Nasty Baby (2015) User Reviews

No more normal

[ferguson-6 · 6/10 · 29 October 2015]

Greetings again from the darkness. Many indie films receive positive responses during a film festival run because most festival goers are frequent movie watchers, and really appreciate the unique and brave approach taken by the rebellious and up-and-coming filmmakers. Writer/director Sebastian Silva lulls us into the comfort zone of a "friends" story and then stuns us with a third act that could seem out-of-the-blue, if one weren't paying close attention along the way.

Mr. Silva also stars as Freddy, a media artist who is working on a video project (entitled Nasty Baby) that features himself (and others) imitating infants. He lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend Mo, played by TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe (so good in Rachel Getting Married, 2008). They are part of a trio of friends completed by Polly (Kristen Wiig), who is addressing her biological clock by relentlessly pursuing artificial insemination from her two friends.

While it's easy as a viewer to get complacent watching the interactions of these three mostly likable people in various elements: together, separately, at work, with other acquaintances, and especially with neighbors; the script offers many subtle hints along the way about the make-up of each.

The supporting cast is excellent and includes Reg E Cathey ("House of Cards") as a mentally-shaky neighbor, Mark Margolis ("Breaking Bad") as a more level-headed neighbor, Alia Shawkat (underutilized here, but very talented) as Freddy's assistant, and Neal Huff as the eccentric gallery owner.

Normal seems like a pretty straightforward term, but the film shows that normal really doesn't exist, since it's always changing. The relationship of this trio of friends, their plan for child-rearing, and the family dinner at Mo's parent's home … all examples of how normal has shifted. And to top it off, the film's third act can't be considered normal by any standard of story-telling, and you will question how you missed the true character of the main players … and maybe even how you would react, if you found yourself in this spot. If nothing else, the film might make you a bit more tolerant of your annoying neighbor that has caused you so many negative thoughts over the years.

Freddy's button got pushed

[cekadah · 5/10 · 29 November 2015]

Personally I'm at a loss for words to write about this movie. I love Sebastián Silva film's but this one left me a bit empty and confused. I have no doubt there is a serious message flowing throughout this story but this time it went right over my head.

The central character is Freddy. He's an artist and this story is about him preparing to film or rather video his entry to an art exhibition. His art project is to record himself dressed and acting like an infant, a baby in diapers! Throughout this story there is an elderly man who taunts, harasses, and belittles Freddy because Freddy is gay. Freddy and boyfriend Mo ignore this hatred coming from this man. Freddy and Mo get on with their lives. Then one evening the hate filled neighbor follows Freddy while walking home. The hate filled man continues his harassment of Freddy and Freddy has had his fill of this grotesque man and strikes back.

At this point the story suddenly changes. It becomes dark and fearful and almost neutralizes the previous hour or so of story. I wondered what is Sebastián Silva doing to this mostly benign story. I will not describe what happens because the viewer must determine what the statement is for themselves. For me this movie is about innocents. Freddy as an artist is innocent in his creative quest, the baby is innocents. Freddy & Mo just want to live their lives and not cross the paths of others. The elderly hate filled man is the world once innocents is abandoned. Freddy is forced to abandon his innocents by the hate filled man who represents society in which innocents tries to survive.

At movies end we see Freddy and friends are admiring an infant in a stroller. Here we see the same movements and sounds that Freddy created for his art project as a baby in diapers. We are left wondering what is the future for this real little infant. At what points will it's innocents be forced out of him as it was forced out of Freddy.

Silva pilots a ship he doesn't know how to steer until it's too late

[StevePulaski · 6/10 · 14 January 2016]

Nobody can say writer/director/actor Sebastián Silva lacks creativity and ingenuity as a young filmmaker. His film Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus, while being frustratingly quirky and an overall unpleasant experience for me years back, did show that Silva had a talent for concocting pretty bizarre scenarios with an ethereal vibe in their cinematography. Silva's latest directorial effort, Nasty Baby, comes very close in giving off the same kind of young, upstart filmmaking tendencies of Jay and Mark Duplass, but it's a film that gets bogged down by a serious sense of misguided direction in its third act that almost makes the film's pillars collapse under the weight of its incredulity.

