Review No.126: Babycall

So from Paris we travel to Norway for our second thriller of the day only Babycall also has some elements of horror nestled within its plot. The film stars Noomi Rapace, best known for the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but more recently seen in Prometheus, as single mother Anna who is seemingly over-protective to her eight year old son Anders. As the film goes on we are given the impression that Anna and Anders have been moved out of their old home after her ex-husband abused both her and their son with them being re-located by the social workers to a new apartment. The social workers try to help Anna get things back to normal by having her put Anders into school as well as giving him his own room which means that she can't have him sleep next to her anymore. As Anna wants peace of mind she heads to the local electrics store to purchase a Babycall, more commonly referred to over here as a monitor, and sets it up in Anders' room so she can hear if anything untoward happens. The only problem is that she hears what she believes is another child being abused in a neighbouring apartment block so starts to write down what she hears to try and stop another family suffering in the way she and Anders did. As the film goes on Anna strikes up a friendship with Helge, who works at the store where she purchased the Babycall, the two bond as both have trouble forging new relationships which in his case is to do with his past relationship with his severely ill mother. Anna and Helge's time together looks to being growing into something more however there are too many other things going on in her life such as Anders' behaviour becoming more erratic as well as the male social worker threatening to take her son away unless she performs sexual acts on him. Obviously as this has already been set out as a thriller there has to be a twist at the end of the film and for me at least I felt the final revelation, while not as out there as the one in Switch, spoilt the film as a whole.

Babycall's first half hour promises so much and after Anna purchased her monitor then started to hear other conversations I got ready to watch a Scandinavian take on Rear Window, Downstairs Monitor perhaps? Soon though there were too many plot elements to keep track off Anna's struggle to remember events, Helge's relationship with his mother, the slightly pervy social worker and Anders' mystery bruises all spoilt what I believed was a decent set-up. Babycall also suffers from a confusion of tone at times I feel I was watching a family drama at others a conspiracy thriller and sometimes a supernatural movie. Director Pål Sletaune does at least make everything a little bit moody and atmospheric in order to present our heroine as someone who doesn't always realise what's going on which in terms means that we can't always trust her. For her part Noomi Rapace is predictably brilliant really excelling at playing this fragile, abused single mother trying to do the best for her son but having increasing problems doing so thanks to all the men in her life. It's disappointing then that Babycall ends on such a sour note with Sletaune almost feeling forced to give us a finale that almost doesn't make sense in a way if you think about what came before it. After having watched both Switch and Babycall it has become obvious to me that these thrillers feel obliged to have some sort of twisty outcome but both suffered due to the ludicrous nature of these denouements. Switch though did have my interest throughout but I struggled to care about the finish of Babycall despite Rapace's best efforts ultimately this is a film that won't stick in the mind as long as the one I watched before it will.

Verdict: A good build-up is squandered with too many plot threads and an underwhelming final revelation however this film's saving grace is the wonderful Noomi Rapace so for that reason alone I can't give it a lower mark than 5.5/10