As a new father, I now know there are few things more rattling than the distorted cries of a newborn crackling through the baby monitor, scrambling your tired brain awake-ish. Of course, finding your baby’s crib empty and your baby missing would be much worse. Writer/director and star Ryan Barton-Grimley’s Listen Carefully follows assistant bank manager Andy McNeary (Ryan Barton-Grimley), whose daughter Abby is kidnapped while he is home alone watching her.
His wife, Allie (Simone Barton-Grimley), is having what seems to be her first night out with her friends after having Abby and Andy assure her everything will be fine. Meanwhile, Andy’s boss has tasked him with working with a cyber security firm investigating mysterious fraudulent withdrawals from the bank. What they don’t know is that Andy has been the one stealing the money.
Andy is awoken by the cries of his daughter Abby, and when he goes to check her crib, she is gone. All that is left is her baby monitor and a voice on the other end that assures Andy he will see his daughter again as long as he uses his embezzling skills to come up with $250,000. Andy will be brought to his limits as he faces his inner demons and lack of sleep to get his daughter back before his wife gets home. His child, his marriage, his life, and his career all hang in the balance. No pressure.
“…follows assistant bank manager…whose daughter Abby is kidnapped while he is home alone watching her.”
Listen Carefully brings an after-midnight grindhouse style to the Chris Evans Cellular story concept. Its tone bounces between dark and darkly funny, never taking itself too seriously. Its opening scene feels right at home in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and as we begin to explore Andy’s inner conflict through his dreams, there are moments of manic delight that scream Nic Cage’s Mandy and Hobo with a Shotgun.
This is an entertaining film that will ultimately leave viewers split by the ending. Throughout the film, Andy’s dreams are constantly confused with reality. Think of every horror movie where something bad happens to the main character, and then they wake up in a cold sweat, and it was only a dream, but then a monster comes out of their closet and stabs them, only for them to wake up a 2nd time, and it was a dream within a dream. That is Listen Carefully’s biggest flaw. The dream trick is pulled a few too many times, which, of course, is effective in making Andy an unreliable protagonist, but it doesn’t work in making the film more interesting. It becomes a cheap scare and a cheap trick that confuses the plot and makes its ambiguous ending even more unsatisfying.
Another flaw with the film is Andy’s character is not believable in his desperation to find his daughter. There isn’t much tension. This is mainly due to the rapport between Andy and the kidnapper. The villain has all the quips to make jabs at Andy, and Andy often responds as if he’s speaking with an annoying playground bully. Andy wants to save his daughter but never feels believably afraid of what he’s up against.
All that aside, Ryan Barton-Grimley’s filmmaking aesthetic is one we don’t get enough of these days and is not to be ignored.
"…not to be ignored..."
