Lenore Harker (Bijou Phillips) is just one thesis paper away from earning her master’s but when she gets pregnant, she decides to leave school and have the baby. After an unexpected growth spurt, Lenore is rushed to hospital for an emergency C-section.
Despite a large looking head, everything seems alright until they cut the umbilical cord. Lenore awakes to a police interrogation about the gruesome murder of her doctors. She insists she doesn’t remember anything but Sgt. Perkins (Owen Teale) doesn’t buy it and tells her to see a psychologist. However Lenore withdraws and starts avoiding not just from the police but her friends and even her husband Frank (James Murray).
Murray (Primeval) reprises his role of background character, which is a problem since he’s one of the main characters! After the baby scratches him, he never interacts with it again that is until it tries to kill him (not exactly quality time). It seems Frank is more worried about “making a sequel” with Lenore. She obliges him if only to keep up the facade that everything’s normal. And thus Mr. Oblivious fades back into the shadows.
Owen Teale has the opposite problem. He’s so in your face you think he’s the bad guy. And his ridiculous John Wayne imitation is only made funnier by cliche lines like “that’s about as far from normal as you can get,” in response to another cop telling him that everything seems normal on the surveillance videos. Then again, you’re probably not watching a movie about a killer baby for realism.
Red herrings or just bad writing?
Some scenes are just complete dead ends. When a K-9 unit searches the hospital you expect the dogs to lead them to the baby, maybe even a humorous scene where to the bewilderment of onlookers the dogs cower in fear at the sight of the baby. Instead we just see the dogs randomly roaming the building and since the audience already knows the baby did it, it’s a pretty pointless scene.
The only thing worse than a wasted scene is a wasted character. Living under the same roof with the couple is Frank’s younger brother, who just happens to be disabled. You’d think a kid in a wheelchair would be easy pickings for an unstoppable killing machine but “it” never goes after him not even when he’s swimming ALONE!
Baby Jaws…
Although sadly the baby never takes it’s killing spree to the water, it does share one similarity with infamous killer shark in that we rarely see outright see it when it’s killing. Most of the time it’s left to our imaginations. After all even with the best CG, seeing a baby attack a full grown man would be laughable and sometimes it is but in good campy kind of way.
What Jaws did for sharks, It’s Alive does for babies. Get those harpoons ready!
