“Listen Carefully”

Rating: 8/10

Director and Writer: Ryan Barton-Grimley

Style: Horror

Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/953775859

Review by Mike Szymanski

Sometimes big things come in little packages, and this odd quirky indy film is one of those. In a film noir motif (actually, everything is really pretty dark in the entire film), it has a small cast with oddball characters, misguided motives and dark hidden secrets.

The guy behind it all (and in front of it all) is Ryan Barton-Grimley (the notorious RBG) who is listed as the “star/director/writer/editor and burger flipper.” He is one of those hyphenates who can do it all, and has proven it time and time again. He’s a name that should be on your radar, you may become a fan.

Ryan plays the hapless assistant bank manager whose baby is kidnapped. The only connection he has to her and her safety is through a cute owl baby monitor with a creepy voice talking him through how to get his daughter back. The voice mocks him, teases him, cajoles him, and ultimately seems to try to be his friend. Meanwhile, the baby is crying in the background.

Ryan even includes his real-life wife, actress Simone Barton-Grimley, in her screen debut. In the past, she is known for being part of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” shadow cast at the Nuart Theater (where I’m sure I’ve seen her a few times).

Andy is plagued by frightening flashes of rooms soaked in blood. He is also being chased by freaky guys with baby faces.

The sinister, but friendly-sounding, voice in the baby monitor calls Andy a snowflake. Meanwhile, things at Andy’s office is getting strange, and he finds the janitor at the office going through his desk. Too many strange things happening, as if it were all a dream.

But does Andy deserve all this mistreatment? He has done something bad, it’s not too clear what it is, but it makes him feel guilty.

RBG has acted in other films, such as the off-beat “Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers” — another film he directed.

The idea for the film came to the writer/director in a dream. Perhaps that is why the ending is so ambiguous. The writer/director/actor says it all came to him while he was out with his wife and friends in 2018.

“For context, my family and I were staying the weekend with my parents in a small beach town in Central California that is very, very quiet. We had a nice family meal at a local Mexican Restaurant, indulging in lots of spicy food and a few too many margaritas. It should be noted, I am not much of a drinker and mostly partake in the odd glass of natural red wine, so tequila… really messes with my system,” explains RBG.

During dinner, they talked about how great his brother was as a hands-on parent, and how the filmmaker was sort of terrified to hold his daughter when she was born.

After all that he recalls, “I fell asleep and quickly dropped into the nightmare that became ‘Listen Carefully.’ All my

anxiety about connecting with my first daughter, providing financially for my family, about the relationship with my wife and how the birth changed that, dredging that all back up years later. It unravelled in my subconscious, reflecting back through a neo-noir psychological horror lens that kept repeating, over and over again.”

He woke up many times during this nightmare, grabbed a notebook and wrote down this nightmare, and the became the basis of the screenplay.

For the record, he adds, “I am able to hug both of my daughters now.”

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