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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Hell Baby

HELL BABY (Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon). 98 minutes. Opens Friday (September 6). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN


I know, I know. Horror parodies are feeling played out. But as they go, Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon’s Hell Baby – a goofy romp about an expectant couple who move into a crappy old New Orleans house and almost immediately find themselves in a paranormal vortex that seems focused on their unborn child – is head and bloody shoulders above the half-assed likes of A Haunted House or Scary Movie V.

Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb are the hopeful soon-to-be parents who buy a crumbling manse as a fixer-upper only to discover its history is a little more clouded than they’d been told. (The locals call it the Maison du Sang.) And no sooner have they moved in than the wife starts acting all Rosemary Woodhouse, much to the consternation of her loving husband.

Fortunately, help is on the way in the form of a pair of Vatican demon hunters – played by the writer/director team of Lennon and Garant as Italian variations on their Reno 911! partners Jim Dangle and Travis Junior – who will get Satan behind them if they can just tear themselves away from a local po’ boy restaurant.

Hell Baby is as much of a joke machine as those other recent horror comedies, but the difference is that the jokes are actually funny. It’s really that simple.

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