Spoiling the film would be criminal, so expect me to dance around the events with great detail. The story revolves around a European immigrant named Freddy (played by Silva, who also wrote the film, as well) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), a gay couple who are trying to have a child of their own and enlist in the help of Polly (Kristen Wiig) to be their surrogate mother. This wouldn't be such a chore, but due to Freddy's low sperm count, his numerous attempts to impregnate Polly have resulted in nothing but frustration. Freddy is also a prolific actor and starving artist, and his latest project is a short film titled "Nasty Baby," which will show him portraying a screaming infant (just when I thought Mark Duplass's role in Creep that had him making a video for his unborn son to enjoy was the peak of strange).

The bane of the trio's existence comes in the form of a mentally ill neighbor they know as "The Bishop" (Reg E. Cathey). Despite their acts of kindness, "The Bishop" continuously bothers them with his erratic and unpredictable behavior, going as far as almost sexually assaulting Polly in broad daylight. "The Bishop," while initially seeming like a petty character in the lives of these three, consistently finds himself being a common problem as they try to go about their daily lives unbothered, especially given the stressful circumstances they're currently facing.

Nasty Baby is a film that works largely because it's free-form and unwilling to conform to a discernible plot for much of its runtime. It admirably rejects form, and that makes it easy to believe that this is a film about three realistic characters that are simply going about their days. The vibes the film gives are so natural and nuanced that even the quirkiness of Freddy making a video of him acting infantile is a believable inclusion, despite its most illogical entrance into whatever remnants of a plot this film bears.

Nasty Baby's issue comes when it decides to introduce a plot - a considerably dark and sad one, at that - late in its third act. It's as if, in that very moment in his screen writing, Silva forgot to really introduce a bigger, more identifiable conflict for his characters, and as a result, the final twenty minutes of the film feel very forced and rushed in attempting to introduce, remedy, and eventually solve the newly introduced problem for their characters. Had Silva stopped dawdling with the screenplay and introduced this conflict earlier, maybe at the fifty-minute mark, this film could've been the best of both worlds - a largely free-form exercise in indie, LGBT filmmaking, in addition to a compelling black comedy/drama.

Instead, this feels like a film that doesn't really find its very real problem or identity until it's too late to really leave a meaningful impact. The overall effect of introducing such a huge and potentially life-altering situation to the characters with only about twenty minutes left in the film not only is unfair to the film's characters, but the audience members, who will undoubtedly emerge feeling a sense of disconnectedness and discomfort thanks to a film showcasing such a monumental event before solving it and cleaning it up like it was nothing at all.

With all that in mind, Nasty Baby is just sporadically funny enough to be deemed a comedy, and wisely punctuated by enough sadder or more dramatic moments to also fittingly earn the title of a drama. Silva's quirky narrative, for the most part, doesn't get the best of him, and the trio of performances from the main cast is particularly strong, with the standout being Wiig in another performance that needs just the right amount of eccentricity and humanity to make it work (see Adventureland and The Skeleton Twins for her other strong performances at playing smart, if disconnected). This is a film that works marginally well for the most part of its runtime, teetering on the edge of silliness and sophistication until the point where it reaches its climactic arc, which should've been its second major conflict throughout. At that point, we see that Silva has been piloting a ship that he knows how to operate but doesn't really know how to steer and doesn't find out until the ship has sailed well past it's destination.

Starring: Sebastián Silva, Tunde Adbimpe, Kristen Wiig, and Reg E. Cathey. Directed by: Sebastián Silva.

