Babycall

(15) 96min

Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, whose fearless performance as Lisbeth Salander was the best thing about the original Millenium trilogy, gets a chance to stretch her acting muscles again in this creepy thriller. Rapace plays Anna, a young mother who has been rehoused with her eight-year-old son Anders after escaping her abusive husband. On the advice of child services, Anna buys a ‘babycall’ – a one-way baby monitor – so that she can rest easy while Anders sleeps in his own room. But one night she hears other voices through the intercom, both frightened and threatening.

It’s a well-paced, gradually established scenario; Norwegian writer/director Pål Sletaune keeps us guessing as to what is really going on, while drip-feeding information that slowly undermines the reliability of Anna’s perspective. But as the film moves towards its conclusion, more outlandish plot developments pile up, and what began as a tightly controlled exercise starts to fall apart. Sletaune aims for a Sixth Sense-type final reveal, but goes much too far, with a twist that glosses over so many inconsistencies that anyone who’s attempted to follow the plot will feel short-changed.

Selected release from Fri 30 Mar.