To
this day, French is still more widely spoken in New Orleans than people
realize. Unfortunately, an expecting
married couple is not fluent. If they
were, they might have picked up on the neighborhood’s macabre names for the
fixer-upper they just purchased. They
soon learn just how grossly they overpaid in Robert Ben Garant & Thomas
Lennon’s Hell Baby, which was a Park
City at Midnight selection during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Vanessa
is pregnant, so we know what that means.
As soon as she and Jack move into the House of Blood, she starts to act
like Signourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. Not yet panicking, Jack takes her to see her
psychiatrist, who is brutally murdered and crucified shortly thereafter. This is certainly a suspicious turn of events,
but Jack is preoccupied by the house’s supernatural box stacking, a desiccated old
lady who will not stay dead, and F’Resnel, the friendly derelict crashing in
their crawlspace. Help, dubious as it
might be, is on the way. Vanessa’s Wiccan
sister Marjorie is determined to perform a cleansing ritual and the Vatican has
dispatched two investigators.
Veterans
of MTV’s The State, Garant & Lennon
recently exposed a bit of the Hollywood system’s sausage-making in their
bestseller How to Write Movies for Fun
& Profit, so they might be doing some short-term indie-genre penance. While Hell
Baby primarily goes for dumb gory laughs and is hardly shy about returning
to the gag-well over and over again, it is safe to assume it is funnier,
smarter, and more aesthetically rewarding than the latest Wayans’ horror “spoof,”
sight unseen.
Indeed,
Hell Baby’s comedy scatter gun is
loaded with blood, vomit, nudity (both the hot and gross varieties) and the
violent deaths of a fair number of major characters. Still, Garant & Lennon find clever ways
to poke fun at genre conventions, such as the practice of compulsively
startling the protagonists.
As
hapless Jack, Rob Corddry is very funny venting and whining. He was also a joy to work with, according to Hell Baby’s impish Sundance junket send-up. Garant & Lennon are
strictly shticky as the Italian priests, but Keegan Michael Key has some amusing
moments as the ever present F’Resnel.
However, Riki Lindhome probably deserves the most credit for being a
good sport during her scenes as Marjorie, which must have been chilly, even in
New Orleans.