Brilliant

[Red_Identity · 22 November 2015]

Wow. Just... wow. I don't think I've seen more than five films in my life that take such an unpredictable, wild turn and tonal shift like this did. I had no idea what it was about, and the first hour or so was great on itself. Engaging characters, well-acted, very humane in its storytelling. What prompted the filmmakers to do what they did? Well, it helps to bring up questions of what the "everyday" person would do in that scenario. Do I buy it? Well, I don't "not buy it". I can definitely say that I didn't dislike its execution. One doesn't really know what they would do in such a scenario. Of course, everyone would like to say "I would have done the right thing!", but we just don't know. This is the troubling question that this film wants us to answer, and honestly, I think it did an amazing job of it. In real life, everything is normal, everyone can be normal... until it's not. What DOES happen when the "stuff hits the fan"? What WOULD we do? There are many different ways that the film could've posed these questions, and sure enough many other films that I've seen have posed them in different ways, but I think the unorthodox unpredictability of this really hits those points home. I think that first normal hour is needed for this reason, and why no one should read anything about this film going into it. I can totally see why it may not have worked for so many people, but I think the execution was on point. For better or worse, the filmmakers took a huge, giant risk here (like, I cannot stress enough how HUGE that risk was), and they didn't want this film to be forgotten lightly. For my money, I left it feeling like it had made me think about a lot of different things, along with being a highly intriguing, engaging film.

There is some food for thought left, but also one cannot help feeling being short-changed

[lasttimeisaw · 7/10 · 21 December 2016]

Chilean director Sebastián Silva's Sundance premiered sixth feature NASTY BABY is an oddity in queer cinema, it ostensibly starts to tackle with a topical issue of gay couples, after homosexuality has been reckoned more or less as a normalcy in America, - parenthood, but rounds off with a shark-jumping bang. Freddy (director Silva himself) is an European immigrant, from Spain, one divines, he is a performance artist lives in New York with his black boyfriend Mo (Adebimpe, leading singer from TV on the Radio). Freddy and his bestie Polly (Wiig) are both broody: Freddy is caught up in his new project named "Nasty Baby" which involves adults imitating baby behaviours, it is absolutely nonsensical both on paper and in its eventual form, while Polly, at one point is joked by Freddy as a"semen vampire", she is not young anymore, so timing is also crucial for her whether she could ever become a mother. Naturally, they decide to having a baby together, only to their dismay that Freddy's sperm count is too low. So Freddy is egged to persuade Mo as the sperm donor, and the latter eventually caves in.

Meanwhile, a mentally impaired vagrant Bishop (Cathey) lives nearby begins to wrack the trio firstly by leaf-blowing in every early morning across the street of Freddy and Mo's apartment, then physically pestering Polly several times and constantly hurling homophobic abuse at them, anyway he is cuckoo, and Silva ascertains that the aversion to Bishop is plain vicarious.

Time goes by until a mood-shifting third act happens on the day when Polly phones Freddy that she is not pregnant with Mo's semen whereas the truth is otherwise, she only wants to give him a surprise later to cheer him up after knowing Freddy's Nasty Baby is cold-shouldered by the gallery owner initially shows interest but backtracks. On his way to his apartment, a tetchy and smouldering Freddy encounters Bishop again, and this time, there will be blood! The film changes its gear bluntly from a blanched mumblecore to a noirish thriller saturated with consternation and fumbles (a hallmark deer-in-the-headlight will arrive later as an over-obvious metaphor). It is a wayward move notwithstanding, but what Silva brings home to audience is the elemental homicidal urge resides in those carefree hipsters, whom we are half-heartedly rooting for until that crunch. The trio is going to become parents of a mixed race baby, but a callous truth is that not only they have no instinct to save one when they can, they also unanimously chooses the other way around, on a deceitful ground that man is a scourge, despicable and expendable, yet, he is still an egalitarian human being, when bringing a new life into this world and extinguishing an old one (assumably with the same skin color) has been juxtaposed in that fashion, it electrifies viewers to jump on that cynical old question: how can we keep our inner demon at bay and raise a child free of such contamination? That's my takeaway of this unorthodox indie fare when being steeped in the catchy closing-credits anthem: Ida Corr and Fedde Le Grand's LET ME THINK ABOUT IT. There is some food for thought left, but also one cannot help feeling being short-changed.

