Hell Baby (2013)

Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon have long had two sides to their careers. Most know them as very funny minds and performers behind such gems as The State, Reno 911! and more. However, their work as screenwriters has been significantly less prestigious, and it almost comes off like a day job that allows them to have significant freedom in their more personal endeavors. It probably says something that the Night at the Museum films are some of their best writing work, as they’re credited with penning movies like Taxi, Herbie Fully Loaded and Balls of Fury. Their new feature Hell Baby, which they’ve also directed, is one of the first examples we’ve seen of pure, unfiltered Lennon and Garant. This is not some asinine screenwriting job that allows them to pay the bills, but instead a passion project that seems completely free of studio interference or other writers sticking their hands in the pot. It also provides fine proof of what these two can create when they’re not asked to make a Lindsay Lohan comedy about a sentient car. It’s a slight, silly comedy, but it’s also hilarious more often than not.

Jack (Rob Corddry) and Vanessa (Leslie Bibb) are a married couple on the verge of having twins. In anticipation of this event, they move in to a haunted house in the middle of New Orleans. Once there they are greeted by menacing spirits who enjoy moving boxes around, a naked and monstrous old woman, a gleeful squatter named F’Resnel (Keegan Michael Key) and two questioning cops played by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel. As the incidents get worse, two priests (Lennon and Garant) fly in from the Vatican to try and get to the bottom of things, and Vanessa’s hippy sister (Riki Lindhome) attempts to bless the house.

Less a cohesive whole than a series of comedic digressions, the best parts of Hell Baby are also the most energetic, and those that at least attempt to acknowledge the horror aspects of the horror/comedy equation. This is not a scary movie—and it’s not trying to be—but some of the biggest laughs come courtesy of some inspired faux jump scares. Not coincidentally, many of these moments involve Keegan Michael Key, who is easily the film’s not-so-secret weapon. He plays a potentially unpleasant character as the most cheerful man on the planet, and it works wonders. Whenever he arrives onscreen, Hell Baby gets a welcome shot of comedic adrenaline. That’s not to say the likes of Corddry and Bibb are bad, but their characters are usually the straight ones while most of the chaos happens around them.

While Garant and Lennon did not have anything directly to do with 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, their film has very many similarities to David Wain’s cult favorite. There’s virtually no structure here, as it takes the general outline of a haunted house movie and then chases down every joke it can as it chugs along. Once it gets close to the 90 minute mark it comes up with an appropriately nuts climax, and then wraps things up nice and quickly. Since it’s so reliant on gags and not much else, there will inevitably be some jokes that do not work. The inherent disadvantage of movies like this is that when the humor fails, the lack of any real characterization or thematic ambition starts to become all the more obvious. When it’s funny, no one cares, and Hell Baby helps itself on that front by usually being very funny. Not enough to completely disguise the hollowness, but enough to be a more than diverting use of 95 minutes. At the very least, it more than proves that the work of Lennon and Garant has far greater cinematic potential than their writing credits might indicate, and so long as they continue to gain artistic freedom there’s no reason to think their output will regress. If anything, Hell Baby may be the start of something beautiful.

Grade: B

PSA: Hell Baby is available now on VOD and iTunes. I don’t know for how long, but it’s apparently getting a theatrical release on September 6. No, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. If you want to see it, might as well jump on it now.