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Down Will Come Baby
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Wikipedia article
'Down Will Come Baby' is an American thriller drama following the story of a twelve-year-old girl finding solace and friendship from an eccentric, order-obsessed and possibly dangerous woman. Based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Gloria Murphy, the television film was written and directed by Gregory Goodell, and was released on May 4, 1999, on CBS. 'Down Will Come Baby' is one of Evan Rachel Wood's earliest acting roles.
Plot
Twelve-year-old Robin Garr is sent away to summer camp at the behest of her workaholic mother and her stressed-out father, both of whom fight and argue often. At camp, Robin befriends Amelia, an overweight girl with scars on her back who claims to be happy about being free from her controlling mother. After coaxing Amelia into a deep lake for a prohibited nighttime swim, Amelia, who cannot swim, quickly drowns while Robin screams for help. Robin is sent back home to her bad home situation; her mother has just changed her job and moves to another city, but visits on the weekends; it's a big chance for her and she thinks the change will be good for the family. Robin is frustrated with this turn of events and confides in a friend at the local park, a boy her age named Calvin, that she still feels guilty about Amelia's death.
One day Robin meets a pleasant woman named Dorothy, who is eccentric and enjoys feeding the birds bread crusts. Robin immediately likes her for her candid approach to grief and sadness, and is even happier to discover that Dorothy is a neighbour in the same building she and her parents live in. They soon become friends, but the closer they get, the more uncomfortable Robin feels. Dorothy takes Robin's photograph without permission, rearranges her room in a way Robin doesn't like, yells at her for using the wrong ingredients in a batch of cookie dough, and tells Robin a disturbing, graphic story about how her own sister (who happens to have been named Amelia) fell out of a third-storey window when Dorothy was supposed to be babysitting her. Dorothy's sister was killed in the fall, an incident that has traumatized Dorothy since childhood. Mrs. Garr is frustrated by the bizarre relationship Dorothy is forming with Robin, and demands that it taper off. Dorothy begins to become obsessed with Robin, clandestinely placing a walkie-talkie in her bedroom. Each night, when her parents are putting her to bed, Dorothy listens in on their conversations. Mrs. Garr realizes that Robin is also uncomfortable with the relationship and tries to get Mr. Garr to put a stop to it. Mr. Garr thinks his wife is overreacting, and he ignores the request.
One night, Mr. Garr asks Dorothy to stay with Robin while he is away from the apartment. Dorothy becomes weirdly authoritarian and angry, yelling at Robin and forcing her to approach her homework assignments with perfectionism until no typographical mistakes are made. Robin finds this silly, and demands to call her parents. In a burst of rage, Dorothy hits her, knocking the girl into the side of a doorframe and causing her to fall unconscious. Mr. Garr comes home to find both Dorothy and his daughter gone, and he sees blood on the doorframe. Mrs. Garr returns home and after a heated argument, they call the police and convince their landlord to unlock Dorothy's apartment. The parents and landlord are stunned to find that Dorothy has neglected to unpack her cardboard moving boxes, and moreover, that Dorothy appears to have built a sort of makeshift shrine that combines things she has collected from Robin, as well as the walkie-talkie. In a panic, they both realize that they know nothing of Dorothy's real identity. The landlord reveals that he only knows the information he was given, and the parents come to an understanding that Dorothy gave the landlord fraudulent identification. They convince Calvin, Robin's friend, to alert other children in the park that Robin is missing and needs to be found. Calvin reveals that Robin was uncomfortable around Dorothy and that he himself didn't trust Dorothy, who had earlier-on warned Robin not to trust any boys at all.
Meanwhile, Dorothy tries to brainwash Robin into believing herself to be Dorothy's daughter. Robin awakens in a little girl's bedroom, tied down and disoriented. She recognizes some of the items in the room and realizes a grim truth about Dorothy: Amelia, the friend who drowned at summer camp, was Dorothy's daughter, who in turn was named after Dorothy's deceased little sister, unveiling a pattern of severe mental illness in which Dorothy has the obsessive need to control "Amelia", even to the Amelia proxy's own harm. This comes to light when Robin fights back against Dorothy. Dorothy lights a candlestick, waiting for the wax to burn down, and holds a piece of iron over it, causing it to heat up. To Robin's horror, Dorothy plans to use the hot iron to burn and brand her skin as a form of punishment (which is how her friend Amelia got the scars on her back). Robin is trapped in what is presumably Dorothy's real home, with no way to get help.
