Dead Babies

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 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.

I am a great fan of Martin Amis, on whose book this film is based. Unfortunately the director has been unable to translate the book to the screen. The novel is thoroughly post modern and highly artificial in its wildly overblown characters and the disintegration of traditional plot line and character development. It is an hilarious examination of human greed, excess and emptiness by one of the most moral of contemporary British writers. The director of the film has completely missed the point of the novel. In his hands, the film screams along at breakneck speed, indulging in every known trick shot and 'odd' camera angle possible. It is like Ken Russel on acid, and suffers from that older director's self indulgence cranked up to a hundred. Not even the (brief) glimpse of gorgeous actor Christian Solimeno's penis was enough to save this wretched film for me. Abysmal!

Suffice to say that -- despite the odd ludicrous panegyric of your posted comment regarding "Dead Babies," one can only conclude that your animosity directed towards this little gem of a film is most likely due to your resemblance of one of the film's two utterly pathetic characters. "Giles"? Or are you more like "Keith"?

It's ironic to me the energy it must have taken to not only seek it out here, but its director's credits, as well as your clearly passionate opinions and suggestions -- "Avoid [it] like the plague," for a film you so revile.

I rented this movie from a Japanese video store. Because of my limited Kanji-reading skills, I took a chance because of the English cast (and, to a lesser-extent, the unusual title). Namely, Paul Bettany, who was brought to my attention to his unforgettable performance in "Gangster #1".

I played it for various English guests in an English-owned and operated youth hostel I manage in Los Angeles. With absolutely no idea what we had in store for us, we were thoroughly pleased, enjoying it from beginning to end. It successfully balanced unforgettable moments of both hilarity and horror, never an easy task and, more often than not, rarely achieved. More so, when its adapted from a popular novel.

So, what do you consider worthy? "Pulp Fiction"? Ha! Maybe something from Merchant Ivory? Do they even make films anymore? Probably not, what with the BFI producing such "rubbish" like "Dead Babies" which received by your fellow countryman (and women) well-deserved comparisons to stellar films such as "Trainspotting" and "Requiem For A Dream".

Instead of attacking everyone from the director to the British Film Industry (Regain its status?!? Lighten up, would ya?)why don't you advise what NOT to avoid. But what can one expect from someone who TRIES, and fails, to present himself as above all others by over-using his thesaurus using such "odious tosh" as "panegyric" and French phrases as "soi distant"! Who talks like this?

A couple of days after writing about how garbage like MAD COWS and THIS FILTHY EARTH receive money while Ange , Duncan and Theo are totally ignored I had to sit through yet another British movie * that had me scratching my head as to why it received a single penny . Some people may claim that because DEAD BABIES is based upon a highly regarded novel it has an in built market but both THIS FILTHY EARTH and MAD COWS were also adapted from novels and they were an ordeal to sit through as well

I had read the synopsis of the plot where a bunch of high class wasters go to a remote mansion where they're stalked by an internet cult but to be honest this isn't really how the story unravels and anyone expecting Friday THE 13TH meets THE SHINING is going to be bitterly disappointed since 90-95% of the running time is taken up with said characters taking drugs and discussing sex . And what hateful characters they are too . Not one of them is likable in any way and within minutes you'll be getting nostalgic for Stalin , Mao and Pol Pot hoping that next time someone embarks on communist democide they'll be successful in creating an egalitarian utopia . Anything that will signal the end of such decadent bourgeois meaningless that the hateful characters in this movie embark upon can only be welcomed

Not content with giving us a movie where the plot is meandering and where the audience fail to connect with the characters the director continues to spoil things further by getting all clever and arty . No doubt that is to impress us so we will fall upon our knees and cry " Oh my god , what a wonderful director the way he bamboozles us with his highly artistic technique and only a worthless pleb will fail to appreciate what a god given talent this man is " . I'm sure the vast majority of people either screamed " How come my projects got turned down while crap like this didn't ? " or " WTF was the last half hour of this piece of crap all about ? " You might defend the movie by saying the original source novel was unfilmable and this makes the film unwatchable . I will agree that this movie is unwatchable

* I know the IMDb classes this as an American movie but the style and faults with DEAD BABIES is uniquely British . Americans might think they've got things tough with Bush but we've got Tony Blair , not to mention DEAD BABIES , MAD COWS and THIS FILTHY EARTH . No wonder everyone is ashamed to be British in the 21st century