“Maybe the seance worked!” “Maybe I’m Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

Justin’s rating: This review does not exist. Officially. Tell your friends.

Justin’s review: There’s nothing quite like a piece of entertainment being denied to you that makes you want it more than anything you’ve ever wanted. That was the fallout of Cry Baby Lane, a horror movie that aired once on Nickelodeon around Halloween 2000. After its showing, it never appeared again, nor did it come out on physical media.

It just… disappeared.

As the years went by, rumors swirled that Cry Baby Lane generated too many complaints and controversy from parents upon its initial airing that led to Nickelodeon tossing it into the void. Kids would share testimonies of being freaked out for weeks after seeing it, and the movie was retold as having the most terrifying elements imaginable. Some people doubted that it even existed, claiming that it was just a hoax, a stance that was encouraged by Nickelodeon employees also denying that the film was real when asked. Seriously.

Gradually, a cult following grew around Cry Baby Lane, which eventually led the TV station — which claims that it just “forgot” about the film — to finally bring it back in 2011, over a decade after its initial release.* But by then, it had become a bona fide urban legend of a flick with a strong demand. To be honest, the forgetting/banning of the movie was a real blessing for Cry Baby Lane,  because nobody would’ve remembered or cared about it otherwise.

I have to say that the legend that sprung up around this flick was far too hardcore for what it actually is. When you sit down to watch this, you quickly realize that this isn’t a terrifying mindscrew; it’s a Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? with a slightly higher production budget and Frank Langella on retainer.

The movie focuses on the legend of conjoined twins, where one was good and one pure evil. The kids died, and the supa bad one was buried on the titular lane, where people can still hear the wails of the malevolent spirit. Ooo. Spooky.

Brothers Andrew (the scared one) and Carl (the swaggering jerk) hear this story via the local mortician (Langella) and decide to investigate the legend to see if it is true. One botched seance later, and the evil twin is above ground and causing havoc. He uses his powers (grave powers?) to turn dogs vicious and people into white-eyed zombies.

There are also a lot of worms. Cry Baby Lane banks a whole lot on the audience finding earthworms freaky-deaky. So the brothers have to deal with worms and figuring out the legend and coming up with a way to put the bad spirit back to sleep. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, just with more nightcrawlers.

At the end of the day (or the end of the movie), this is just a boilerplate ghost tale with kids TV acting and an extremely mildly creepy tone. It’d be useful for a Halloween experience for the tween set, but anyone looking for actual scares are bound to be disappointed.

*Nickelodeon did embrace the whole “banned film” reputation, however, going so far as to advertise this as such on its website.

Intermission!

• I wanted to quote this from an article from Slash Film: “Cry Baby Lane is the subject of its own Creepypasta, where an intern who worked at Nickelodeon at the time claimed that the version of the movie we all saw in 2000 is not the version that Nickelodeon has re-released nor is it the version that Redditors found and uploaded. In reality, the film truly was as depraved and terrifying as our collective memories would have us believe, and if the director had his way, it would have included graphic depictions of cannibalism and other not-so-child-friendly horrors subliminally interspersed between the frames. It’s a great horror story, but one that is once again, not true.”
• Melissa Joan Hart recorded a host intro for the film
• Oh that old “we swallow five spiders a year in our sleep” myth
• “Come back any time, it’s dead here!”
• A hobbit hole a year before Fellowship of the Ring released.
• Dead spiders and mice doesn’t sound like a healthy diet for growing children
• Should you really be freaked out by earthworms? It there are strobe lights on them, I guess you are.
• Digging a hole is a major ordeal, apparently
• “Cookie dough? That’s going to kill the baby.”
• “I’m not going out with your mom.” “Yeah but if you marry her, you’ll be my dad!” Dude, he’s ELEVEN.
• This dad is surprisingly cool with his two boys being missing at night
• $30 for coffee HOW DARE HE
• This mother is very very shrill, because that’s the only way she won’t listen
• A cheap plastic lightsaber is enough of a weapon to take down a fully grown adult, especially if wielded by a little kid pretending he’s in Lord of the Rings
• “That dwarf stole my class ring.” “He’s a hobbit!”
• This may be the only horror movie where a kiss between prepubescent kids is played up as a horror bit