Weak sauce

[zetes · 4/10 · 17 January 2016]

Pretty lousy for the most part, though it does arrive at a compelling (if not original) conclusion. Director Sebastian Silva stars along with Tunde Adebimpe as a gay couple in New York City who are thinking about having a baby with their best friend, Kristen Wiig. Not much really happens plotwise for the first hour or so, though a conflict arises between the trio and a mentally unhinged, homophobic man who lives in their neighborhood (Reg E. Cathey). He often follows Wiig around in a threatening manner, and likes to throw homophobic slurs at Silva and Adebimpe as they walk down the street. Alia Shawkat (who co-produced! How desperate do you have to be to hit Alia Shawkat up for money?) and Mark Margolis also co-star.

takes a dark turn

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 3 August 2016]

Freddy (Sebastián Silva) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) are a gay couple in NYC. They're trying to have a baby with friend Polly (Kristen Wiig). Freddy discovers that he has low sperm count. Mo is reluctant to contribute. Freddy is a performing artist making a short of adults acting like babies. The group gets harassed by local homophobic unstable Bishop (Reg E. Cathey).

This is a rambling indie at first. The starts as a low-budget mumbling gay lifestyle artsy New York indie. It sprinkles in some darker tones and then it takes a completely different dark turn. It's intriguing although it doesn't completely work.

Had potential but ultimately dull and unengaging

[grantss · 3/10 · 25 September 2020]

Two gay men are trying to have a baby with a female friend. One of their neighbours is a homophobe and has mental health issues, resulting in him harassing them but them having no recourse, as the police realise that, due to the mental health issues, nothing will come of a complaint. A confrontation is inevitable.

The central plot - the conflict between the gay couple and the mentally ill neighbour - was reasonably interesting. However, this story in isolation isn't enough to fill up an entire movie, so we have sub-plots and other padding that draw out the film and make it fairly dull. Some of the padding is more than dull, it's irritating and pretentious, e.g. the adult-as-a-baby photoshoot.

Once the confrontation occurs you expect things to ramp up but even then things just progress in a sluggish, unfocussed, way. The ending is very disappointing as there was heaps of room to make something of where the plot had progressed to.

Slow Burn

[bcm_jobs · 8/10 · 26 July 2015]

Films are like visiting a city. Mainstream movies cover the big attraction: Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedra, and Musée du Louvre. Indie films take you through the back streets and occasionally you get a tour of the underbelly of a city. "Nasty Baby" by filmmaker Sebastián Silva takes you on a back ally tour of the character of ordinary people. We all like to think we know what we will do in hypothetical situations. The truth is often we don't. This movie starts off pleasant enough with likable, real character; but from the start there is a slow burn that is building towards some unwanted destination. This movie takes you around the big attractions of a city and delivers you via the characters in places you would never expect to visit or would want to go. Check out "Nasty Baby" if you get a chance.

Good, but relies too much on aesthetics

[ana-potter-23 · 7/10 · 6 April 2016]

Directing and acting are definitely the strong suit of the film, the dark comedy is sharp and on point in terms of timing and rhythm. Nasty Baby looks into the lives of young artist Freddy (played by Sebastián Silva), his boyfriend (Tunde Adebimpe), his best friend (Kristen Wiig), and some of his other cool hipster buds. The trio are trying to have a baby, but end up having to deal with some darker things than baby names and homophobic families. What the film lacks in coherent storytelling it excels on being quirky and stylish, with very hip aesthetics and modern liberal themes supported by great acting. Not your typical Hollywood comedy, but a good funny film.

Watch it and prove me wrong.

[pittman-05904 · 1/10 · 14 October 2021]

Annoying, racist, liberal degeneracy. Clueless and entitled characters, drifting through meaningless lives. Obviously barely scripted or directed. You will end up after watching it not caring one bit about these characters, and regretting wasting your precious time.

Brooklyn Grotesque

[bob_meg · 8/10 · 7 November 2015]

Grotesque (Noun) - A distortion of reality, often comic or satiric in nature.

