Spoonful of Sugar (2023)

This is a hilarious black comedy. 

It has everything virtually apart from zombies - a creepy babysitter, a demonic child, a lunatic mother and a selfish, perverse father, child abuse, LSD, necromania, multiple murders, dead rabbits ... So much the script writers are clearly struggling to keep all the different plot elements moving in sync, but they just about pull it off.

We meet Millicent attending at job interview as a baby sitter for a very high needs child.  Millie presents as 21-year-old, and says she is studying medicine.  She quickly forms a rapport with the boy, Johnny. Parents, Jacob and Rebecca, hire her.

Turns out Millie isn't quite what she seems - addiction to LSD being just one 'problematic' aspect.  She casually disregards Becca's rules about child care - which are many - and seems not unresponsive as Jacob starts making advances on her.  And there is more, so much more, about her.

Okay, so she's a psycho.  That isn't any big reveal.  It's signaled in the opening moments.  Hell, even her interview hair clearly signals dangerous-loon-girl-don't-let-her-near-your-baby.

"Hi, I'm clearly a loon.  Please let me care for your high needs child.  I'll do your husband as well, for no extra charge."

If that was all there was to it, we'd be watching a rehash of Fatal Attraction or Single White Female.  But Spoonful of Sugar is smarter, and way madder, because as the veneer of sanity is stripped of Millie, we learn more about her employees and her charge as well.  It's as much A Turn of the Screw as it is Fatal Attraction with absolutely no-one good in it at all.

The entire film is crewed with utterly amoral people willing to do whatever they need to to get what they want, whether it is protecting their facade of family life, sampling young flesh or inveigling your way into a family as a surrogate wife / mother.  At least Millie has the excuse of being a drug addled survivor of abuse - the family are just middle class.

Out of the whole sorry lot of them, tail chasing Jacob is perhaps the most easily accommodated character - we know what he wants pretty much right from the start, when we see him hosing down the garden half naked.  In case you're still struggling, he even squirts his hose at Millicent.  It's a fairly uncomplicated transaction as far as he's concerned.

Curiously, all this madness crystalizes or coagulates into the form of Johnny, the near mute child with a penchant for sudden violence.  Everyone, it seems, projects their own crazy onto him.

"I want LSD, not birthday cake!"

Most obviously is his mother, Rebecca, who reels of a list of requirements for Johnny's care, claiming that he suffers from massive, critical allergies and a range of psychological issues.  The former worry is quickly shown to be frivolous, as Millie simply ignores them, encouraging Johnny to play outside and teaching him how to skin decomposing rabbits, and Johnny thrives.  Though it is too simplistic to suggest this is a case of mummy bad, Millie good as she is quite clearly deranged herself, and some of her child care decisions are ... eccentric to say the least.  And Johnny isn't an innocent either, with his willful savagery and fondness for burying slaughtered animals in the back yard.

The performances are very good, and the outbursts of violence is startling and shocking.   Though perhaps to weird for all tastes, I thoroughly enjoyed this quirky dark, near Lynchian domestic drama.  A Spoonful of Sugar is highly recommended if you are looking for something that isn't a tired slasher re-tread.

Star Rating: ****