The Baby 1973

Ann Gentry, Anjanette Comer, is a social worker wracked with guilt over a severe car accident with serious repercussions for her husband. She is assigned to a new case: the eccentric and mysterious Wadsworth family. Ann quickly reveals that she has a special interest in the family’s youngest member, a seemingly mentally impaired adult man in his 20s who does not have a name and is called only “Baby” David Mooney. Mrs. Wadsworth, Ruth Roman, has been extremely overprotective of him ever since his father left the family after his birth; she will not let another caregiver interfere. The family’s life revolves around Baby’s care, and they are dependent upon Baby’s disability payments as their main source of income.

Ann wants to work with Baby, who still acts and is treated like an infant by his mother and two sisters, thinking that with the proper treatment he might begin to behave more appropriately for his age group. She soon discovers that Baby’s infant-like state is not caused by any physical or mental conditions but because of the family’s profound neglect and abuse. Baby is never permitted to speak, walk or do things for himself and is forced to both wear and use diapers. He is punished by being beaten or restrained and is even shocked with an electric cattle prod whenever he attempts to break out of the baby role. Baby has been forced to remain in his state of perpetual dependency and infantilism since his actual infancy.

The Wadsworths finally grow tired of Ann’s meddling and try to dispose of her during a party, but Ann manages to escape and steals Baby. Ann keeps Baby at her house rather than turning him over to a professional facility. Eventually, goaded by pictures that Ann sent of Baby doing “adult” things such as standing, the Wadsworths break into the house with murderous intent. They fail to steal Baby back, however, as Ann—with the help of her mother-in-law—kills them all. She stabs Baby’s two sisters, then buries Mrs. Wadsworth alive (alongside the corpses of her daughters) beneath the floor of a swimming pool that Ann has been building in her yard.

In the end, Ann’s interests in obtaining Baby are revealed to have not been as pure-hearted as they seemed. Now that she has him, she no longer wants to rescue or rehabilitate him; she sought him only so he could be a playmate for her husband, who was left with the mental capacity of an infant after his accident. Thus, under Ann’s care, Baby will remain trapped in his state of dependency and infancy, but under the kinder care of Ann and her mother-in-law, with Ann’s husband as his “brother.”

This story unfolds with a quiet, unsettling tension that probes the boundaries between care, coercion, and desire, presenting a stark look at how vulnerability can be exploited when fear and dependency intertwine. The film stays close to its domestic setting, letting the psychological pressure build through intimate interactions and tightly controlled scenes. The result is a morally complex tragedy where appearances of compassion mask a colder, more calculating motive, and where the line between protection and possession becomes dangerously blurred.