Big Baby (2026) Review

Writers have always been dangerous in horror films. From The Shining to The Mouth of Madness and Secret Window, give them a blank page, a bruised ego and too much time alone and sooner or later somebody is likely to reach for an axe or similar. From the start, it feels like Spider One’s Big Baby knows it is walking down a very well-trodden corridor, but for much of its running time finds something fresh in the anxiety at the centre of it: what happens when a writer’s imaginary monster starts looking considerably healthier than the writer himself?

Brandon Scott plays Adam Lewis, a successful horror screenwriter who ought, on paper, to be delighted with his lot. He has a career, a comfortable home and a supportive girlfriend in Kate (Krsy Fox). Unfortunately, he also has access to social media.

After listening to two smug horror podcasters tear apart his latest film, Adam stews over the criticism until an especially nasty nightmare feeds him an idea. Enter Big Baby, a hulking killer in a grotesque infant mask, armed with a long-handled hatchet and apparently ready-made for franchise immortality. There is one problem. Adam soon begins to also see him while he’s awake.

Spider One wisely holds back from explaining whether this is supernatural manifestation, creative psychosis or something between the two. And the first half of the film is at its best when Adam himself seems unsure. Cuts mysteriously appear in the bedsheets. Characters begin speaking to him. Inspired writing sessions start to look more like possession.

Scott makes all this compelling because Adam is never just a tortured genius. He can be funny, perceptive and genuinely vulnerable, then turn defensive the moment somebody questions him. Criticism has become fuel and poison at once, and there is little that his friends can do to help.

The relationship with Kate gives the film much of its early structure and this is helped by great chemistry between Scott and Fox. She brings warmth without turning her into a saintly therapist, and there is believable history in the way the pair talk around each other. It’s clear the couple loves one another. And Adam treats Kate as his sounding board or audience whenever convenient.

Torio Van Grol is equally natural as James, Adam’s old writing partner and friend, a well-meaning presence whose attempts to reconnect carry their own faintly uncomfortable agenda.

Visually, Spider One has fun keeping Adam slightly out of step with his surroundings. Unusual angles and patches of darkness make ordinary domestic spaces feel unstable, while the fictional slasher world gradually bleeds into the real one. The design of Big Baby himself is terrific too – absurd at first glance, but unpleasant enough to leave a lasting impression.

Once Adam disappears further into the script he is writing, Big Baby starts becoming more interested in the slasher movie inside its own head. Those sequences have their pleasures, and it’s here that there are inspirations from classic slashers, and perhaps even modern ones (the Terrifier franchise specifically), but the psychological material surrounding Adam is considerably richer. A familiar masked killer running amok is less interesting than watching somebody wonder whether he invented that killer in the first place. And that’s the difference between this and a Terrifier film. It’s undoubtedly more cerebral.

There are intriguing ideas here about creators feeding their creations, audiences giving monsters their power and criticism becoming part of the creative process whether artists like it or not. Sadly, not all of them get quite enough room.

But, Scott holds the centre admirably, carrying Adam from wounded professional vanity into something far more desperate. Spider One also deserves credit for making the people around him feel like actual people rather than future victims. There is even a particularly bloody scene that proves that the Big Baby crew is as interested in practical effects as much as they are about psychological scares

Big Baby loses some of its nerve when it swaps mystery for slasher mechanics, but the film around that stumble is still clever, uneasy and often sharply observed. The monster may wear the memorable mask, but Adam’s spiral is where the true horror lies.

It’s a fun film, an impressive achievement with surprisingly strong cast, and it would be a shame to see it go without a sequel.

Movie Rating:

Big Baby trailer