Also, the film’s pacing is deliberately glacial. A scene of Lena peeling an apple lasts 90 seconds. It is excruciating. It is the point.
Director/writer Marielle Heller (known for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood ) takes a sharp left turn here. She shoots Lena’s home like Kubrick shot the Overlook Hotel—wide, symmetrical, and deeply wrong. The lighting is aggressively warm, almost jaundiced. The sound design is the real MVP: the hum of the refrigerator becomes a drone; the squeak of a dish towel sounds like a mouse being stepped on.
The “babygirl” of the title is not a term of endearment from Nico, but the pet name Lena’s own estranged, dying mother (a ghostly Edie Falco) calls her in voicemails Lena cannot bring herself to delete. The film is a slow unspooling of Lena’s carefully curated existence, triggered by a seemingly minor event: she finds an old VHS tape of her mother’s 1980s aerobics show. babygirl free movie
It will haunt your commute. It will make you side-eye your own quiet kitchen. And you will never hear the phrase "babygirl" the same way again. The scariest film of the year has no ghosts, no jumpscares, and no villains—just a woman drowning in a glass of perfectly filtered water. Note on viewing: As of this writing, check your local public library’s Kanopy or Hoopla service—they sometimes have A24 films like this for free with a library card. Otherwise, it’s worth the $5.99 rental.
And she is utterly, completely losing her mind. Also, the film’s pacing is deliberately glacial
White, as the "good husband," plays against type brilliantly. His kindness is not a mask, which is the film’s darkest joke. He isn't a villain. He is genuinely good. That makes Lena’s desire to scream at him all the more tragic. You can’t hate him, and so Lena learns to hate herself.
Some critics have called the third act “underwhelming.” The climax does not involve screaming matches or thrown vases. It involves a misplaced library book and a single, whispered sentence at a dinner party. If you need catharsis, this film will frustrate you. It is the point
Heller’s thesis is brutal: The absence of conflict is itself a form of violence. Nico is too good. He remembers her coffee order. He initiates therapy. He folds the fitted sheet correctly. There is nothing to fight against, and so Lena turns her rage inward, manifesting in compulsive behaviors—counting grains of rice, rearranging the spice rack by color at 3 AM, and eventually, a series of quiet, devastating acts of sabotage.