Sebastian Silva has a knack for making films that mask simmering malice, danger, and outright evil in a playfully subversive manner. "The Maid" featured a long-time servant out to make mischief for her callous employers. "Magic Magic" detailed the slow crack-up of an innocent and naive California blonde as she's dragged deep into the bowels of South American ethnicity (read: Reality).

Silva himself stars in this latest excursion into unwanted reality, one his character, Freddy, seems just as terrified to face: that of fatherhood. Freddy lives in an airy Brooklyn apartment with his partner Mo (Tunde Adebimpe). He's a visual and performance artist who's got a child's attention span (and general life attitude): flighty, not overtly responsible or aware of other's feelings, and prone to fits of rage that mask an underlying self-hatred and nonacceptance. Throw into this emotionally thick stew Freddy's fixation on getting his best friend Polly (Kristin Wiig) pregnant with Mo's sperm (as Freddy's isn't up to the task - ouch), an obsession with an oddly self-conscious performance art piece that articulates his own fear and loathing, and a crazy neighbor who's becoming more and more aggressive in his assaults. There's enough TNT here to detonate the most stalwart brownstone.

Most of Freddy's fears and neuroses are down-played in Nasty Baby, just as Juno Temple's were in "Magic Magic" and Silva is good at this. Mo, Polly, and even Wendy, Freddy's assistant (the sparkly Alia Shawkat, who also produces here) can see the cracks and the film does a good job at slowly turning up the seismic rumble under the surface.

Reg E. Cathy (miles away from his displaced Barbecue chef on House of Cards) is an effectively unstable menace who constantly pushes Freddy's self-hatred buttons with homophobic slurs and taunts. Does Freddy really want a child? Or is it something he feels he must do to complete some kind of bohemian ideal or even his latest performance piece? Nobody around him seems sure, even his elderly gay neighbor (the superb Mark Margolis) who's seen his share of battle wounds from just being himself.

Nasty Baby eventually erupts in an unexpected and nasty way that I won't spoil. It's satisfying though not in a real audience-pleasing manner, but you can see the terror and dread in Silva's face up until the end. It's anything but light entertainment, but like all of Silva's films it will make you think and will hold up over repeat viewings. The iTunes commentary, with Silva, Adebimpe, and Wiig is a hoot, by the way.

An abrupt shift in tone and content leaves us behind

[Groverdox · 6/10 · 19 February 2016]

Sebastian Silva's Nasty Baby is a movie that features a tonal shift so abrupt you find yourself questioning the likelihood of the behaviour you are witnessing. It seems forced and unrealistic, as though the writer, director and star (all Silva) knew he had this destination in mind, but didn't really know how to get us there.

He's done tonal shifts before, and much better, in Crystal Fairy, for example, which was a kind of quirky comedy until an absolutely poignant moment toward the end almost had me in tears.

In Nasty Baby, the shift is handled with a plot device we've all seen before, so it feels like the movie wants to move into thriller territory without warning. Perhaps because it feels so unrealistic it's hard to take seriously as anything other than typical-for-that-genre fare.

It finishes with the trio - two bearded gay men and a woman, trying to get pregnant - needing to dispose of a body. They didn't mean to kill him, but it happened in self defense. Why doesn't the Silva character call the police as soon as it happens? "He'll get deported," his boyfriend says. Is he an illegal immigrant? He must be the only one who also has a job as a trendy artist. Most illegal immigrants work for peanuts. If he is worried about deportation, why is he in such a high profile career?

Nasty Baby starts like a Nicole Holofcener drama, with quirky, believable characters trying to work out with what they want for themselves and each other. Silva should have watched one of Holofcener's movies to see that that would have been enough: perhaps he thinks an abrupt tonal shift is required of him now. It doesn't look like the movie believes it either.

Another thing: why on Earth is the elderly gay neighbour so efficient at disposing of corpses? He almost seems to smile when he sees the body. What is up with *that*?

