Some of the best films of 2024 were religious horror films and the first one of 2025 might not be as anticipated, but don’t count it out. The Baby in the Basket will be available to own or rent on digital download in the UK and US and to own on DVD (for the UK only) from February 17.
The marketing touts this as a gothic horror mystery, but it feels more like a satanic panic homage. A baby shows up in a basket on the doorstep of a convent and the nuns take it in. You can imagine where it goes from there. Whenever the a cruscifix is used as a “T” in a horror movie poster, you know the Devil is involved somehow. is It doesn’t look half-bad as independent religious horror films go, however it might be a slow burn. The offiical plot can be read after the trailer below.
“It’s 1944 and World War Two rages on. The sisters of St. Augustine’s, a convent on a remote Scottish island, are preparing for an incoming storm. One night a cloaked figure leaves a baby in a basket and disappears, never to be seen again.
The nuns take in the boy, and agree to look after him until the storm passes when they will take the child to the mainland for permanent care. However, after a night under their watch, unsettling things begin to happen with the newest addition to the convent. Sister Agnes (Amber Doig-Thorne) suspects the child is the spawn of Satan, causing her to be locked away for fear that she’s been driven mad by the isolation.
But increasingly strange occurrences lead the sisters to question their faith and everything they believe, they wonder has Sister Agnes fallen victim to the desolation of the remote island setting or was there really weight in her suspicions?”