Lullaby (2022)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Crib Cage

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Aside from a handful of committed performances and some effective set design, this horror movie is unfortunately all too formulaic, staying right on the surface and hitting all the old familiar beats.

Rachel (Oona Chaplin) and John (Ramon Rodriguez) are proud new parents of a baby boy, Eli. Unfortunately parenthood does not come easy as Eli is a fussy baby that cries constantly. In a box of baby things sent over by her mother, Rachel finds an old book that contains a special lullaby. Out of desperation, she sings it and, miraculously, Eli falls asleep.

Soon after, though, Rachel begins seeing flashes of an evil Crone that seems to be threatening Eli. She goes to visit her sister, Vivian (Liane Balaban), in a mental institution, and learns that she went through the same thing when she lost her own child, Zachary. Meanwhile, John gets a call from Rabbi Cohen (Constantine Alexander Karzis), and learns of other ways of protecting Eli. But no one is ready for a showdown with the ancient evil being behind it all.

Directed by John R. Leonetti, Lullaby starts well enough, using the fears and despairs of new parents, and the unsettling helplessness that comes from a baby that won't stop crying. When Rachel reads the lullaby and it begins to work, it's understandable that she would surrender any possible caution for a measure of comfort. But things quickly go south as it becomes clear that perhaps a book decorated with drawings of demons and monsters and mutations isn't one that you want to trust with a child.

So the characters begin to go through the usual motions, making the usual mistakes, reacting in just the way we'd expect. We even get the usual sequences in which the characters seek out "experts" to help. Here, Rachel goes to her sister, who maybe can't be trusted, and John goes to a tattooed rabbi, who also maybe can't be trusted, but Lullaby fails to bring any friction to this notion.

The rules for defeating the Big Bad are criss-crossed and broken, and it means nothing. The movie does make an admirable attempt to incorporate Jewish culture into its narrative, but it falls short of something like The Vigil; this one is more like a checklist of terms ("dybbuk," "golem," etc.), dropped willy-nilly throughout the screenplay. In the end, this movie isn't worth the effort of hiring a babysitter.