Urban drama

[visualandwriting · 7/10 · 1 January 2016]

Nasty Baby, Sebastian Silva's an independent movie presents contemporary urban drama. This film undertakes a story of homosexual partners Freddy and Mo and their female friend Polly. This trio tries to conceive a child. For men, this is a need and a disturbance in one. Freddy, an artist, to become a father creates a piece of art. A multimedia performance is imitating his and others behavior as newborns – they cry, play in front of the camera. During the process of conceiving, Freddy learns that his donation isn't as good as he, though. Mo must be a biological father, but he doubts the idea of having a child. Polly is consistent and eager to be a mother, she pushes forward the prenatal test and persuades the man for the action. The more to the story unravels the more tensions rises. Not just between trio but in Silva's creative work as well. This conflict resonates in the neighborhood. Bishop, a mentally troubled neighbor, invades the space of the trio and pushes their boundaries to the edge.

Silva starts his story using close-ups to revoke the parochialism of emotions between the trio. We see from the beginning the inner world of friendship, their dynamics, that is very progressive yet holds an unspoken truth. Mo and Freddy seem to be an average couple of men in their 30 ties. Understanding, communicative, loving. They share an apartment in Brooklyn. Mo is secretive, more aloof; he isn't sure if he wants a child. On the other hand, Freddy is an energetic, emotional man, more of a rover. His friendship with Polly is deep and unusual. From the first scenes, Polly seems determined and controlling. For her having a baby is natural and unquestionable. You might have the feeling that they are a couple, the drive towards each other is intense. The closeness is disturbing, personal boundaries are invisible and needs a compliment. The relation questions the urge to procreate with Mo, not willing to have a child with Polly. There is a scene; that best portrays the relationships. After a family dinner, the friends spontaneously decided to procreate a child. Freddy masturbates Mo and Polly waits on a bed, ovulating with legs over her head ready to take the donation.

Freddy's inability to create a piece of art that is appreciated and his procreation potential is questionable. An art gallery owner dismiss the piece, and his life couldn't go worse, but it does. The tension between characters slowly rises and spreads to the neighborhood. The Bishop, a psychologically troubled man with his action, annoys the community. He regularly invades the space of the trio, at night he stocks them, in a day he makes noise on the street. The more story unravels the hyped his instability become. It bothers the neighbors especially the homosexual couple. His consequence and invasion take frustrated Freddy to the edge. His instability denudes the real face of the Brooklyn's trio. The tension rises and the police intervene making a proper movie climax that contradict the intentions of the charters. Puts them in a serious life threatening situation to show that one need the life create a life comes with a contempt of the others.

In Silva's film core of attention is paid to the characters rather than production design or insane stunts. Nasty Baby is an intimate drama, a story of a group that is complicated and diversified. This movie is a progressive though questioning the parenthood urge and devaluate life. Silva encircles the story by grotesque thought provoking scenes, characters poor behavior to the situations. He confronts the point of view characters with their ability. Weirdness and the feeling that something off comes out through a movie. The events go smoothly supported by the actors. Kristin Wiig after watching her in numerous comedies where her workshop is limited, here she presents a more serious approach to the character, and her actors skills flourish. All performances in the film at a good level. Silva's and Mo presentation is well balanced, yet they have an adversarial approach. Dialogs are well written and up to a point. Silva's camera work observes silently and quietly the events. There is ease of the Silva's style. He uses close-ups and firm plans a lot of natural setting and natural pace of the film. Nasty Baby is a substantial artistic and contemporary drama that through a challenge to the viewer.

Read more on www.visualandwrting.com

I fully enjoyed & appreciated the story & performances were brilliant.

[sharonscinta · 10/10 · 9 May 2016]

I watched it as I saw Kristen Wiig was in it. I knew if she chose to be part of an independent film than it was going to be worth watching. The depth and imperfections in each character were beautiful. There is no doubt that everyone who performed in this movie believed in it and did it for the art and beauty of a great film. I am unfamiliar with most of the other actors in the film but I loved them all. I will keep an eye out for more of these passion projects as they are worth the time to see. There was nothing Hollywood about this movie. Nothing looked like set, wardrobe or hair and make up. It truly looked like I was part of the lives of the characters, which I do not often find. Everyone who took part in this film should be very proud as it's a great work of art.