The Ones Below - Alakertalaiset

Would you let this hyper-maternal, grief-stricken woman babysit your newborn?

The Ones Below is an intimately disturbing nightmare of the upper middle classes, with tinges of melodrama and staginess, entirely appropriate for its air of suppressed psychosis.

David Farr takes the giddy, heady days of early motherhood—the frustration and isolation, the exhaustion and confusion—and mines them for creepy, paranoid thrills in “The Ones Below.”

Farr establishes the hostilities existing within the film's quartet of characters with quiet confidence, as he exhibits one of the great and under-valued qualities of a thriller director: patience.

Scene by scene, Farr piles on the atmosphere: uncomfortable silences, languorous shots of flowers blooming, cacophonies of car alarms and the cries of a baby.