If Rosemary’s Baby had a nasty head injury and stumbled drunkenly into a B-movie casting call in Soho, the result might look something like Sharon’s Baby—a film so misbegotten, so tonally confused, it should come with a birth certificate stamped “illegitimate by Satan.”
Directed by Peter Sasdy, a man who once helmed elegant nightmares like Taste the Blood of Dracula, this cinematic miscarriage feels less like horror and more like a drunken séance in a maternity ward. It stars Joan Collins—yes, that Joan Collins—as a former stripper named Lucy Carlesi who gives birth to the Antichrist’s grumpy baby cousin. A baby so full of rage, it immediately scratches the doctor delivering it. That’s the cold open. Just a baby clawing at a man like it’s trying to return to the womb but forgot its roadmap.
But don’t worry—it gets dumber.
We’re told Lucy was once part of a burlesque act that involved a dwarf named Hercules. She spurned his advances, because naturally, and now she’s cursed. That’s right: this entire demonic saga is apparently because Lucy didn’t want to sleep with a horny dwarf. Somewhere in hell, even Satan is rolling his eyes.
The plot slithers forward like a drunk python in a gravel pit. Lucy’s baby, Nicholas, is not just colicky—he’s homicidal. He hates his mother, hates his nanny, hates crosses, and spends most of the film offscreen committing murders with invisible toddler rage. Nurses are found drowned. Electricians are strangled. Joan Collins spends the runtime either shrieking, clutching a rosary, or looking like she just found out she’s been double-booked on a cruise ship full of cannibals.
And then there’s Donald Pleasence, playing a befuddled doctor who might’ve wandered in from another movie entirely. He acts like he’s reading his lines off a cue card just behind Joan Collins’ bouffant. He keeps insisting there’s a medical explanation for the baby’s behavior, like this is a particularly rowdy case of acid reflux.
Let’s talk tone for a second. This film is a masterclass in cinematic schizophrenia. One minute we’re watching a psychic nun warn Joan Collins about spiritual dangers, the next we’re in a neon-lit strip club being introduced to “Hercules the Erotic Dwarf” like it’s a sleazy Game of Thrones spin-off. It’s as if the script was written by two people—one obsessed with theology and one obsessed with cleavage—and neither read the other’s pages.
Peter Sasdy directs with all the subtlety of a rusty forceps. There’s no atmosphere, no tension—just over-lit interiors, sweaty zoom-ins, and musical cues that sound like a synthesizer in cardiac arrest. The baby, supposedly the centerpiece of this horror show, is barely shown. And when it is, it looks about as terrifying as a cabbage patch doll with resting bitch face.
But that doesn’t stop the film from telling you—repeatedly—that this baby is EVIL. Not mischievous, not troubled. Evil.The kind of evil that makes priests scream, nannies leap out of windows, and Joan Collins question her agent’s life decisions.
Ralph Bates, usually a reliable Hammer presence, plays Joan’s Italian husband with all the authenticity of a Guy Ritchie extra doing an olive oil commercial. He’s conveniently absent most of the film, until it’s time to deliver exposition like “maybe it’s an evil dwarf’s curse” as if that clears everything up.
And then, when you think this thing can’t get more ludicrous, the exorcism happens.
Yes, the psychic nun (because of course there’s a psychic nun) comes back, shuffles into the apartment, and decides she’s going to extract the evil from the baby through pure eye contact and religious mumbling. It goes about as well as you’d expect. The baby—still offscreen, of course—flips furniture and presumably hurls a tricycle at someone’s spine. People scream. Things catch fire. The nun dies in a position that looks suspiciously like she fell asleep mid-sermon.
And how does it end? Spoiler: abruptly. The baby is calmed, or possessed by a different demon, or maybe just bored. It’s never clear. The film ends with a final “shock” that’s about as surprising as a flat tire on a dirt road. You’re left blinking at the screen like, “Wait, that’s it?”
The whole experience feels like a fever dream you had after eating undercooked clams and watching too much late-night TV. There are moments—brief flashes—when it could’ve been a camp masterpiece. But it never commits. It’s not scary enough to be horror, not trashy enough to be fun, and not weird enough to be cult. It’s just… awkward.
Peter Sasdy, who once knew how to stage dread and drama, seems like he’s phoning this one in with a broken rotary dial. Maybe he knew this script was trash and decided to just aim the camera and pray. Maybe he lost a bet. Whatever the case, Sharon’s Baby is the kind of film that feels like everyone involved was looking for an exit while the cameras were rolling.
Final Diagnosis:
Shannon’s Baby (or I Don’t Want to Be Born, or whatever the hell it wants to be called this week) is a haunted diaper of a film. Loud, messy, and full of unidentifiable goo. It wants to ride the coattails of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, but trips over its own formula and lands face-first in a strip club full of supernatural nonsense.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of a possessed teething ring—useless, shrill, and potentially dangerous if taken seriously.
If Satan’s baby really was this underwhelming, no wonder he fell.
