Pros: Chilling Norweigan thriller with convincing acting
Cons: Slightly predictable with a hollow ending
Babycall is a Norwegian thriller that’s as chilling as it is humdrum. It tells the story of Anna (Noomi Rapace) and her eight-year-old son Anders (Vetle Qvenild Werring) who have both escaped the alleged violence and brutality of the boy’s father. They move into a faraway eerie apartment block, eager to start their lives afresh, free from the abuse that has brought on Anna’s evident extreme anxiety and paranoia.
Constantly fretting for her son’s safety, Anna lives her life in fear and doesn’t know what to do with the daily dragged-out hours that haunt her whilst Anders is at school. Wandering around town aimlessly, she goes to buy a baby monitor - which offers Anna brief solace to social workers’ requests to her to let Anders sleep in his own room - and befriends the salesman Helge (Kristoffer Joner), who with a dying mother, is facing some problems of his own.
One night, Anna is awoken to screams from the baby monitor and rushing to her son’s room to see him fast asleep, Anna begins to worry that the two are not alone. What follows next are a mixture of chilling and moving scenes: we are comforted and hopeful of Anna’s budding friendship with Helge, but unsettled by twists and turns that portray Anna’s paranoia as dangerous rather than protective.
Rapace’s convincing portrayal of Anna and her obsessive protectiveness over her son (“You know Mummy loves you and can’t live without you?” she says to him) is disturbing and riveting to watch, but director Pål Sletaune falls short of convincing us to care about the characters and unraveling plot as much as we feel we should and the final minutes portraying the twist are slightly disappointing, if not predictable.
Overall, the unsettling 96 minutes of this film is still worth a watch - but maybe one to avoid if you’ve recently purchased a baby monitor.
Released 30th March 2012
By Jennifer Tate
Twitter @JennieTate
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