For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
October Baby is a faith-based, pro-life movie aimed squarely at a particular audience that will undoubtedly embrace its pro-life stance, but its surprisingly high production values show that the makers have intended their film to cross over into a mainstream audience. Acceptance may be an uphill struggle.
Young Hannah collapses while making her Shakespearean acting debut. Determined to find out why she is ill, she discovers that she was the subject of a difficult birth. Born prematurely due to a failed abortion attempt, Hannah also discovers that she was adopted. Devastated by this news, she embarks on a road trip with a group of teenage friends in order to find out who her real mother is.
The important thing to remember with faith-based movies is that the target audience is incredibly uncritical. As long as the message is there, the film for them will work. This is not the case for mainstream audiences who expect and demand something more, and if the film truly wants to be taken seriously outside of its faith-based origins than it needs to be something more than October Baby delivers.
The best and most professional looking scenes are those involving the adults. John Schneider and Jennifer Price do well as Hannah’s parents, and the scene involving Jasmine Guy as a nurse who was witness to the failed abortion attempt is particularly strong and effective and manages to temporarily elevate the professionalism of the film to a higher level, but all the scenes involving the teenagers – which takes up the first half of the film – are poorly written and poorly performed. The drama is forced and the odd moments of humor, equally so. There’s something about inexperienced teenage performers; they manage to make scenes that are supposed to be dramatic look more like soap opera, and unfortunately that’s what happens here.
The saving grace, beside Schneider and Jasmine Guy, is its heroine played by Rachel Hendrix. This is her first feature and she shows great promise. Her range of emotion and facility to be appealingly sympathetic are strongly evident. Clearly she has the ability; all she needs now is a good script and better direction to make her delivery appear cinematically natural.
The film makers, Andrew and Jon Erwin, have a background in directing Christian music videos, and together they pour an appallingly bland collection of pop/rock FM friendly power ballads over the soundtrack like treacle at every opportunity. After the second song it actually started to sound funny.
No one can deny that the message of forgiveness is a good one, or that every life should always be considered sacred, but no matter how hard October Baby tries to appear mainstream, most audiences outside of its faith-based target will view this as pro-life propaganda, and a poorly executed one at that.
