Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear

Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear

BABY MONITOR: SOUND OF FEAR

This HAS to be awesome, right? Any movie with a title like that is promising to be the biggest, tastiest slice of cinematic cheese I’ve stumbled upon in ages. Images of a woman clutching a baby monitor and gasping in fear as some ominous voice comes over the speaker, a killer who’s modus operandi is child care product-related, and a deadly weapon that looks like a big rattle or something all flood to the mind. And it’s a Lifetime Network Original Movie. This is going to be the best thing since Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?, right? Right?

Wrong.

For all the promise it’s amazing title holds, Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear is actually just about the dullest genre retread that ever dully retreaded a genre. There’s no baby-themed killer. There’s no funny weapon. There’s hardly any baby monitor action. Instead, there’s just the screwiest, most backwards jilted wife vs. homewrecker babysitter plot that Lifetime has ever produced. And it’s not even backwards in a good, “so bad it’s funny” way. It just makes no sense that a movie such as this was made, and made with so little gusto to boot.

I mean, how many Lifetime movies have there been where the wife finds out her husband is sleeping with the nanny, and then must find the courage to leave the jerk and be her own woman, all while fighting to retain custody of the kids even as hubby claims she’s too crazy to have them? That’s EVERY Lifetime Original Movie. They really should just title all these movies Not Without My Daughter: Part whatever. Alright, now tell me how many Lifetime movies have posited the nanny and husband as the heroes and the jilted wife as the crazed villain. One. And it is Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear.

Does that make any sense? You have a hard-working, bread-winning woman who has sacrificed years of her life and countless hours she could have spent with her son to work her ass off and make a living that allows her family to live in a very nice luxury apartment with all the amenities - including a full-time nanny - and the movie expects us to hate her when she finds out her deadbeat husband is bagging the nanny. Why would we feel anything other than pity? Apparently the screenwriters figured on that, and they accounted for it by casting this woman as a psycho who hires contract killers to take out the nanny and ransom their kid for all the jewels hubby keeps in a safe. Because, you know, that’s the logical response. My husband cheated? Time to kill his lover and risk the life of the child I’ve never spent time with!

And, again, this sounds like it should be loopy, cheesy fun. But it’s not. You know why? Because most of the movie is about a woman listening to a baby monitor and doing nothing else. An ungodly large chunk of this movie revolves around endangered nanny Ann fiddling with her baby monitor to check on her young ward, Peter, while picking up sounds from the baby monitor in the apartment upstairs, where the idiot killers have accidentally gone and killed the wrong nanny.

Ann hears static. She flips the power switch. She fiddles with a dial. She smacks the thing. She hears Peter crying and goes to put him back to sleep.

Ann hears static. She turns up the volume to make out the sound of her fellow caretaker screaming bloody murder. The sound cuts out. She fiddles to get it back.

Ann hears Peter crying. She tells him to be quiet so she can listen into the chaos upstairs.

Ann hears people discussing murder. She fiddles with the antenna until the scary voices go away.

They should have called this movie Baby Monitor: The Quest for Improved Reception.

Once all that malarkey is out of the way, Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear devolves into a standard cat-and-mouse chase movie. The killers eventually realize - thanks to their own tinkering with another baby monitor - that they got the wrong nanny and the wrong kid and head downstairs to get Ann. Ann knows they’re coming and starts planning her escape. Elsewhere, clueless hubby and obviously evil wifey speed around town gathering the ransom to bring it home. Cutting the lights. Hiding the children. Chasing. Fighting. Stabbing. Car crashing. Attempted rape. Strong Canadian Accents. Shoot out. One-upping the bad guy and sending him to his doom. Thinking you’re safe and promptly getting jumped by the one who won’t die. Police dog tit biting. This movie wrote itself.