Baby blues
Expecting parents are beset by tragedy in David Farr’s paranoia-fuelled thriller.
‘In London, loneliness is papered over’
The great fear of becoming a parent is that it will utterly destroy your life. But that’s the reality in The Ones Below, a British psychological thriller in which new parents Justin and Kate, played by Stephen Campbell Moore and Clémence Poésy, discover just how terrifying a baby can be.
“In a big city like London, there’s a kind of loneliness that’s papered over,” says writer/ director David Farr, “but it’s only when you have a child where all of a sudden the dinner parties and nights out become more difficult. And older, deeper connections of communities and family no longer exist. Modern life places enormous anxiety on having a child.”
That anxiety isn’t helped by their new neighbours, wealthy banker Jon (David Morrissey) and Scandinavian wife Teresa (Laura Birn), an older couple who, after years of trying, are also due. As Farr puts it, “Kate is a woman who is deeply unsure if she wants a child, Teresa is absolutely convinced that it is her destiny on earth. A huge thing about pregnancy and post-birth are the mental health issues, and I found my way of highlighting that is to have a character who’s completely free of doubts, and is absolutely certain, but in a slightly terrifying way.”
This becomes clear when the couples, united by pregnancy, bond over a boozy dinner party; a scene that graduates from passive-aggressive unease to full-blown horror when Teresa stumbles down an unlit staircase, miscarrying. This, as you can imagine, leads to dark times, and what follows is a relationship between the neighbours that’s not hostile, but not friendly either – a paranoia that owes an obvious debt to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Are Jon and Teresa really plotting against their newborn? Or is it all in Kate’s head?
“I would, obviously, say the movies of Roman Polanski and Michael Haneke sit behind it as ancestors,” says Farr. “It’s psychological suspense. I’m after that atmosphere of uncertainty which is unsettling just by its presence. And I think we all exist in that. I certainly feel I do.”
ETA | 11 march The Ones Below opens next month.