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Thursday, April 22, 2021

Álex de la Iglesia’s Spanish TV Movie ‘The Baby’s Room’ Explores the Fears of First Time Parents [Horrors Elsewhere]

Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not always be universal, but one thing is for sure  a scream is understood, always and everywhere.

Apart from directing cult films like Who Can Kill a Child? and The House That Screamed, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador largely worked in television. One of his most notable projects on the small screen is Stories to Keep You Awake (Historias para no dormir), an anthology series that originally aired between 1966 and 1968 before it returned in 1982 with a handful of feature-length episodes. Although talks of another revival arose in 2000, it never moved beyond the developmental stage because Serrador wanted other filmmakers to write and direct. His wish finally manifested in 2005 when he and Telecinco began production on an ensemble of telefilms collectively called Films to Keep You Awake (Películas para no dormir). The six movies started broadcasting in 2007 with Álex de la Iglesia’s The Baby’s Room (La habitación del niño) being the first to air.

In Films to Keep You Awake’s inaugural tale, Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Sonia (Leonor Watling) have moved into an old house fully unaware of its past; a boy temporarily went missing there many years ago. After his family gives him an old baby monitor, Juan hears a stranger’s voice in his seven-month-old son’s room. No one is there, yet the possibility of an interloper who comes and goes undetected naturally disturbs Juan. His purchase of a baby cam only exacerbates his paranoia as he now sees a man next to the crib. Of course, his wife never sees this alleged prowler who disappears without a trace. The father’s growing obsession soon puts both his marriage and newborn in grave danger.

The movie is no mere breaking-and-entering thriller seeing as it quickly lets viewers know there’s something supernatural going on; the cold open shows a boy being pulled through a puddle inside the house before he later emerges. In the present day, the same house and its accursed history remain intact. The prologue might suggest a similar fate for the main characters’ son, but the house’s next victim is really Juan. Iglesias goes against the grain by focusing on the father, as opposed to other horror movies that target the mothers.

First-time parents are bound to be nervous, but sometimes those nerves can take on a life of their own — this is what happens to the father in The Baby’s Room. The stress of work, family, and restoring an old house all starts to chip away at Juan. His troubles begin when his sister Theresa (Eulàlia Ramon) shows up unannounced with gifts for her nephew, including the ill-fated baby monitor; the device is the starting pistol for all the sinister events that follow. The strain at home eventually causes Juan’s nervous collapse and Sonia’s departure. Even though she also heard the frightening voice on the baby monitor, Sonia chooses to believe it’s nothing. Thinking otherwise, she’d have to acknowledge the problems in her marriage and the fact her child isn’t safe from his own father.

Juan’s fear not only worsens when he installs the baby cam, it takes on a physical form. At times, his problems at home parallel the major life changes entwined with parenting. Juan’s overwhelming panic over the supposed prowler suggests an apprehension towards parenthood; something about his child and home deeply scares him. Adding to this reading is a curious scene where Juan goes to buy the first cam and tells the female employee the device is for a friend rather than himself. What might seem like a technique for flirting may really be a kind of escapism. Up until the move or his son’s birth, the protagonist lived the life of a sports writer who didn’t have to worry about diapers or homeownership. Whatever personal freedom he had was then diminished, leaving Juan to consider his own senescence.

Explaining the phenomenon inside Juan’s house is where The Baby’s Room stumbles before getting back on its feet. This second-act decision is perhaps for the audience’s benefit, but maintaining ambiguity would have been fine, if not better. Having Juan visit a reclusive parapsychologist named Domingo (Sancho Gracia) smells of other genre movies where a random expert conveniently gets involved. While Domingo never quite solves Juan’s ordeal, he offers help in the form of quantum physics. Specifically, he brings up Schrödinger’s Cat, a thought experiment that foreshadows things to come — when you try to rescue the cat, you’ll end up trapped or worse. Another fruitless development is Terele Pávez’s elderly character, the sister of the boy from the opening scene, whose cryptic words don’t add too much to the overall story.

It would appear everything is back to normal once Sonia returns home after being scared away by Juan’s suspicious behavior. By being more active in his son’s care and resuming work at the newspaper, Juan accepts his new life changes with no more resistance. Needless to say, this is the calm before the storm; internal threats aren’t so easy to get rid of once that door has been opened. At least now, Juan is more committed to being a father than ever, no matter the place or time.

Iglesias curbs his signature dark sense of humor, but his low-key movie is not without its own style, either. The central location is eerie and beneficial when conveying domestic dread. The telegenic format never influences the cast’s performances or hinders the film’s visual output. The technical prowess defies expectations about made-for-television features. Iglesias was initially wary about the medium of choice; he assumed the budget and equipment would be detriments to his work. On the contrary, neither factor impairs the movie or its overall success. So much of the filmmaker’s work — including The Day of the Beast and The Bar — is about big horrors out in the world, but The Baby’s Home is a strong reminder that terror often starts at home.



source https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3661602/alex-de-la-iglesias-spanish-tv-movie-babys-room-explores-fears-first-time-parents-horrors-elsewhere/

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