Sorry Baby (2025) Parents Guide

Sorry Baby is Rated R by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for sexual content and language.

The Story & What It Tries to Say

The plot is about Agnes (Victor herself plays her with raw vulnerability), a young literature professor who lives in a sleepy New England town. Her life is dull and monotonous: lectures in the morning, long walks, embarrassing social life. However, behind this calmness is a broken memory: a rape by her previous mentor, Preston Decker, which occurred many years ago but is still affecting her current life.

The movie consists of five chapters, which are not tightly knit with each other, and each of them takes place in a different year of Agnes life. It is not narrated in a chronological order and that is exactly the point. Similar to actual trauma, the chronology jumps, circles, and collapses in on itself unexpectedly. In another chapter, Agnes is moving through the direct aftermath of the attack, attempting to explain the unexplainable to a doctor, her voice suspended between disengagement and shock. In the other, she is picking up the pieces years later: taking care of a roommate cat, flirting with her nice neighbor Gavin, or just trying to make it through the motions of a regular day.

However, this movie is not concerned with smooth lines and clean endings. No courtroom, no dramatic confrontation, no cue of sweeping music to mark growth. Rather, Sorry, Baby is a much more radical book, the book of a woman who is learning, painfully and imperfectly, to continue living.

The emotional heart of the movie is in such little, barely noticeable things: a sandwich with a stranger; a car trip where no one knows how to speak; a sudden, ridiculous joke that breaks through a cloud of fear. Victor is arguing the nobility of these middle grounds. In the silent heroism of merely appearing.

Sorry, Baby is a film of survival without spectacle at its core. It is about what follows the worst thing, how an individual can curve, reshape, and learn to live under the burden of memory. And above all, it is about the fact that healing is not necessarily visible. It can simply be the decision to remain.

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Eva Victor gives a performance that borders on being too honest. No theatrics, no weeping in the rain, no great Oscar scene. Instead, she plays Agnes with a certain anti-performance: dry humor as a cover to hide the wounds, long pauses that speak louder than words. You trust her all the way. You know her. Or perhaps, more awkwardly, you have been her.

Naomi Ackie, as the former roommate and longtime friend of Agnes, Lydie, is so warm and subtle that you want the movie to give her even more time. They have a wonderful understated relationship, Lydie wants to help, but she does not always know how, and Agnes does not always want to be helped. Their conflict is painfully recognizable to anyone who has seen a loved one swallowed up by grief and unable to do anything to pull them out of it.

Lucas Hedges, playing Gavin, delivers one of his most subtle, yet successful performances in years. He is not a plot device, he is a presence, an open hand, a soft place to fall. His scenes with Victor are awkwardly tender, the intimacy that is real because it is slightly awkward.

Then there is Louis Cancelmi as Preston Decker. He has few scenes, but they are lingering like smoke. He is not a cartoon villain, and this somehow makes him more disturbing. He is relaxed, eloquent, calm. He does not consider himself as a person who has committed a wrong. And that, the movie indicates, is precisely the issue.

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John Carroll Lynch also shows up in one remarkable scene—just a middle-aged man and a sandwich—and manages to break your heart with a single line. That’s the kind of film this is. Nothing and everything happens, all in the same breath.

The direction of Victor is extremely confident in its first film. Her storytelling has a literary edge to it, which is appropriate, considering Agnes is a writer, but it never falls into pretentiousness. The chapters are titled, implying a personal journal and a broader thematic organization, but the movie never feels constrained by that organization. Rather, it is spontaneous, as memory.

Cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry shoots the wintry silence of New England in a hushed intimacy. The interiors are claustrophobic and battered. The outdoor scenes are very silent, almost ethereal. The color scheme of the film, cool faded blues and soft grays, reflects the emotional state of Agnes without being excessive. This is a gorgeous economy, an eye-candy minimalism that lets the performances breathe.

Rhythm of the film can be credited to the editors Randi Atkins and Alex O Flinn. It is in no hurry, and will often jump a year, or stop to dwell on a frame almost bare of figures. At some point, the editing is deliberately jerky, flashbacks creeping in, seemingly out of nowhere, as though we were witnessing the memory fail Agnes in real time.

Sound design is also important. No swelling score to trigger our feelings. Rather, the movie is dependent on silence, background sounds and the crackling voice memo or voicemail message. It is urgent, touchable, and very human.

Sorry Baby (2025) Parents Guide

Language: The film features frequent strong profanity, including explicit sexual references and harsh insults straight from the character’s honest mouth rather than a scriptwriter’s forced shock tactics. Expect realism, not subtlety.

Sexual Content: Central to the plot is a sexual assault by a trusted mentor, depicted off-screen but powerfully felt in its emotional aftermath.

You’ll see intimate scenes (some sensual, non-graphic), bathing moments, and frank conversations around sexuality—handled thoughtfully but with adult openness

Emotional fallout from trauma is portrayed in detail. Panic attacks, confusion, and distress recur throughout the film. It’s heavy material, especially for those who’ve experienced trauma.

Violence & Emotional Distress:  There’s no graphic physical violence or gore, but emotional violence is front and center. Scenes at a cold, unsympathetic doctor’s office or dismissive bureaucracy hit hard—and feel disturbingly real.

Substance Use: Minimal—there’s a brief glimpse of alcohol, but it’s not central nor glamorized

Concluding Remarks & Suggestion:

Sorry, Baby will not be to everyone. And when you want your stories to go in a straight line, your feelings to be large and on the surface, your release to be tied up with a ribbon–it is not your movie. However, should you have ever experienced something that transformed you in a manner you could not quite describe… should you have ever attempted to explain that transformation and found words utterly inadequate… then this movie will recognize you.

It’s tender. It’s infuriating. It is humorous where you least expect it. And most of all, it is real.

Here Victor has created something daring not so much because it screams, but because it dares to speak in a whisper. Sorry, Baby leaves you seated with it long after the credits have run, not with answers, but with presence. And sometimes, that is quite sufficient.