Álex de la Iglesia

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) One of the advantages of French-Canadian TV is that we get a lot of obscure, out-of-the-mainstream movies — as long as they have a French dub. So it is that made-for-TV Spanish film The Baby’s Room wouldn’t necessarily be something you’d expect to have ready access to — but here it is. It does help that the film is a decent one that warrants distribution outside Spain: writer-director Álex de la Iglesia doesn’t quite know how to structure all of his ideas in a coherent, satisfying whole, but his film is at its most effective during the suspense sequences that are strung along with the script. My main issue with the film is that it seems to be an improvisational exercise rather than a sustained story with an effective progression, reinforcing themes and a coherent tone. Maybe it’s a baby-monitor thriller; maybe it’s a home-intruder story, no wait, maybe it’s a parallel world with a sordid backstory. This is really where the writer needed help in structuring the material. Fortunately, de la Iglesia is much better as a director, making effective use of limited means to create decent horror sequences. The Baby’s Room is not all that original and the ending predictably falls flat without a sustained buildup, but the film itself is generally better than most monster-of-the-week horror movies. It’s not such a surprise that it would travel widely — in English, the film is most readily available as part of a DVD box-set called “Films to Keep You Awake” collecting the original run of Spanish TV movies.