I watched this last night and thought it was a decent entry into the monster genre. Bijou Phillips plays a mother who gives birth to some sort of monster baby and realises it is a killer.
The acting was hit and miss, for the most part, Bijou was great, aside from some overacting whenever she found that the baby had done something. One thing did make me laugh though, because she is playing an expectant/new mother, she uses a breast double. This must be the first time Ms. Phillips has actually shied away from appearing nude in a film. The rest of the mostly British cast was OK, but some of them (namely Ty Glaser) seemed to be suffering from bad accent syndrome, and there was some slipping back into the natural accents. I thought that Raphael Coleman was quite good as the baby's wheelchair bound relative, considering that this appears to be only his second feature film.
The one piece of casting I couldn't buy was the sinister looking Owen Teale as a police officer. Perhaps it is because I last saw him in Torchwood as a cannibal killer, but no one can deny that there is something sinister and decidedly criminal about him, so it seems odd for him to be playing a policeman. Whenever Jack Ellis appeared on screen all I could see was Jim Fenner too (this was also the same when he played Liz McDonald's bit on the side in Coronation Street), so perhaps I've just typecast these actors as being sinister.
I think the film would have been better off had it been set in Britain because of all the British actors used. It just seemed odd to me to see them all in this supposedly American setting.
I was a bit confused by the main character as well. She is supposed to be a college student, but she appears to be at least 30 years old, so I wasn't sure whether she was supposed to be a mature student or just stupid.
The death scenes weren't very well done either, with characters being rushed at by some invisible force and left in a pool of blood. They all seemed to be the same too, which just got boring after a while.
This brings us on to the baby. Well, after being teased all the way through the film, we finally catch a glimpse of it near the end when it appears in a bin. The CGI used to animate it is dreadful, and it just ends up looking ridiculous. The only thing that looks worse is the CGI fire that comes around the baby's room near the end.
Having said all that, I enjoyed the film. There was a heartbreaking moment just before the baby's reveal where the father agonises over whether to kill his child and it begins to cry like a normal baby. The whole moral dilemma over whether to kill one's own child, especially as it is just a baby is not a nice position to have to be put in.
I'd say watch this film, because it is a decent entry into the straight to DVD market, and although it's no masterpiece, it's still worth a watch.
The acting was hit and miss, for the most part, Bijou was great, aside from some overacting whenever she found that the baby had done something. One thing did make me laugh though, because she is playing an expectant/new mother, she uses a breast double. This must be the first time Ms. Phillips has actually shied away from appearing nude in a film. The rest of the mostly British cast was OK, but some of them (namely Ty Glaser) seemed to be suffering from bad accent syndrome, and there was some slipping back into the natural accents. I thought that Raphael Coleman was quite good as the baby's wheelchair bound relative, considering that this appears to be only his second feature film.
The one piece of casting I couldn't buy was the sinister looking Owen Teale as a police officer. Perhaps it is because I last saw him in Torchwood as a cannibal killer, but no one can deny that there is something sinister and decidedly criminal about him, so it seems odd for him to be playing a policeman. Whenever Jack Ellis appeared on screen all I could see was Jim Fenner too (this was also the same when he played Liz McDonald's bit on the side in Coronation Street), so perhaps I've just typecast these actors as being sinister.
I think the film would have been better off had it been set in Britain because of all the British actors used. It just seemed odd to me to see them all in this supposedly American setting.
I was a bit confused by the main character as well. She is supposed to be a college student, but she appears to be at least 30 years old, so I wasn't sure whether she was supposed to be a mature student or just stupid.
The death scenes weren't very well done either, with characters being rushed at by some invisible force and left in a pool of blood. They all seemed to be the same too, which just got boring after a while.
This brings us on to the baby. Well, after being teased all the way through the film, we finally catch a glimpse of it near the end when it appears in a bin. The CGI used to animate it is dreadful, and it just ends up looking ridiculous. The only thing that looks worse is the CGI fire that comes around the baby's room near the end.
Having said all that, I enjoyed the film. There was a heartbreaking moment just before the baby's reveal where the father agonises over whether to kill his child and it begins to cry like a normal baby. The whole moral dilemma over whether to kill one's own child, especially as it is just a baby is not a nice position to have to be put in.
I'd say watch this film, because it is a decent entry into the straight to DVD market, and although it's no masterpiece, it's still worth a watch.