Baby Blues (2008)

Great Film overall

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I saw this movie on a rented DVD in 2008. Read some good reviews. Was looking forward to it. One word, it is not for everyone. This movie is scary, shocking n full of tension without any cheap jump scares, ghosts, revenge or gore. The situation/plot of the movie is scary enuff. This is a disturbing film with some intense moments. It is psychologically disturbing as the horror is real. Nothing can be more scary than a sick mother hunting down her own small children on an isolated farmhouse in the father's absence. Fans of High tension, The shining, Inside shud definitely check this out. The psychotic mom is believably portrayed by Colleen Porch. The eldest son was portrayed well by Ridge Canipe. The ending of the film is more shocking then the events that preceded them. Regardless of its weaknesses (obvious set pieces/predictability) this film presents some tense moments and some real moments of sadness. The secluded farmhouse in the middle of nowhere gave more creeps n knowing that it's based on a true event is frightening. This movie is a fictionalize depiction of the Andrea Yates story. The makers of this film shud be given more projects to direct.

A young mother (an excellent and terrifying performance by Colleen Porch) suffering from post-partum depression goes dangerously crazy and turns on her own children. It's up to ten-year-old Jimmy (a sound and credible portrayal by Ridge Canipe) to protect both himself and his younger siblings from their mother's murderous wrath. Directors Amardeep Kaleka and Lars Jacobson (the latter also wrote the dark and uncompromising script) don't pull any punches in their telling of this genuinely scary and upsetting tale that was inspired by an actual incident; the extreme scenes of brutal violence against children (some of them are even killed!) are intensely painful, gut-wrenching, and hard to watch. Moreover, the meticulous and convincing evocation of pedestrian everyday reality adds an extra frightening plausibility to the already bleak and unnerving narrative. The best and most distressful horror films hit home (in this case literally) by showing how ordinary life can be ripped asunder by an equally mundane, yet deadly and unusual phenomenon. One becomes very afraid of what this unhinged and dangerous woman might do to both herself and her own children; her descent into psychotic insanity is the stuff of real nightmares. The film further benefits from sterling acting by an able no-name cast: Porch and Canipe are remarkable in the leads, with fine support from Joel Bryant as the trucker father, Kali Majors and Holden Thomas Maynard as Jimmy's younger siblings, and Gene Witham as amiable neighbor Lester. Matthew MacCarthy's cinematography gives the picture an appropriately rough and grainy look. Amardeep Kaleka's shuddery score also does the shivery trick. The conclusion is positively bone-chilling. Unpleasant for sure, but still quite powerful and effective just the same.

Postpartum psychosis is a mental illness,which involves the rapid onset of psychotic symptoms in a woman following childbirth.Symptoms of postpartum psychosis can include feelings of being ordered by God to harm oneself or the children,seeing or hearing things that others don't,out of control feelings and thoughts,random or uncontrollable anxiety attacks or memory lapses.Andrea Yates methodically drowned her 5 children in a bathtub in her Texas house in June 2001.She suffered from post-partum psychosis.In "Baby Blues" the mother is trying to kill her four children.After having a complete psychotic breakdown she smothers the baby and stabs to death two older children.Only her oldest son named Jimmy manages to survive.Colleen Porch is perfectly believable as a murderous mommy with hatchet as are the child actors.The scenes of violence and child murder are mostly off-screen,but still pack one hell of a punch.8 out of 10.

Spoilers contained below: Apparently there are several people on this board who get their thrills from watching young children murdered by their mother. This is not a horror movie. This is not a thriller. It is about a poor, sick woman who goes crazy after the birth of her last child and butchers her young children in front of her other children. Then at the end the woman is apparently going to be allowed to go home with her last surviving child and her husband is okay with all of this!! You have to be kidding me. As the mother of 3 children I could not watch this movie. It was completely disturbing and I am furious that it was billed as a thriller and so I was suckered into renting it. If I could have given it 0 stars or -100 stars then I would have.If you like watching young children murdered then this is definitely the movie for you. If you find that sort of thing sickening then stay away!