This isn\u2019t some hidden secret, though. As Baby\u2019s mother Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) tells social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) when she pays the family a visit, social workers have been coming to the Wadsworth house regularly since Baby was a child, and they\u2019ve apparently found nothing amiss. The government even sends the Wadsworths money for Baby\u2019s care, which is the family\u2019s sole source of income. Mrs. Wadsworth is unconcerned and dismissive with this new case worker, even expressing surprise that Ann wants to bother seeing Baby in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ann, however, has taken an inordinate interest in Baby, and from early in the movie there are hints that her concern isn\u2019t entirely altruistic. Her eyes light up when she tells Mrs. Wadsworth that she requested to be assigned to the case, and soon she\u2019s asking to feed and play with Baby herself. Previous case workers would check in twice a year, but Ann shows up three times in her first week. Baby has never received any kind of medical diagnosis, and the Wadsworth family dynamic is obviously not healthy. Maybe it\u2019s a good thing that someone from the government is finally showing concern for Baby\u2019s well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As blatantly twisted as the Wadsworths are, Ann herself is perhaps more insidious, keeping her own proclivities under wraps for most of the movie. She gets a troubled look when Baby\u2019s sister Germaine (Marianna Hill) asks if she\u2019s married, first speaking about her husband in the past tense before clumsily correcting herself. \u201cI lead a pretty conventional life,\u201d she tells Germaine, which of course is something that no normal person would actually say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, Ann seems like a perfectly sane alternative to the Wadsworths, who are reluctant to let Baby be examined or leave him alone with anyone. There are only brief glimpses of their demented private treatment of Baby, but they\u2019re enough to make it clear that he\u2019s being abused and exploited, whatever his genuine condition might be. \u201cHe loves being a baby,\u201d says his sexpot sister Alba (Suzanne Zenor), whose own stunted personal style could be described as \u201cnaughty schoolgirl,\u201d but what Baby actually cares about is of no concern to anyone in his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A director with a more distinctive, stylized vision could tip the movie into camp, but Post underplays even the most outlandish developments. By the time the movie arrives at Baby\u2019s birthday party, a swinging \u201970s shindig full of adults smoking pot and dancing suggestively, the audience is fully on board for whatever the filmmaker can throw at them. As shocking as the final twists may be, right up to the gleefully horrific closing freeze frame, they feel almost inevitable, a foregone conclusion in a world as plainly unhinged as this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The performances support Post\u2019s gritty, immersive approach, from Roman\u2019s world-weary, smoky-voiced matriarch to Comer\u2019s wide-eyed, chipper idealist. Manzy, who has only a handful of acting credits, is remarkable as Baby, making this ridiculous character believable and even tragic. Without any actual lines, he conveys Baby\u2019s confusion, longing, and desperation. The scene of Baby frantically attempting to latch onto a teenage babysitter\u2019s breast to feed is both horrifying and weirdly tender. There\u2019s an undercurrent of sexual fetishism to the way that the other characters, who are almost all women, interact with Baby, but the movie never feels prurient or sleazy \u2014 at least not in a negative way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baby<\/em>\u2019s central family dynamic has echoes in more explicitly violent horror movies, from the following year\u2019s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em> to Rob Zombie\u2019s Firefly family trilogy (House of 1000 Corpses<\/em>, The Devil\u2019s Rejects<\/em>, 3 From Hell<\/em>), which also prominently features a character named Baby. Despite its current streaming home on Shudder, though, The Baby<\/em> isn\u2019t really a horror movie. It\u2019s a psychosexual drama about women taking control over men via one particularly helpless avatar, an expression of anxiety during a period of social turmoil. It\u2019s also about a grown man rolling around in a playpen, and it has to be seen to be believed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Baby\u201d is streaming on Shudder<\/a> and on free services<\/a> including Tubi, Plex, and the Roku Channel.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/the-baby-1024x576.jpg\")
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The Baby<\/em> gets more deranged as it goes along, and it could easily be played for laughs or for cheap exploitation. Instead, Post approaches the material almost entirely straight, letting the plot and the characters carry the absurdity. A journeyman director whose credits include numerous TV episodes and later installments in the Dirty Harry<\/em> and Planet of the Apes<\/em> franchises, Post brings a matter-of-fact perspective to The Baby<\/em> that ultimately makes it more disturbing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n