On general release from Fri 30 Mar
Pål Sletaune / Norway / 2011 / 96mins
Part psychological thriller, part mystery and part ghost story, Pål Sletaune’s Babycall follows traumatised mother, Anna (Noomi Rapace) and her young son Anders (Vetle Qvenild Werring) as she struggles to adapt to her life in a secret new home after fleeing her abusive husband. But when her baby monitor (or babycall) starts to transmit sounds that lead her to believe a child has been murdered, she begins a journey that takes her to an unimaginable place.
Tense, gripping and dark, Babycall is a finely-tuned piece of cinema that is only let down by its abundance of themes, subplots and its ambiguous nature. While ambiguity is a very strong and useful device to have in a psychological thriller, the problem with Babycall is that this uncertainty leaves it devoid of and searching for identity. Is Anna a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown? Or is she a vulnerable woman who has stumbled into a very confusing and dangerous situation? Sletaune’s film doesn’t answer these questions, and while this is understandable, it makes the piece seem unfinished and unsatisfying despite a very strong performance from Rapace as the abused and unpredictable mother figure.