When Lindsay (Mary Katherine O’Donnell) rushes to a suburban home for a last-minute babysitting job, she can’t shake the feeling that it’s too good to be true. The parents, Beth and Brian (Jennifer Trudrung and Reginald Heinish), are affable and accommodating. They give Lindsay a high-tech baby monitor and assure that their newborn will sleep while they’re gone — she should not check on him. Though Beth is nervous about leaving Theo, even for a few hours.
They finally leave. Lindsay prepares for a quiet night of studying, lulled by the sounds of Theo sleeping transmitted through the monitor. But just like Bluebeard’s wives, she’s compelled to enter Theo’s room — the forbidden chamber — and find out what Beth and Brian are hiding.
While the premise of Unbearing offers nothing especially new, the film is well-paced and effectively suspenseful. Trudrung, who also penned the script, gives a standout performance that’s unsettling without being on the nose. The production design is also worth noting; rendered in drab cream and beige, Beth and Brian’s house is a subtle mockery of white-picket-fence culture that betrays their desperate wish to appear the perfect nuclear family.
All in all, I give it 7.5/10 creepy babies.
Updates and future screenings of the film can be found on NightFrizz Production’s Facebook page and Jennifer Trudong can be found and followed on Twitter: @JMunroeT
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