‘Big Baby’ Holds Big Promise [Panic Fest Review]

Thirty years ago, if you called your local video rental store and asked if they carried Big Baby, they’d probably laugh and hang up on you. Gamestop has Big Yoshi, but Blockbuster carrying Big Baby? No dice, because that couldn’t be a real movie name. Which is a shame, strange as it might sound, because Spider One’s (Rob Zombie’s younger brother) Big Baby would have been right at home alongside the metafictional horror slashers of the early-to-mid 1990s. I raise you one I, Madman, and one The Dark Half.

Adam Lewis (Brandon Scott, Channel Zero) is a horror screenwriter who, truly, is his own worst enemy. He subjects himself to podcast bros dissing his latest scripts, adorns himself in Teflon when it comes to compliments, and projects his own mounting insecurities onto his girlfriend, Kate (Krsy Fox, Terrifier 3). Kate, one of the realest there is in this genre, is adept at communicating through whatever Adam’s most recent insecurities are. Oh, two bruhs don’t like your latest movie? What about the… thousands of others who do?

Her patience is that of a saint as she endures a delightfully scripted tirade from Adam about the death of the modern audience, how they must hate his movie because they didn’t understand it. The movie in question features werewolves, for what it’s worth. Adam, my man. Come on. Stress, even self-imposed, can wreak havoc on the body, and it does when Adam starts dreaming up the titular Big Baby every time he closes his eyes.

He’s suitably rattled, but since his first dream featured Big Baby hacking Kate to bits, and Kate remains very much alive, he dismisses the manifestation as anxiety getting the better of him. And, hey, wouldn’t that giant, axe-wielding baby make a great subject for his next script?