Laura's expecting. Her husband, Steven's a loving guy but has little time for her. Her mom lives thousands of miles away. Forced to give up on her dreams, she's always been a bit edgy. A C-section drives her over the edge, making her see things in a different light. A creepy babysitter doesn't make things any better. She begins seeing things, trusts no one, as she goes into self-destruct mode.
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Reviews
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Excellent but underrated film
Don't listen to the negative reviews
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
I voted 10 for this movie. Iam not a film maker, I am a Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, and I can tell that this is an excellent movie to explain a certain type of psychopathology and to teach as well. The character of Elsabeth Sue shows a very narcissistic and immature women who is not prepared to have a child. This situation generates a big anxiety crisis in Laura. Step by step the director is showing very carefully a change in Laura's conception of reality (despersonalization) until she finally turns delusional and psychotic, and kill her own baby!!!!! The diagnostic Post Partum Psychosis. I think that, to really appreciate this film is necessary to know a little bit of pregnancy complications, and mental health in general, this will permit the audience to understand what is going on this women.
***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*** Really a case of severe post natal depression more then a "Rosemary's Baby"-like imitation the made for TV movie "First Born" is about a young woman Laura Davis, Elisabeth Shue, who goes off the deep end into La-La land when her pet dog Harper is accidentally poisoned after eating rat poison that she planted in her house.Being already pregnant Laura's deep guilt over Harper's death leads to her feeling that she won't be a good and caring mother to her soon to be born child. This leads Laura to conjure up all kinds of crazy scenarios about her being cursed, or hexed by evil spirits, in this case witch's, that not only drives her batty but also everyone else she comes in contact with including her husband Steve, Steve Mackintos.After her baby is born Laura starts to feel that it's not really her's in an obvious excuse to shirk any responsibility in properly taking care of it. This is for Laura to have and excuse in anything that happens to her child, a girl, being the results of supernatural forces not her own inability, due to her post natal depression, in being good a mother. The film goes on and on with a number of crazy incidents, conjured up by Laura, where the baby's life is always in danger when it fact it's not. The only one who's a threat to Laura's baby's health, or even life, is Laura herself.The worst thing by far that Laura does is accuse the kind caring nanny Mrs. Kasperian, Kathleen Chalfant, of trying to either kidnap or murder her new born child. This accusation by Laura is so ridicules that even the local police refuse to even entertain, much less act on, it. Coming up with stories about rats and sinister and bloated baby dolls doesn't help Laura either in making anyone believe her. All this causes Laura's mother, Blain Brown, to travel to New York from the other side of the country, California, to come over and look after her grandchild since Laura seems totally incapable of doing it. When the movie ends you get to see just how incapable of being a mother Laura really is!
I thought the movie was horrible. It had good intentions until Shue went crazy. With all the characters in the movie you would have thought the director would have used them more. For instance the mother, what mother would not come to see her first grandchild because she was scared to fly. How did she get there if she was afraid to fly? The housekeeper who knew something was wrong but never thought to call the husband to say to him "I found a knife in the crib." I mean there was a lot of unanswered questions. The girl Jenny, the diary. I hope there are no plans for the making of a "First born 2" This could have turned out to be a good movie if the director would have used his characters more.
don't believe everything you read, everyone has an opinion, and everyone does not have to agree with that opinion. the movie was slow moving in a positive way, this helped in creating the characters and atmosphere. and even though we could predict the ending, we did not want this to be so;as the ending developed that feeling of "Oh my god" factor hit home with a thud. the movie left me feeling numb and silent, hoping i had missed a valuable point, though no, Spoiler - she really did it, her madness brought on by a bad experience during labour, loneliness and paranoia towards being what society counts towards being a good mother, and later infection from her c section brings on hallucinations and madness. as she takes the doll out into the garden, dragging it by the arm and tossing it onto the grass before digging a hole to bury the cold, lifeless plastic that has been haunting her, the small smile forcing its way onto the mothers face has never left me with such a feeling of dread, keep your paranormal, slash, terror/horror movies, this psychological thriller did it for me, i feel despair and sadness just as the mother felt and what the director wanted from his audience.