Movie Review: BIG BABY

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 7th, 2026 / 09:43 PM

BIG BABY Movie Poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Brandon Scott, Krsy Fox, Adam Marcinowski, Catherine Corcoran, Torio Van Grol, Kate Freund, Jordan Elsass, Radek Lord, David Howard Thornton, Tracie Thoms, Sierra McCormick, Del Howison, Angel Melanson
Writer: Spider One
Director: Spider One
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: August 7, 2026 (streaming)

Horror movies that want us to guess if one character is losing their mind or if something supernatural is going on are tough to pull off. Just a little over-emphasis in one direction or the other can not only tip off the audience too early, but it can make everything between that revelation and the finale seem superfluous.

BIG BABY writer/director Spider One is mostly successful with this aspect of his contemporary slasher, at least partly because he keeps this ambiguous until almost the very end.

BIG BABY’s protagonist is horror screenwriter Adam Lewis (Brandon Scott). Adam is financially and professionally successful. On top of this, he has a supportive, gorgeous live-in girlfriend, Kate (Krsy Fox).

Even so, Adam is extremely dissatisfied. He wants more respect, he wants more prestige and, most of all, he wants a new premise for a screenplay.

Adam is driven to frustration and fury by a horror movie review podcast from two smug young jerks (Jordan Elsass and Radek Lord). One of them calls the film made from Adam’s latest script, THE BLACKEST MOON, “one of the worstest [spelling is correct] movies I’ve ever seen” and advises whoever wrote it to kill themselves for having written it.

In fairness to Adam, it’s snide, say-anything-for-a-quote putzes like these guys who give public discussion of films a bad name. We can’t blame him for being mad.

We can, however, blame Adam for wallowing, even after Kate tries to cheer him up. Adam gets drunk, wakes up, hears a noise, goes outside – and he and we get a super-effective jump scare.

Adam wakes up in the morning, inspired by the visceral nightmare he’s endured. He devises a story about a hulking slasher in a distorted baby mask (Adam Marcinowski), whose weapon of choice is a long-handled hatchet.

So far, so good. The only nagging problem for Adam is that his and Kate’s bedsheets have new, real slices in them, the kind made by a sharp-edged blade.

Then Adam starts seeing and hearing his characters talk to him. A lot of writers maintain this happens for them, but they’re probably not being quite so literal as what happens here.

Filmmaker Spider One brings up some intriguing notions about what, if anything, creators owe to what they create. However, he doesn’t investigate this much, leaving one of BIG BABY’s most original aspects to trail off.

Since we spend a lot of time with Adam and Kate as a couple, more exploration of Kate’s character and the relationship would have given BIG BABY more heft and tension.

Kate is a patient, loving listener. Adam doesn’t seem much interested in what’s going on in Kate’s life; he and the movie treat her like a sounding board with benefits. Never mind the domestic situation becoming menacing; we think she’d leave on the basis of being taken for granted.

These elements aside, though, Spider One is adept at staging ominous scenes, even teasing some alarming moments out of set-ups where we know what’s coming. He also holds our attention by employing unconventional camera angles, making us as well as Adam look at things in a different way.

BIG BABY also benefits greatly from the performance of leading man Scott, who takes Adam from authentic if familiar Hollywood solipsism to the desperation of a man who simply cannot articulate what he’s experiencing.

Fox is appealing as Kate, and Torio Van Grol is very natural as Adam’s warm, geeky best friend. Elsass and Lord make their characters appropriately annoying. Horror fans will appreciate cameos from actors David Howard Thornton and Tracie Thoms, author (and Dark Delicacies proprietor) Del Howison, and FANGORIA online editor Angel Melanson, among others.

BIG BABY leaves a few things on the table, but it’s unusual and impactful enough to be worth watching. Viewers should stay for a final sequence that runs through and past the end credits.

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Latest Buzz

A slasher walking the madness/supernatural tightrope

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Movie Review: BIG BABY

Related

Related Posts:

Leave a Comment

Assignment X Poll

Newsletter subscription status