By: debbie lynn elias
From the wickedly irreverent, fertile imaginations of those guys who brought us “Reno 911!”, Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, comes HELL BABY, a riff on the demonic possession films that have delighted audiences for generations. Vanessa and Jack are expecting their first child and, of course, want he/she to have a nice house to grow up in, a nice neighborhood, a nice yard. So, what do you do with a wife who’s eight months pregnant and ready to pop at any moment? You buy an antebellum dilapidated mansion in hurricane ravaged New Orleans, a house that needs to be razed rather than renovated, a house that is often referred to by the locals as the “House of Blood” and, oh yea, has a squatter named F’resnel who pops up at the most inopportune moments scaring the bejeebers out of you.
As if pregnancy isn’t enough of a horror, imagine what happens when Vanessa starts speaking in deep staccato like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” and acting beyond weird. (I was waiting for her head to start spinning.) Of course, Jack just attributes everything to pregnancy hormones. F’resnel, on the other hand, is certain she’s possessed by something in the house…or the house itself.
Meanwhile, at the Vatican, word has come of the impending birth of Satan’s spawn. And guess who the mother is? Knowing this cannot be allowed to happen, Cardinal Vicente sends his “best” exorcists, Father Sebastian and Father Padrigo, to New Orleans to resolve the situation. Ray Ban wearing, chain smokers that look more like gangbangers than priests, Sebastian and Padrigo create their own “heeby jeeby” fish-out-of-water vibe fueling its own hilarity and hijinks.
As forces, friends and foes collide for the inevitable birth, blood spews forth, dead bodies turn up and comedy ensues in every shape possible.
No one can feign horror and shock like Rob Corddry while maintaining a perfect edge of believable sympathy. As Jack, Corddry gets to do something rarely has the opportunity to do – be the straight guy. You adore him, you feel for him. Corddry really evokes sympathy and empathy and makes bumbling stumbling belief in his wife adorable. As Vanessa, Leslie Bibb knocks it out of the park with hilarity as the modern day comedic version of “Rosemary” of “Rosemary’s Baby” fame, giving birth to her Satanic spawn.
But as good as Corddry and Bibb are both individually and on-screen together (great chemistry), look no further than Keegan Michael Key who steals every scene. Reminding me almost of an old 1930’s “don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes” with a man in black-face sketch, as F’Resnel, Key screams laughter. His sneaky surprise appearances have you wondering if he is the one “haunting” Jack and Vanessa’s house or is he secretly practicing his own brand of voodoo. Whatever he’s doing, it works! And Key serves a very important function for the audience as while F’Resnel provides exposition of history and urban myth to Jack and Vanessa, he is also providing the audience with the backstory and necessary elements to fill in any gaps. Wonderful construct by w/d Lennon and Garant.
As exorcists sent direct from the Vatican, Lennon and Garant themselves don the cloth and cloaks…but with a few comedic additions – chain smoking cigarettes, Ray Ban aviators, sloppy face-stuffing gorging of shrimp po-boys covering their faces in catsup with the food arrangements mimicking the trail of entrails and blood splatter from grisly bloody murders – and all done deadpan. And I mean deadpan. Just looking at them and you laugh. They are the comedy version of “The Boondock Saints” MacManus Brothers aka Norm Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery filled with piss, vinegar and whoop-ass, just with sanction of the Vatican.
Written and directed in the patented slapstick style of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, the duo opt for the simplicity of shock, awe and surprise as opposed to horror franchise terror. Parodying standard horror tropes, Lennon and Garant create a well paced and consistent comedy filled with side-splitting laughs that barely give you time to catch your breath from laughing so hard. And this laughter isn’t just a snicker or chuckle – it’s uproarious.
Where Lennon and Garant really soar are by creating the funniest moments from everyday events and occurrences – and none is more frustrating or funny than dealing with the cable man. Even in a haunted New Orleans mansion possessed by Satan, one needs their cable. And what’s not to laugh at when Kumail Nanjiani shows up at the door as the installer and is swept into the insanity of the situation with a cleansing exorcism that involves some very very very powerful pot. Too high to stand let alone drive, he insists on driving his cable truck home or back to the shop which makes for one of the funniest scenes to come along in movies in many a day.
Where the duo fall a bit short, however, is with overkill in extending comedic antics beyond the laughter, i.e., cable guy trying to drive, sloppy eating of po-boys. And just how many burps and farts do we need in a film? One gag that doesn’t get old though is Corddry’s Jack trying to repair a floor lamp. It’s “shockingly” funny.
I am in love with the location and the mansion used for the filming. Cleverly stripped bare on the interior but for the bare bones skeleton of the structure and an outside that looks like Tara 200 years later after Sherman burned it to the ground with the fire char still covering the plaster but with the added decor of graffiti and cobwebs, the mansion is a character unto itself. Thrilled the film was shot in New Orleans and had the setting be New Orleans. Adds an entirely different vibe of authenticity to the film.
Interesting is the crew that Lennon and Garant have assembled starting with cinematographer Charles Papert. With a background steeped in diversity, Papert brings the wonderful sensibilities as a cameraman/steadicam operator with the likes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Act of Valor”, “Scrubs”, among others, that give him an eye for lighting and lensing with creativity in small or constricting spaces and capturing specific emotion of each scene but giving it a cohesive polish.
Providing the final touch of tonal perfection is Michael Farrell’s score which is fun, mirroring the tone of the film.
A laugh a minute. Devilishly delicious. Just say “Hell, Yes” to HELL BABY.
Written and Directed by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant
Cast: Rob Corddry, Leslie Bibb, Keegan Michael Key, Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
