Sunday, January 23, 2011

Weird Killers 2: The Baby

Who doesn't love giant babies?  Okay- no hands?  I'm not surprised.  This is a nice and obscure movie, so I'm game.  What kind of crazy hijinks do we get?  We get a crazy family who keeps their 21-year old son in infant form.  That...sure is different.  I'm sure that there's got to be a good reason for this, provided the movie feels like giving one.  I'm going to go ahead and guess that they don't.  By the way, the whole shock-factor here comes from the guy acting like a baby.  Is that meant to be scary or off-putting?  The way it's done- it comes off as silly.  I'll get into why a bit later, but let's just focus on the positive.  It's not a pot of boiling water poured all over my face.  Will this movie be a shocking bit of nostalgia or a piece of history that we should choose not to remember.  Either way- change is in the air.  Ha ha ha- baby puns.  Get our your giant play pen as we go visit...
The film begins with a social worker looking over her file as the credits roll.  You fool- you're taking Case 39!  Incidentally, the movie has no idea what the word 'dramatic tension' means.  Why?  Because you see the adult-baby before the credits even begin!  A competent movie would build up the woman visiting the house, tease that she's upset about something there and, in a big reveal, show the 'kid.'  Not this movie!  The woman get appointed as their liaison and meets the family.  At no point does the movie explain how these people were not put into Family Court and/or had the baby taken away from them.  It's been 20 years- those things would have happened!  They write it off with an off-hand line about them running tests on the 'kid.'  I cry bullshit there, but let's move on.  The family consists of a bitchy woman, a frizzy-haired sister and a blond, bitchy sister.  We also get some subtle build-up to a tragic even in the Social Worker's past.  The hold this card pretty close to their chest, so that's one point for them.  When you actually see what this is building up to, you'll immediately want to take away all of their points though.  You'll see...
The lady begins to hang around the house a lot, which begins to upset the family.  How dare you care about us!  The family suspects that he has some ulterior motive...which she does.  Mind you, her ulterior motive is to get the 'kid' some help and make him an adult.  The family, however, doesn't want her to do this because...um, because!  There's no explanation for this given, so I guess that I can just make my own up.  My theory: they just loved buying diapers so much that they just never wanted to stop!  By the way, all the drama here is sucked out because the 'baby's' voice is an awkwardly-dubbed in sound of a real baby.  I can buy the mind not developing, but the vocal cords and physiology would!  Are we supposed to assume that the poor family made a drug that causes the 'kid' to not go through puberty?!?  They push back by making an accusation against the woman which causes her to be taken off of the case.  They don't explain what they accuse her of, but she's really upset about it.  Well, since she's off the case now, I'm sure that this will be the end of it...
Oh right- I still have one paragraph left.  She continues to make her presence felt, but it's a bit more awkward now.  She takes the 'kid' to a psychologist who says that he thinks the 'kid' can be helped with lots of therapy.  That's when the family cuts off their support.  After being threatened with the action that should have been taken against the family years ago, they concede and invite the lady to the 'kid's' birthday party.  They end up drugging the lady and tying her up in the basement...whereupon they don't check on her.  The 'baby' goes down to the basement, but does absolutely nothing to help as the woman escapes on her own.  Was there a 'baby quota' or something?  The lady escapes the house with the 'baby,' which is odd when you consider that the women were in front of the door the whole time.  She takes the 'kid' home and takes a picture with him in adult clothes, sending it to the family.  Desperate and angry, they break in and try to get their 'baby' back.  Mmm... barbecue sauce.  Our heroine and her mother-in-law take the sisters out, however, and cause the mother to break her leg.  They take her out to the back and bury her in the foundation where their pool is being made.  In the movie's big, twist ending, we learn that the woman's tragic event was an accident that caused her husband to mentally-regress to that of a child.  She takes custody of 'baby'- somehow- and has the family she's always wanted.  The End.
This makes me want to cry!  The plot of this movie is dumb- plain and simple.  The gimmick is a silly one that really does not merit 90 minutes.  The movie meanders about for a long time before building up to its silly finale.  What a random finale too!  The movie just kind of abruptly reaches this odd conclusion.  How has nobody done anything about her situation?  How has nobody done anything about the 'baby' and its situation?  How can a movie about a crusading Social Worker exist in a universe where every other Social Worker does nothing?  More importantly, this movie does very little with its gimmick.  The 'kid' whines and cries in scenes, but it goes nowhere.  They had nowhere to go with this.  It's basically a Mad Libs script that was stopped halfway through.  "Let's make a film about...a man who is...a baby.  Yeah, then he'll....hey, let's go play outside now!"  This could have been something either shocking, scintillating or at least interesting.  It's not.  Life moves on and so should you.  Waaahhh.
Up next, Weird Killers 2 Week continues with a look at one of the more infamous serial killers of all time.  This film was made a mere two years after the crimes took place and just makes shit up.  Stay tuned...

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