The Mother

I First saw Cradle Will Fall a couple of weeks ago and i found it to be quite a disturbing but very good film. The mother suffers a psychotic breakdown due to postpartum depression and the stress of family life which makes her want to kill her children 10,7,4, and 3 months. Her husband has gone away. Now Jimmy,the eldest son has to help the family survive. Jimmy must try to protect his brothers and sister. He has to fight off his mother to stop her from hurting the rest of the children. I thought this was a very strong film at times with some disturbing seances which could scare viewers. Apart from this i thought it was a very good horror movie.

On a secluded family farm(huge props to the location scout), a mother(Porch, handling both the sympathetic aspects and the one line delivering attempts at creating a genre icon, a la Jason Voorhees) snaps and becomes violent towards her four youngsters. Her husband is a long-distance trucker, and won't be home for many hours. It is up to their oldest, 13-year old Jimmy(Canipe, getting across how resourceful he is, whilst still being a kid. He's a much better child actor than anyone should expect from someone his age) to save their lives.

Considering the fact that this is actually straight to video, it is wild how well made this is. The cinematography and editing are efficient and chilling. You see some of the auditory and visual hallucinations brought on by schizophrenia and postpartum psychosis(not "merely" depression, despite the title), that Mom is experiencing. The music is ominous. This is tense, suspenseful and creepy. A significant chunk of this is the chase, and despite its short length - even if you include the end credits it's only an hour and 14 minutes(!) - it has more of that, than a number of movies that are significantly longer.

The horror genre tends to explore basically any taboo that standards of good taste will allow them. The death of little ones remains one of the few that a lot of films will leave entirely untouched. So when this crosses that boundary early, and threatens to do it multiple times, and by the hands of a parent, a *mum*, obviously it's something that's going to attract attention. Wisely, this doesn't tend to show a lot of violence and gore when it comes to those victims. Even so, this is tremendously exploitative. And the ending sends that into the stratosphere. You may want to stop watching not long before it actually concludes - trust me, you'll know when.

I recommend this solely to those who feel strong anxiety about the idea of someone murdering their own offspring, and believe that this picture could help them work through that. My rating is based on the talent that went into making this, and does not reflect how messed up I think it is to make a slasher flick out of this concept. 8/10.

A long haul trucker hits the road just as his wife is in the throes of a psychotic break due to postpartum depression. Now left alone with their mother, the oldest son must attempt to protect his three siblings and escape their isolated farmhouse.

What a discovery! It's hard to believe that I hadn't heard of Baby Blues before renting it on a whim last October. This is a disturbing film with some intense imagery. The first 30 minutes are especially rattling, as we are treated to an all too realistic portrait of a mental breakdown. One particularly effective scene sees the mother sitting in a daze as she imagines heinous sounds emanating from the baby monitor in place of her baby's actual crying. The film eventually turns more towards a slasher type scenario, only with kids as the victims instead of the typical teenagers. Not to say that it gets less disturbing, it actually doesn't. The kills get under your skin, especially the first one we're witness to involving the sharp point of a mirror.

Colleen Porch is fantastic as the mother, never taking things over the top, something that easily could have happened. The kids are good too, all perfectly believable as normal children in a terrible situation that they don't fully understand. There's a scene where the mother attempts to drown her daughter in the bathtub, the whole thing made more effective by the reaction of the girl's brother in the background, a reaction that rang very true to me.

This isn't a film for everyone. It is often hard to watch due to the unnerving nature of what unfolds on the screen. For others like myself who prefer to feel something when watching a horror film, this is one that you won't want to miss. It's exceptionally well done.

Like many horror fans, I spend a lot of time wading through the proverbial garbage that saturates the genre, in search of those hidden gems. BABY BLUES is just such a find. Beautiful cinematography, a tight script, and some really solid performances make for a terrifying journey into a child's worst nightmare. My biggest question is, why has it taken me so long to find this flick? It seems to have completely slipped under the radar. This film is 10 times better the most theatrically released horror films. If you are a horror fan, or just a fan of great independent cinema, I strongly recommend you check this out!

I picked this up cheap on DVD, under the title Cradle Will Fall, yet the credits on the movie read Baby Blues. Why do they do that?? Just keep it the same! As with so many of these budget purchases I go in with low expectations, however Baby Blues proved to be fairly decent. Inspired by true events, a mother of four young kids suffers with postpartum and while the father is away in his truck she flips and embarks on a bloody killing spree. In true slasher movie style. It's very disturbing and graphic, the sight of a mother butchering her children is not easy to stomach. The rural location adds to the helplessness of the children's situation, there's a creepy scarecrow and corn fields (a nod to Children of the Corn?). Acting is decent, in particular Ridge Canipe as 10 year old Jimmy. I do pass on many of my DVDs after I've watched them but I may just hang on to this one and revisit it again in the future.