Sorry, Baby (2025) – Review

Quick Thoughts:

• Director, writer, and star Eva Victor has crafted a fantastic film that expertly blends humor, trauma, warmth, suspense, isolation, and compassion
• I hope it’s remembered come awards time
• Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, and John Carroll Lynch are wonderful
• Betty-Anne from Letterkenny is in it! Kelly McCormack is great. 
• Lamb of God lol

There’s a moment in Sorry, Baby when the central character Agnes, (Eva Victor) is having a panic attack and can’t catch her breath. She pulls her car into a restaurant parking lot, and the owner (John Carroll Lynch) comes out to tell Agnes that she can’t loiter in his lot. When he sees she’s having trouble breathing, he helps calm her breathing and then makes her a sandwich. What’s great about the scene is that the guy is gruff as hell (and hates his trash collector neighbors), but he listens and shows genuine empathy towards a person who needs it (even though he doesn’t like her name). It’s a great moment that blends sadness with humor and is just one of the fantastic character interactions in the Eva Victor- directed movie. 

Sorry, Baby focuses on what happens when a “bad thing” happens to a promising grad student named Agnes. The tragicomedy unfolds over several years that take place in five nonlinear chapters with different titles like “The Year of the Questions” and “The Year of the Bad Thing,”. What’s interesting is that while the movie is occasionally harrowing, Agnes’s journey is loaded with humor and will make you want to grill some hot dogs (or open a sandwich shop). The supporting work from Naomi Ackie, John Carroll Lynch, Kelly McCormack, and Lucas Hedges (who, between Lady Bird, Mid90s, Boy Erased, Waves, Honey Boy, and Sorry, Baby, is an A24 allstar), is pitch-perfect and proves that Victor is a director to watch. 

While Sorry, Baby is centered around Agnes and her life before-and-after the “bad thing,” the heart of the film is the friendship between Agnes and her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie – on a great run with Blink Twice and Mickey 17). The other 2025 A24 film about friendship (conveniently titled Friendship) goes to some soap-eating places, but this friendship is healthy and filled with love. Ackie and Eva Victor have excellent chemistry, and the friendship between their characters feels lived in and organic.It makes sense that first-time director Victor scheduled the first week of shooting to establish the pair’s friendship, because their chemistry made Victor’s life easier, and they are very funny together. 

The nice thing about the humor in Sorry, Baby is that it feels organic, because it comes from a person who uses humor when dealing with good or bad situations. At times, it’s used as a deflection technique (there’s a great joke about being “tall”) during stressful situations with doctors, college employees, lawyers and coworkers. At other times, her jokes (“Is it my baby?”) come during moments of happiness and surprise. The jokes balance out the serious themes because they are an obvious coping technique for Agnes.

Much of the movie takes place inside an isolated cabin that becomes its own character throughout the five chapters. One thing I noticed is that Agnes’ isolated home feels both safe and nightmarish. Whenever Lydie is around, the place feels like a cozy cabin surrounded by cozy woods. However, when Agnes is alone, every creak, crack, and crunch makes you think the movie has become a horror film. Victor deliberately made the place seem both “cozy and terrifying,” and I don’t think I’ve been more stressed out this year while looking at a door. Cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry (check out the Mitski music videos she shot) does a fine job of shooting the front door from other rooms, which gives it an alienated and dangerous feeling. 

To write the film, Victor traveled to Maine and sequestered themself in a cabin for a two-month writing session. The isolation paid off as the screenplay juggles a plethora of emotions while never feeling overly written. Victor can make an elevator ride wildly stressful, so it’s not surprising that the nonlinear screenplay successfully walks a tightrope and never lets the comedy or trauma make the movie plummet to the ground. It’s fun knowing that Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) talked Victor into directing the film, and that Eva shadowed Jane Schoenbrun while they were making I Saw the TV Glow. All the hard work paid off, as after the award-winning Sundance screening, A24 bought the film for $8 million and put their weight behind it. 

Final Thoughts – Sorry, Baby is an inspiring piece of cinema created by a person who put a lot of work into making something original and unique. Watch it!