LISTEN CAREFULLY (2024)

New On Demand from Haida Street Films and RBG Films!
Directed/Written by Ryan Barton-Grimley.
Check out the trailer here!!

When an overworked assistant bank manager Andy McNeary (filmmaker Ryan Barton-Grimley) babysits his new daughter for the night while his wife goes out for a night on the town. But then his daughter goes missing, the kidnapper instructs Andy to rob his own bank though the baby monitor or he will never see his daughter again.

LISTEN CAREFULLY is a tense little thriller. The pace is brisk and direct. This is a story about morality, guilt, and desperation and Andy exemplifies those traits quite well. While Andy might not be the most likable of protagonists; he is sort of walked over by his wife, same goes for his boss, and even the night janitor, never really standing up for himself to them and sort of just rolling with the punches. But when the kidnapper calls him on this behavior and even walks all over Andy himself, I felt for Andy’s plight and was rooting for him to somehow come away from this nightmare of a night with his family intact. So it goes to say something that writer/director/lead actor Ryan Barton-Grimley was able to bring out those emotions to me. No one wants to be the doormat, though it happens a lot to a whole lot of people, nevertheless, so there was a nice everyman quality to this character.

This is a very focused thriller with one big goal in mind for Andy—get the ransom and get his baby back. With the focus solely on Andy for the entire time, the film feels a little like it might have made for a better TWILIGHT ZONE episode, as there is no real deviation or cutaway to speak of here. We just see Andy try to find a way out of this. It works, but I think a shorter version would have serviced this type of story better. Nothing against Ryan Barton-Grimley as an actor, but his pushoverness and desperation, despite being relatable, makes for a frustrating watch, especially since a lot of Andy’s attempts to outsmart the kidnapper are so easily thwarted. It becomes obvious why this is towards the end, and while I saw the finale coming as things begin to get more sideways as the time ticked away, I still feel either I wanted to see less torture for Andy or a bigger payoff when he finally does snap.

But all of this talk about character really does show that LISTEN CAREFULLY had my investment, I guess. The creepy baby-masked pursuers Andy continually runs into are nice and creepy. This one turned out to be a tense thriller with somewhat of a predictable ending, but the ride there was a wild and emotionally taxing one.