Spider One once again proves his monsters have far more on their minds than murder.
I’m not going to lie—I was a little apprehensive about checking out Spider One’s latest film, Big Baby. But thankfully my love for his previous feature, Little Bites, ultimately won out. On paper, Little Bites sounded like it was simply putting a fresh spin on vampire mythology. Instead, it completely blindsided me. It was a remarkably thoughtful piece of horror that used vampires as a vehicle to explore addiction, domestic abuse, and the sacrifices of motherhood with surprising emotional depth.
That experience kept pulling me back to Big Baby, even though its premise initially sounded far less compelling: another slasher centered on a blood-drenched killer this time sporting a pink onesie. Much like Little Bites however, Spider One once again uses familiar horror iconography to smuggle in something far more intimate, turning what looks like a gimmicky slasher into a deeply personal meditation on creativity, self-doubt, and the emotional cost of making art.
The film follows Adam Lewis (Brandon Scott), a horror screenwriter reeling from the hostile reception of his latest screenplay while desperately searching for inspiration for the next one. That inspiration arrives in the form of a horrifying vision: a blood-soaked killer wearing an oversized baby mask and a blood soaked pink onesie known as Big Baby. As Adam pours himself into writing his next script, the line between fiction and reality begins to dissolve, transforming what initially appears to be a straightforward slasher into an increasingly unnerving psychological descent into madness, with a side of domestic melodrama.
What makes Big Baby so compelling is how nakedly autobiographical it feels at times. After a pair of horror podcasters mercilessly eviscerate Adam’s screenplay—going so far as to declare that whoever wrote Adam’s film – The Blackest Night “should kill themselves”—his already fragile confidence begins to collapse. It’s a painfully accurate snapshot of the ugliest corners of online fandom, where criticism quickly curdles into cruelty and creators become easy targets for outrage masquerading as commentary.
As Adam spirals, his girlfriend Kate (Krsy Fox) becomes the lone force trying to keep him tethered to reality, while Big Baby evolves into something far more terrifying than a masked slasher. He’s the physical embodiment of every creative insecurity, intrusive thought, and fear of failure that artists carry with them every time they put their work into the world. In that sense, Big Baby isn’t really about a killer in a baby mask at all. It’s about the psychological toll of creation—the terrifying act of digging into the darkest corners of your imagination, only to wonder if something ugly might crawl back out with you.
The film certainly delivers the grisly body count you’d expect from a slasher, with some impressive practical kills, but once again it’s the human story that grounds everything. The relationship between Adam and Kate never feels like something that simply exists to connect the kills. Brandon Scott and Krsy Fox share an easy, lived-in chemistry that makes their domestic life feel authentic from the moment they’re on screen together. Their conversations, frustrations, and quiet moments carry the weight of a real relationship rather than a screenwriter’s approximation of one, comprising the emotional core of the film.
It’s a smart choice because most filmmakers would lose themselves in the carnage—that’s the easy part. Spider One understands that the horror only lands if we first become invested in these people. By taking the time to make us care about Adam and Kate before Big Baby literally tears their world apart, every kill and his slowly consuming madness carries genuine emotional weight.
Big Baby isn’t just a slasher with an eye-catching gimmick; it’s a blood-soaked meditation on the creative process and what happens after an artist releases a piece of themselves into the world. Spider One captures the anxiety that comes with creating something deeply personal—the fear that your work will be misunderstood, ridiculed, or weaponized against you. Those intrusive thoughts can grow unchecked, feeding on every bad review, dismissive comment, and anonymous insult until they become monsters of their own.
At the same time, the film serves as an indictment of the increasingly toxic culture surrounding online criticism, where outrage often generates more clicks than thoughtful discussion and creators are too often treated as disposable targets rather than human beings. That’s not to say criticism itself is the villain—far from it. Honest, constructive criticism is essential to art. But there’s a world of difference between engaging with a work and using it as an excuse to perform cruelty for clicks.
Like Little Bites before it, Big Baby proves that Spider One has little interest in making horror that’s simply about the monster. He’s far more fascinated by the people haunted by it. The blood, gore, and inventive kills are undeniably entertaining, but they’re merely the delivery system for a story about vulnerability, self-worth, and the emotional price artists pay every time they dare to create and set their creation free into the world. It’s a surprisingly poignant, deeply personal horror film that lingers long after the final kill—not because of the body count, but because of the uncomfortable truths hiding beneath the baby mask that every creative person is forced to reckon with.
