"Baby Ruby" -- Movie Review

 

This week at Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the new psychological thriller “Baby Ruby” starring Kit Harington and Noémie Merlant. 

Synopsis

Will a couple’s newborn baby drive her mother mad – or is someone really trying to kill her?

Story

Jo (Noémie Merlant) and her husband Spencer (Kit Harington) are expecting their first child any day now.  With the couple having moved to a secluded rustic suburb far from the city, Jo, an internet influencer, arranges her own baby shower; attendees include the team of support staff who work on her lifestyle web site.  Childbirth does not prove to be the beautiful experience Jo had originally envisioned; it is painful and messy and its aftermath altogether unpleasant.  Once she is discharged from the hospital, one of the nurses “gifts” her with the placenta because it is rich with nutrients. 

Upon getting baby Ruby home, Jo’s problems are just starting – and get increasingly worse.  To begin with, Ruby is incessantly crying – to the point that there’s precious little Jo can do to quiet her down; this is wearing on Jo because she’s losing sleep and is lacking in the mental and physical energy needed to maintain her web site.  Jo believes Ruby is displaying great hostility towards her; Ruby gets increasingly rough with Jo, biting her during breastfeeding and pulling off her earring to the point that it tears her earlobe, drawing blood.  Jo takes Ruby to the doctor and informs him about all of this, but he insists it’s normal behavior for an infant. 

Eventually, Jo comes to discover that she’s not alone – there are other young women in her area that are also recent mothers with infants to care for.  She eagerly befriends them in search of a support system but soon becomes suspicious of who they are and what their motives may be.  Are they really parents?  Do they even have babies at home?  Jo believes that everyone in her inner circle is against her because they believe she’s an incompetent mother – even Spencer and his mother, who assists in caring for Ruby.  Thinking she and her baby are in danger, Jo takes Ruby and hurriedly leaves – but will she really escape their supposed peril?     

Review

First-time director Bess Wohl certainly nailed the standards of this type of movie – stinger music, jump cuts, spooky lighting and so forth.  Unfortunately, the script is somewhat trite which is rather surprising given that Wohl’s career has primarily been as a writer.  Exactly who the antagonist is changes from moment to moment:  is it the baby or the creepy neighbors or the husband or the mother-in-law?  We are somewhat led to believe that this is going to be a supernatural or paranormal story, but it turns out that the heroine is actually confronting more of an internal nemesis. 

Ultimately, “Baby Ruby” comes across as a great advertisement for contraception; part way through the movie, you almost expect its denouement will be Amazon delivery workers to be dropping off crate after crate of condoms at the couple’s doorstep.  At its heart, what the film seems to want to convey is that mothers of a newborn – especially first-time mothers – have very little in the way of support from society and don’t have an outlet for their concerns.  Part of the problem with the motion picture is that it doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be – social commentary?  Horror?  Science Fiction?

Writer/Director Bess Wohl was interviewed following the screening.  Wohl’s career has primarily been spent as a playwright, although she has written a number of screenplays and teleplays, as she says, just to pay the bills in between stage plays.  “Baby Ruby” is not her first screenplay credit but it is her first credit as a director.  She sees this movie as something of a mixed genre – horror, drama, psychological thriller.  Wohl says that her influences for this film included “The Shining”, “Fatal Attraction” and “Rosemary’s Baby”.  The ending of  the motion picture is different from the script she originally wrote (which is what drew Kit Harington into the project); during the shoot, Noémie Merlant convinced her to change it and that’s the one that wound up in the final version.