Robin's parents come across Amelia's file at the summer camp, discovering that Dorothy's real name is Gretchen. They track down Gretchen's home address, despite being told by the police to wait at home. When Robin tries to escape, Gretchen grabs the screaming girl and attempts to brand her arm with the hot iron. Luckily Robin's parents arrive just in time to rescue her, and Mr. Garr breaks down the window and the door to the bedroom. Gretchen insists that Robin is really her daughter Amelia. The detectives and police arrive shortly thereafter, pretending that they all know that Gretchen is telling the truth in order to fool the insane woman into releasing Robin, which she does, only for Robin to be given back to the Garrs.
Gretchen is arrested, handcuffed and led to a police car, where she lapses into a complete breakdown, believing herself to be a young girl back in childhood, talking to her deceased little sister. She calls out things such as, "Amelia... want to play hide and seek? Yes, yes, I'll find you... you HIDE! GO HIDE!" (then proceeds to count manically backwards in the voice of a child). She continues to act this way as police take her into custody. Robin, despite the ordeal, feels sorry for Gretchen and wonders where she will end up now that she's been caught. She and her parents then return home. Mrs. Garr decides to quit her job, deciding that she doesn't need it as much as she needs her family; this revelation causes Robin, who is pretending to be asleep in the backseat of the family car, to smile placidly.
Cast
* Meredith Baxter as Leah Garr
* Diana Scarwid as Dorothy McIntyre
* Tom Amandes as Marcus Garr
* Evan Rachel Wood as Robin Garr
* Katie Booze-Mooney as Amelia
* Kory Thompson as Calvin
* Nicholas Glaeser as Detective Larkin
* Warner McKay as Linus
Production
'Down Will Come Baby' was written and directed by Gregory Goodell, based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Gloria Murphy. It was produced by Hearst Entertainment in association with CBS Television Network, with Renee Valente and Paullette Breen serving as the executive producers. CBS had previously adapted another one of Murphy's novels, 'Simon Says' (1994), into the 1996 television film 'Summer of Fear'. While Murphy was unhappy with the previous adaptation, she approved of Goodell's adaptation of 'Down Will Come Baby', believing that his script stayed true to her original story and characters. There were some changes made for the film, such as the setting being switched from New England to Arizona.
Meredith Baxter said the role of Leah appealed to her because she could relate to the character's struggles in juggling a career and being a mother. She was also drawn to the script's idea that strange things can happen to ordinary people, noting that the film starts out following a very normal family before taking a sudden turn into darker territory. Having done her share of true crime television dramas, Baxter was keen to do a film based on a fictional story. She explained:
The film was shot in Phoenix, Arizona, based out of the downtown area, from February to March 1999. It was shot over 18 days in what Baxter described as a "pretty demanding" schedule. Several local Arizonan actors rounded out the supporting cast including Katie Booze-Mooney, Kory Thompson, Nicholas Glaeser, Warner McKay.
Reception
Critical reception
'Variety's Laura Fries thought the cast was "decent," highlighting Wood as the most consistent performer, but found that overall the film "suffers from a hodgepodge script and so many plot holes." Tom Shales of 'The Washington Post' was highly critical of the film for "exploit[ing] parents' fears about their children."Ratings
'Down Will Come Baby' earned a 8.7 national Nielsen rating, where each ratings point represents 994,000 households, making it the 27th highest-rated prime time program for the week of May 3 to 9, 1999. Overall, it was the 120th most-watched film on television for the 19981999 season, with 11.4 million total viewers.Accolades
For her performance in the film, Wood was nominated for a YoungStar Award for Best Young Actress in a Miniseries/Made for TV Film.References
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