The film follows Lena (an astonishing, raw performance by newcomer Lio Tipton), a 30-something former artist who has perfected the art of vanishing. She lives in a pristine Brooklyn apartment with her doting husband, Nico (Jeremy Allen White, shedding his charm for a skin-crawling earnestness). She hosts perfect playdates. She bakes sourdough. She smiles at the right moments.

Some critics have called the third act “underwhelming.” The climax does not involve screaming matches or thrown vases. It involves a misplaced library book and a single, whispered sentence at a dinner party. If you need catharsis, this film will frustrate you.

White, as the "good husband," plays against type brilliantly. His kindness is not a mask, which is the film’s darkest joke. He isn't a villain. He is genuinely good. That makes Lena’s desire to scream at him all the more tragic. You can’t hate him, and so Lena learns to hate herself.

Lio Tipton, who previously charmed in comedies, gives a career-defining performance. Watch her eyes in the two-minute scene where she simply watches her daughter sleep. In that stillness, you see: love, terror, resentment, nostalgia for a life she never had, and a tiny flicker of pure, animal hatred. It’s breathtaking.

Heller’s thesis is brutal: The absence of conflict is itself a form of violence. Nico is too good. He remembers her coffee order. He initiates therapy. He folds the fitted sheet correctly. There is nothing to fight against, and so Lena turns her rage inward, manifesting in compulsive behaviors—counting grains of rice, rearranging the spice rack by color at 3 AM, and eventually, a series of quiet, devastating acts of sabotage.

It will haunt your commute. It will make you side-eye your own quiet kitchen. And you will never hear the phrase "babygirl" the same way again. The scariest film of the year has no ghosts, no jumpscares, and no villains—just a woman drowning in a glass of perfectly filtered water. Note on viewing: As of this writing, check your local public library’s Kanopy or Hoopla service—they sometimes have A24 films like this for free with a library card. Otherwise, it’s worth the $5.99 rental.

The “babygirl” of the title is not a term of endearment from Nico, but the pet name Lena’s own estranged, dying mother (a ghostly Edie Falco) calls her in voicemails Lena cannot bring herself to delete. The film is a slow unspooling of Lena’s carefully curated existence, triggered by a seemingly minor event: she finds an old VHS tape of her mother’s 1980s aerobics show.