The Baby's Room (2006; Álex de la Iglesia)

When I reviewed my first Film to Keep You Awake, I said horror films made for television tend to feature too much lighting. It is becoming quite obvious to me that this television series has done away with that problem and has begun dealing with another recent problem plaguing film in general. Digital. Need I say more?


A young couple moves into a nice house that was mysteriously cheap. As soon as they move in they begin to hear voices through their baby monitor and start to get worried. It is obvious where I am going with this now, so I'll just leave it at that.

While The Baby's Room retreads ground that has been so retreaded that I doubt there is even ground to be treaded on there anymore, it does it well enough that it deserves some credit. While the ghost tale is not the only horror cliche at work here (the ending comes to mind) it still has enough chills to make it a worthy experience.

The soundtrack is sort of bland and uninspired, which matches perfectly with the script, I suppose. The pacing is adequate; keeping you interested enough to keep you going. The acting is a lot better than one would expect, which happens to be one of the only aspects where this film reaches beyond average.

The camera is of the same bland quality, but with one major exception. During the course of the film, the couple acquires a baby monitor with a video feed. This leads to some very interesting, almost mockumentary type scenes where we are bound to only the limited sight of the monitor. This leads to some actually effective chills until the film dials it down and goes for a more straight forward approach that drags it back into the realm of normality.

So to wrap this brief entry up, while the film reeks of cliche, it's use of an effective medium for certain scenes gives it's score a little bit of an edge to a final of...

Score: 3/5

Notes: Potatoes are red.