Listen Carefully is about that special kind of fear that comes from watching a baby. Many will start to tap dance around the gender and socio-political trappings of that issue. But, let’s be honest. Most men aren’t 100% comfortable with taking care of children. They can pick them up, drop them off, give them snacks and generally do basic pet care for them. But, when they are so young and fragile, it gets scary. Listen Carefully lives and dies by its ability to make that fear palpable.
Table of Contents
Sleep matters
Six month old Abby has been keeping her dad up. He’s also guilty, because he’s ripping off his bank job with a corrupted ATM card. Now, his wife has left and he might be hallucinating baby faced criminals stalking him. Suddenly, a voice speaks to him over the baby monitor. A mystery woman is extorting him for $250,000. If he doesn’t come up with it, he won’t see his baby daughter again among other bad things. What’s a poor dad to do on such limited sleep?
I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been rewatching Eyes Wide Shut a ton in the last month, but the thematic overtones smacked me upside the head. Plus, it let me understand a lot of derision I heard from people that have seen both movies. Americans don’t handle ambiguity at all. I think it’s only going to get worse as the ability to understand subtext and that which goes unsaid is being forcibly removed from individuals in the education and workspace. But, why?
![Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 5](https://andersonvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Villians-come-in-all-shapes-and-sizes.jpeg "Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 6")
There’s no money in the observed life
Criminals feeling guilty for their deeds is as old as American Cinema. So making an indie film about a sleep deprived father hallucinating a response to his day-time crimes isn’t a typical. It’s how Listen Carefully anchors his fears around his own inability to protect his child. Even that isn’t reinventing the wheel. But, what Listen Carefully gets right is the panic and quick response actions people take when they’re trying to make sense of their life going wonky.
It doesn’t matter if it’s police intervention, a spouse finding out or a mystery voice appearing on a baby monitor. Fear, paranoia, unease and general stress can push the guilty into bizarre responses. Naturally, I dug getting to watch our lead break down and try to make sense of what is happening to him.
![Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 7](https://andersonvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Split-personality.jpeg "Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 8")
I’m impressed by the director
Ryan Barton-Grimley has done something I don’t see in a lot of modern indie directors. He takes the thread bare nature of indie cinema and started playing with the dreamlike nature that accompanies most fears. When you’re in a panic, you don’t see things rationally. Enemies come out of nowhere, the mundane becomes threatening and you go into problem solving mode. But you can’t solve problems when you can’t trust your reality and you may not fully have a grasp on the situation.
Smart and well-rested people can understand when things don’t make sense. However, stress and discomfort push already out of sorts people into an arena they can’t understand. Panic cinema is quite a feat to pull off, especially on a lower budget. But, damn if it just doesn’t come together in Listen Carefully.
![Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 9](https://andersonvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Allie-is-unimpressed-with-Andy-scaled.jpeg "Listen Carefully (2024) [VOD review] 10")
Final thoughts on Listen Carefully
Films like Listen Carefully are an acquired taste, so you might see a lot of places not quite gelling with it. That’s typical, so make of that what you will. But, if you can hang with a film that doesn’t spell every little detail out for you, then check it out on VOD.
Listen Carefully is now available on VOD
