Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie Review

Chucky: The Chinese Years

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 2, 2014

Possessed dolls weren’t exactly new news when Child's Play trundled onto the big screen over 25 years ago, and so it’s hardly surprising that the 2013 Chinese film Baby Blues doesn’t offer much new in the way of plot points in this curious horror subgenre. What is surprising is how many other subgenres Baby Blues at least flirts with, including riffs (no pun intended) on tunes that kill (shades of Suicide Club or the Listen segment in Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear) as well as postpartum depression and replacing a dead baby with a doll (The Truth About Emanuel). All of these elements spill out of Baby Blues with florid abandon, and the film is nothing if not energetic in its hyperbolic presentation of a troubled woman’s apparent psychosis after one of her twins dies during delivery.

Janelle Sing and Raymond Lam portray Tian Qing and Hao, a newly married couple who move into a house whose previous tenants have left behind a weird little doll. When Tian Qing's delivery results in only one child being born alive, she frays and begins investing her dead baby's supposed identity in the doll. However, we've already seen that the doll has a few ideas of its own, and most of the horror here comes from the little plaything's nefarious activities. Baby Blues is nowhere near self-aware enough to make it into solid camp territory, but it might provide a laugh or two for undemanding horror aficionados who can't track down their copy of Chucky: The Complete Collection.

Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Baby Blues is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This digitally shot feature isn't extraordinarily sharp, but it offers well above average clarity and some excellent fine detail in close-ups. Some segments have been color graded fairly aggressively (to the ever popular blue hues that seem inescapable in horror fare), and there's a segment in the climax that has been tweaked to look grainy or even distressed. There are occasional issues with compression artifacts in some of the darker moments. Baby Blues was evidently released theatrically in some markets in 3D, but there is only a 2D version on this Blu-ray.

Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is nicely immersive courtesy of typical horror elements like thudding LFE, but also due to the fact that the husband in the film is a music producer (hence the "killer song"). Dialogue is very cleanly presented. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is extremely wide in this problem free track.

Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:17)

Baby Blues Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There was an earlier film called Baby Blues which was culled from the horrible tragedy of Andrea Yates, the troubled young mother who killed five of her children. Thankfully, that particular plot point isn't part of this kind of cobbled together stew of various horror staples. Stick with the malevolent Chucky if you're looking for scary children's playthings.