Millicent.
Spoonful of Sugar is an odd movie. It has a lot of ideas and little to say about them. Millicent is hired as a babysitter to a sick child. The parents are coming apart because of their child’s needs. Millicent is a disturbed young woman who is obsessed with motherhood and protecting the child. There is also LSD and an attraction between father and babysitter and a mother losing her marbles all while someone other than Millicent is hiding a deadly secret. It’s a lot. And yet, Spoonful of Sugar makes it feel like less than the sum of its parts.
It has a fascinating ending. We won’t spoil it here but what makes it fascinating is how good of an idea it is…and how poorly the build up to it is done. Like I said…a lot of ideas with little to say about them. Saylor and company make the ride to the destination as interesting as possible but the payoff, though fun, can’t help but leave you wondering why some of the choices that came before it were made. That’s as far as we can go with that in a non-spoiler review.
The basic plot of Spoonful of Sugar involves Millicent taking over the care of the child…and the child’s resulting attachment to her. The mother feels squeezed out by the arrangement and Millie has designs on taking more than just her son. It’s all very 90s psychological thriller. For a while. There are a couple of secrets that pay off by the end to make it into something else. I’m just not convinced that it makes it into something better.
What I am convinced of, however, is that a performance can raise a decent movie to a good one. And can put enough duct tape around loosely plotted and undercooked ideas to make them work. That’s why it’s best described as performance horror. You may find aspects of the story and technique that you appreciate…Spoonful of Sugar has enough of both to be interesting on its own. But what you’re going to be left thinking about is a dynamite performance.
Scare Value
A lot of Spoonful of Sugar works. Enough to deliver an interesting and perfectly watchable experience. It’s stretching at times…and its best idea isn’t built up well enough to work as well as it should. It works enough to be enjoyable…but falls short of memorable on its own. Thankfully, Morgan Saylor’s performance gets it there.
3.5/5
Spoonful of Sugar Link
Streaming on Shudder
Spoonful of Sugar Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of Spoonful of Sugar, check out other new release reviews: Jethica, Consecration, The Fearway and We Have a Ghost
