Spoonful of Sugar

One of Shudder's low-budget horror stories. It is a slow-burning film. It takes its time to develop the characters. It's not a horror-action movie.

At the forefront of the story is a young couple who's struggling to take care of their only young son who is severely autistic. Johnny (Danillo Crovetti) throws violent tantrums and is sometimes hard to contain. Dealing with Johnny's issues puts a great strain on the couple's relationship and they look numb on the outside as well as inside.

After losing the last nanny, they hire Millicent (Morgan Taylor) without doing a background check. Millicent is a cookie herself with a whole sort of psychological issues. She perfectly plays the role of someone who has been abused and has been in and out of foster homes throughout her life.

When Millicent meets Johnny, an immediate rapport is established between them. Millicent first time feels a sense of family, and, Johnny first time feels safe. Soon after, Millicent quits her prescription LSD drops for feeling much better and gets the bright idea of using her LSD drops on Johnny's foods and medicine. What could go wrong?

It is not an exciting movie but it is a good story, good direction, and good acting. The script is good. If you don't like slow-cooking stories, it might not be your cup of tea.

There's a definite lack of thematic consistency. The film isn't sure what it wants to be - Is it a take on acid trips and its effects? Is it about bad parenting? Is it about cheating in relationships? Is it about childhood trauma? The writing tries to dip its paintbrush in all of these buckets, but it doesn't come together in a very satisfying way. But, to the film's credit, the performances (especially Morgan Saylor, who effortlessly swings between sweet, menacing, and sexy) largely cover up for the holes in the plot. The visual effects looked pretty bad in the first act, though when the LSD elements kicked in, I felt the director executed the hallucinatory bits nicely. At least a couple of scenes made me aghast, and that includes a wild raw-dogging bit as well as the gory climax. A twist is revealed almost right before the end credits, and though it made sense from a storytelling standpoint, the ramifications seemed low.

If you like intelligent plots with a touch of bizarre and smart solutions, this is the film. Amazing acting, a sober direction and dark shades of obscure references anchored under the human psiqué (pay attention to 'The Shining' nod in the door sequence). Above all, no trace of the left-wing clichés that, nowadays, pollutes almost every script or the politically correct crap made in Hollywood. Just a tight screenplay that surprises and conquers the moviegoer with a slight touch of gore. The soundtrack also contributes to the result, along with LSD references that makes it more and more insteresting. A potential cult for the right audience.

This is an interesting film with some great performances that ultimately doesn't quite work. It's as if there are a few too many ideas going on and something got left on the cutting room floor. It also doesn't help that characters aren't clearly drawn, should you be rooting for them or hating them ? The twist was a nice touch but in the end it doesn't save the film. Someone dropped the ball, either the writer, director or both, but the film doesn't quite gel into something I would watch again. For the performances though, the strangeness of it all and the fact that it uses a rare case of a male as an object of desire, makes this worth a one time watch.

Considering the rather low ratings it got on here I wasn't expecting too much from this horror movie but I'm glad I gave it a shot because it was pleasant to follow. Horror movies will never please everybody, and even though I wouldn't class this one as hardcore horror, it was an entertaining movie. It's mild horror with a couple of bloody scenes, creepy for sure and that was mostly due to the performance of Morgan Saylor. She has good facial expressions to make it creepy, and of course her acting talent that was more than decent. The story was certainly not bad, just simple but effective, and easy to follow.