Turns out I picked a rather fortuitous weekend to be out of town.
Yes, I know this was the weekend of Smurfs, Eddington, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025), all massively hyped movies with trailers in constant rotation for the past several months. Bullshit. If the studios involved had any real faith in any of these projects, they wouldn’t have dumped those movies in between Superman (2025) and The Fantastic Four (2025).
Even so, I expect I’ll get around to at least one of them in short order. But first, there’s one recent indie film that I would much rather spotlight. And it got screwed over even worse than the others.
Sorry, Baby comes to us from Eva Victor (they/them), previously known for fuck-all. Yet here’s Victor, making their feature debut as writer/director/lead actor. In terms of star power, pretty much all this movie has is producer Barry Jenkins (not even mentioned on the poster), who godfathered the movie through his Pastel Productions shingle. And it’s a dark comedy about sexual assault (CONTENT WARNING). Best of all, it’s an A24 release that came out opposite another A24 release from a much bigger star in their roster.
So, yeah, this one got screwed over. But it’s exactly the kind of movie that would’ve gotten screwed over regardless. That said, it is rather depressing that an indie arthouse darling like A24 would shaft two of their movies like this, but I digress.
The plot unfolds in non-chronological order, against a rural backdrop somewhere in New England. Victor plays Agnes, who started out as a grad student in English. While it’s never explicitly depicted or even outright named as such, Agnes’ description of events makes it abundantly clear that she was sexually assaulted by her mentor in the English department (Professor Preston Decker, played by… Louis Cancelmi. I swear to you, gentle readers, I am not making that name up.)
A few years later, Agnes is a professor of English who eventually gets promoted to a full-time position. Replacing the position that’s been vacant ever since that incident with Decker. So now she’s got his old job and his old office. While she’s still grappling with PTSD from the incident. Lot of mixed feelings there.
This isn’t a movie that’s easy to describe in terms of “good” or “bad.” It’s not even a movie that’s easy to describe in terms of “funny” or “depressing”. There is, however, one word that completely and perfectly describes this film: Mumblecore.
The genre has declined a fair bit since it peaked in the Obama years (not to mention the tragically premature death of genre pioneer Lynn Shelton in 2020), but there’s no question that’s what we’re looking at here. Shoestring budget, glacial pacing, and wall-to-wall dialogue (chunks of which feel improvised) about quirky adult characters hashing out their problems. If you have any memory of what made Greta Gerwig famous pre-Lady Bird, that’s what we’re looking at here.
A fortunate side effect of working within this genre is that it’s defined by a clumsy sort of charm. It’s the passion that sells the movie (and the dense dialogue exchanges) more than the craft or the spectacle. Mumblecore was made of, by, and for filmmakers without the resources or the experience to make anything more complex, which makes it an ideal fit for a scrappy young novice like Victor. And if some of the shot compositions are weird or the cuts are oddly placed, the genre makes it feel more like a feature than a bug.
Of course Victor is the primary reason to see the film, and kudos are certainly due to their skills as an actor. Perhaps more importantly, Victor filled out the cast with a number of reliable supporting talents to act against. We’ve got the aforementioned Cancelmi (I can’t get over that name, fucking seriously…), who delivers exactly the kind of ambiguous charisma the role needed. We’ve got Naomi Ackie in the all-important best friend role. Lucas Hedges is on hand as a salt-of-the-earth rural neighbor/love interest/fuck buddy for Agnes. Kelly McCormack plays up her particular brand of eccentric to play the comic relief. John Carroll Lynch drops in for a scene.
Simply put, this entire cast list was specifically built for affordable quality. None of these names are flashy or well-known, but they’re all seasoned veterans. They’re all talented enough to elevate an inexperienced screen partner, and they’re all more than capable enough of making something memorable with only two minutes of screentime. In particular, Hedges’ character could easily have come off as a mere plot device, but we’ve seen Hedges do far more with far less at half his current age. More importantly, the Victor/Ackie interplay powers what might be the single most crucial relationship in the entire movie: the foundational “best friend” dynamic that gives the story enough hope and strength to rise above the sexual assault trauma.
Which brings me to the strongest part of this movie: The script. It’s genuinely impressive how much ground this movie covers in terms of life as a sexual assault survivor, all depicted in a clear-eyed and even-handed way.
We see Agnes getting triggered by reminders of The Event, and also by certain other activities that Agnes didn’t even know Decker was responsible for. We see exactly how Decker took a slap on the wrist to avoid any serious long-term repercussions, and how our greater society is woefully inept at even discussing the topic, much less addressing it. Yet we also see how Decker’s short-term downfall happened in a way that directly benefited Agnes in the long run and how conflicted she is over that. We even get a heartbreaking explanation as to why Agnes never talks about the assault and why she never pressed charges.
But at the same time, the movie introduces a healthy dose of levity to balance it all out. Again, a lot of that comedy relief comes back to the aforementioned supporting cast; Ackie, Hedges, and McCormack most of all. In point of fact, Ackie helps explore the viability and the necessity of having close ride-or-die friends to help get through such trauma. Lynch’s glorified cameo role demonstrates how much good that any one of us could do with a simple act of kindness for a stranger (in direct opposition to the systemic apathy demonstrated elsewhere). Hedges’ character helps to explore how sex, romance, and body positivity might still be possible after surviving a sexual assault.
Oh, and of course we have the stray kitten that Agnes finds and adopts. Because a warm purring kitten makes everything better.
Time and again, the film deftly shows how life after sexual assault is possible, yet different. Agnes even goes so far as to state outright that she typically goes about her day in total normalcy, with only the occasional flare-up of PTSD. And the flare-ups are apparently so rare — and yet so serious — that compiling all the instances over four or five years is only enough to fill a 100-minute movie. That’s an ingenious way of making the point.
There’s a lot going on in this movie, with a great many themes and storylines weaving every which way. Yet they all dovetail together beautifully at the ending. I’m obviously loathe to go into details, but that ending does an elegant and bittersweet job of elaborating everything Agnes is and does and all the ways she’s changed over the course of the film. For instance, the fact that she’s gone through all this shit could potentially make her an ideal mentor for somebody else when awful things inevitably happen to them. And there’s a good chance that being somebody else’s guardian, helping to ease somebody else’s suffering, might be enough to keep her going through another few decades.
On a final miscellaneous note, I’d be remiss not to mention the clever media references. I respect the bold choice to put in a Twelve Angry Men clip in a movie that revolves so heavily around society’s failure to hold a sexual predator to account. Likewise, given the film’s subject matter and setting in a college English department, using Nabokov’s “Lolita” as a recurring motif is simply diabolical.
Sorry, Baby is not an easy film to sit through. The subject matter is pitch black, the pacing is languid, and even the comedy is darkly twisted. Even so, I’m innately drawn to artists who state in clear, bold, honest terms that life is hard and the world sucks; while also stating with equal honesty and integrity that we can rise above. I might further add that in a world so vocally desperate for original works by brave new filmmakers, we need more movies like this and we need more filmmakers like Eva Victor.
Unfortunately, I worry that the film might be so far against the grain and so far off the beaten path that nobody will see it, regardless of mainstream complaints about “MCU fatigue”. That said, if this is the only film Victor ever makes, they should be damn proud of it. If you’ve got the brass to handle blunt and honest discussion of trauma and sexual assault, and if you’ve got the patience to sit through a mumblecore flick, check this one out.