Dead Babies

It would be true to say that William Marsh's directorial debut pulls no punches. In fact shock tactics are deliberately played right from the word go. One of the first shots is of the alcoholic Giles' bloody teeth falling out one by one. From here on in the audience is left with little doubt that we're in for a bumpy ride. However, we end up being bombarded with so many scenes of drugs, violence, nudity and general depravity that one soon develops an immunity.

The plot centers around one hedonistic weekend where a bunch of directionless English graduates who inhabit a country mansion, are visited by three American friends (one of whom is played by Marsh himself) bent on supplying the perfect weekend of sex and drugs. It's kind of like watching a drugged-up version of Peter's Friends. The films' sub-plot involves a net based terrorist group known as The Conceptualists, who have somehow infiltrated the proceedings. It soon becomes clear that one of the revelers is not what they seem. However any intrigue, or indeed suspense, is dulled by our lack of empathy for the characters, who are either too larger-than-life to be believable or just totally un-likeable.

Dead Babies would no doubt like to be thought of in the same tradition as other drug fueled British cult classics such as Performance, Withnail and I, and Trainspotting. However, these films were far more character driven and weren't so heavily dependent on artificial means of stimulation.

'Dead Babies' is perhaps of the shallowest of Martin Amis's novels: a vicious satirical attack on the smart set in 1970s London: wealthy, fashionable, drug-addled, and paranoid, it follows them through a desperate and debauched weekend. The book's tone is flippant, with the strong implication that the characters don't actually deserve any treatment more reverent; while the novel justifies its own existence through the outrageous comedy of its hyperbolic prose. But hyperbolic prose, and drug-fuelled hysteria, are two things hard to capture in film (think Terry Gilliam's disastrous adaptation of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for example). In his film of 'Dead Babies', director William Marsh uses the imagery of the modern video game, or pop video (something by the Progidy, perhaps, although this idea is maybe brought to mind merely by the presence of a grotesque character called Keith). This technique is less anachronistic than it might seem, as the setting is also updated to the present day, but unfortunately it's also familiar, and dull, in a way that the book's original prose never was: a collection of gross-out images set to techno. In places, flashes of Amis's humour shine through, but elsewhere the film seems amateurish. Amis's novels have always had a self-awareness that allows their author to get away with excesses that would otherwise be inexcusable; but this movie lacks the faint hint of self-mockery that help redeem the book. Finally, I haven't read the book for ages, but unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the ending was somewhat different the one we get in the film, which is also excessive, but futilely stupid in a way that the original writing never was.

I remain a big fan of Martin Amis, and I suspect that some (but not all) of his other books might potentially make more successful films than this one. But the path to adaptation is strewn with peril. In the case of 'Dead Babies', something is definitely lost in translation.

A group of friends all met when they were in college. Quentin has since married a girl with money and enjoys his free life of drugs and sex; Keith has been in a mental institution and is not better now that he is out, Giles has an inheritance and a major drink problem while Andy and Diana are married but the drugs have significantly reduced their sex lives. Into their lives come two Americans and a messed up guy called Skip, bearing new powerful drugs and promoting their particular brand of bisexual group sex. As if things were going to be weird enough, someone called "Johnny" is leaving bloody threatening notes around the house.

The word on this film is that it is bad, really bad. With this knowledge I didn't have high hopes but watched it anyway and must say that I don't think it is bad as such, or at least it deserves a better description than that one word. Instead I came to think of it as more than one word and several that come to mind include pointless, dated, cheap, tiresome and excessive. If the plot seems pointless it is because it is; eventually it will get to something about a conceptualist group on the internet but by the time it does you will not care that even that is stupid and pointless. Instead the film spends most of its time trying to be shocking, whether it is sexually, violence-wise or just with the way it treats the characters. With so much pointlessness it is hard to care about or even be interested in the characters – just as well since they are cartoon wide-boys and clichés taken from other films.

The shock value is all here and what a shame it is that none of this stuff is that shocking any more – drugs are a norm for many people, sexual taboos are gradually vanishing and the idea of drunken parties full of excess will be known to many who went to university to get just that. Seeing them on screen allows things to be excessive but they are not shocking or interesting – eventually they just get tiresome and boring. The director has clearly seen Trainspotting and is trying to get as close to it as he can, but sadly he has forgotten that substance should come first – get the audience into the film, then they will care enough about the action to actually give you an emotional response of some sort. Sadly, without this it just seems stupid and the end of the film couldn't really come soon enough! The cast are a very strange mix, with some faces in there that are better than this and some I only know from sitcoms and made a strange find. Bettany is always interesting but here cannot do anything to raise the material. However he is head and shoulders above the rest of the cast who are pretty poor thanks to the material they are given, Condou gets the closest to an interesting and sympathetic character but the rest just go along with whatever nudity, shouting or excess they are required to do – none of them convince and none of them add anything.

Overall this is not a bad film if you are a teenager looking for something that is supposedly "edgy" and "different"; however the majority of us will just feel like it was a grind from start to finish with nothing of value along the way. Without a plot, script or even characters it is no wonder that it so totally failed to engage me and just ended up being tiresomely gory and excessive for no reason and providing nothing of value. A pretty terrible film but one that deserves more description than just being "bad".

It's possible that you may see this movie on TV. Bear in mind that those two hours of your life can never be brought back. If you see it in a video store, bear in mind that you will be wasting your money AND your life.

This is a badly written, poorly paced and badly shot movie. The characters are nothing you haven't seen before, the sort of badly-characterised 'spoilt rich kid' that appear in all sorts of British movies. The plot - concerning 'internet terrorists' (has Amis been reading a lot of Lynda La Plante lately?) is nothing short of appalling.

Save for a few reasonably good performances, there is absolutely nothing to like about this film. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

A terrible storyline (Amis at his worst), pointless and self-conscious 'decadence', obvious shock tactics and patchy acting make this film (rather like "Rancid Aluminium") embody everything that went wrong with the much-vaunted British film revival. The humour is, at best, limp, and the pretentiousness of the whole set-up (including some kind of "internet terrorist group" - ooh, how contemporary) really begins to grate.

Final summary - a half-baked attempt to be 'edgy' that does no-one any favours. Still, it's always a pleasure to see Katy Carmichael on screen...