It’s a shame that the urban legend of “Cry Baby Lane” is better than the actual movie. “Cry Baby Lane” was originally shown on Nickelodeon in 2000 and aired allegedly only once. It was then banned for over a decade, never airing again, not even during Halloween, or even its teen channels. Many movie lovers spent years circulating boot leg copies of the movie, until it finally re-emerged in 2016 and aired on Nickelodeon’s late night block “Splat.” There are a ton of theories as to why the movie was banned, but frankly were it not for the years of infamy, “Cry Baby Lane” would just be a boring Nickelodeon TV movie, best forgotten.
One of the only redeeming qualities of the movie is Frank Langella, who is given a small but interesting role as the gatekeeper of his town’s morbid secret Mr. Bennett, who makes money by robbing grieving families blind. That said, “Cry Baby Lane” watches like a long and monotonous latter day episode of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” even opening with Langella’s character setting up the movie with narration. Apparently the town has a disgusting legend of a farmer who kept his conjoined twin sons locked away and hidden in his home. Ashamed of them, he never allowed them to see other people. Eventually one of the twins developed a terrible sickness that spread to the other twin and killed them both.
Aware that one twin was evil and the other good, he sawed them in half, buried the good twin in a cemetery, and the bad twin in a shallow unmarked grave. Andrew and his brother Carl are fans of scary stories and go to Mr. Bennett to be scared, despite their mother’s anger at him. Deciding to impress some girls, Andrew’s obnoxious older brother Carl sets up a fake ghost sounds tape at the grave of one of the brothers, and accidentally unleashes his spirit. The problem is the evil brother’s spirit has been set free, and now he’s begun possessing everyone around the town making them do… odd things. Suffice it to say, none of it ever too extreme, and the villainous ghost seems hell bent on committing more annoying pranks than anything else.
One scene involves him tricking young Andrew in to stripping almost naked in a barn, only for him to be pelted by a random group of girls with rocks. And there’s the scene of Langella being beaten near death by a nine year old with a toy lightsaber. Despite being a TV movie, “Cry Baby Lane” feels like an hour long premise stretched in to an eighty minute movie, and a lot what occurs feels so much like filler. The tension and mystery are lackluster, while our protagonists are irredeemable idiots. It’s not hard to see why “Cry Baby Lane” was banned for years, as the heavily suggested violence, and sexuality could have hit the wrong chords with parents. I just wish the movie were more than just a sub-par TV movie.