It’s bad enough when all of Natasha’s friends start making babies – but when a toddler falls into her life and holds onto it, the 38-year-old chef’s world turns into a true horror show. The baby is a serial killer.
The Baby, a horror comedy directed by Siân Robins-Grace and Lucy Gaymer, which premieres Sunday on HBO Max, initially seems like a scathing critique of the absurd expectations that some (in this case, English) societies place on women and mothers. As the eight-episode limited series progresses, however, a haunting backstory plunges us into something much deeper and darker – an unimaginable horror that, most chilling of all, is actually not all that difficult to imagine.
Michelle de Swarte plays Natasha, whose sharp wit masks a softer, more vulnerable emotional core than meets the eye. Her best friends both embrace motherhood, a journey she has no interest in and she can’t stop being shitty about it. She drives to a beach cabin for an impromptu vacation to find out her misfortune, but instead finds a young woman who has fallen to her death – and miraculously catches the baby who has followed her off a cliff.
The little boy and his yellow knitted shoes might be so cute they deserve an Anne Geddes portrait, but there’s something wrong with this baby.
Aside from his supernatural calm after that massive fall, there’s the fact that seemingly everyone hanging around the child ends up dead – except for Natasha, who gets understandably frantic as her attempts to get rid of the horrible little one continue to fail. Add in some disturbing dream sequences, a few buckets of blood, and a catastrophic meltdown at an indoor play center, and you have a solid motherhood horror comedy.
However, the series only really shows its hand after a few episodes. There’s no big “twist,” but there is one big reveal — one that might infuse previous episodes with the spark they occasionally lack. Though the first six of The Baby’s eight half-hour episodes ultimately deliver what one might expect from a killer baby romp (some maternal body horror here, a demonic playgroup scene there), it takes a while to heat up.
Natasha spends much of the show in isolation with the baby, save for a mysterious seventy-year-old named Mrs. Eaves (Amira Ghazalla), whose interest in Natasha’s new ward seems to be… a little intense. (“He’s going to level your life, destroy your relationships,” she is heard in the trailer. “And once he gets you around, he’ll destroy you.”) However, as intriguing as this relationship becomes, Natasha’s friendships are — yes early our main window into their world – feels generic and uncooked. If The Baby’s original sin relies too much on broad, familiar satire at the outset, the back half does much to atone when we dig a little deeper into her (and the baby’s!) family.
“If the original sin of ‘The Baby’ initially relies a little too much on broad, familiar satire, the back half does much to repent when we dig a little deeper into their (and the baby’s!) family.”
Natasha may not be interested in procreating, but her sister, a child magician named Bobbi (Amber Grappy), is practically dying of baby fever. The two witnessed trauma that broke their family apart from different angles at a young age, which seems to have pushed them in two different directions. Natasha is cool, reserved, slightly sour; Bobbi is the kindhearted, eager Marshmallow. With the arrival of The Baby, the two begin to examine their history together, as well as the narratives they have internalized about themselves.
But the most compelling aspect of The Baby is the ghost story that lies in its past – a waking nightmare that is both too horrible to imagine and, unfortunately, all too easy.
This could be comedy, but thematically it shares a crib with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both explore the dangers of a patriarchal society that idolizes babies and treats women as reproductive assets. In the case of The Baby, however, the horror story is rooted in history rather than dystopian fiction – a detail that should unsettle viewers all the more.
Any fan of demonic children’s horror will obviously be a natural fit for this series, as will fans of British horror comedy. However, it’s hard not to feel like there’s still a lot on the table. Given the premise – again, let me repeat, a demon baby! — you wouldn’t expect this series to feel so repetitive and even at times understated, from the costume choices to the disaster scenes. There’s excellent satire here, and a chilling horror story too, but it seems none of them have learned to walk.