Reflective Encounters

“Amidst arresting mid-century decor, a bored, childless couple lie in bed. Sleep’s pleasant numbness is interrupted by the sounds of an infant’s wails. The lady asks, ‘Do we have a baby?’ And the rest of writer-director Ian Killick’s film is about finding out. 

BabyThump is alienating in just about every respect. Post-sync sound separates sound from image. With affect, the film is almost defined by a lack of movement: the characters seem to teleport from one location to another, aided by decompressed film glitching out for a second or more.

This almost Straubian absence of cinema – where events happen off screen and the audience is left with little more than an abundance of faces – is dragged to new realms of the surreal through back-and-forth comedy that might remind the viewer of Inside Number 9 or the Peter Strickland film In Fabric.  

Derek Elwood and Kathryn O’Reilly bring extraordinary detail to their performances. Stoic as they are, emotion pours through the slight vocal cracks and facial twitches. And with its final, dark turn, BabyThump cements itself as an experiment not only of mood, but of courage.”

— Ben Flanagan