Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s perversive horror isn’t predictable. That is to say that it’s nearly impossible for a film to be predictable when, by the first act, the psychedelic narrative stomps its foot on the mercurial ground and erratically insists that you stay for dessert, at least. And stay, you will. When you have already invested your time long enough for you to unwittingly become a part of the barbarous LSD trip worsened somehow by a grossly vilified materialization of what would be considered a pretty generic sexual awakening, you may as well chuckle your way through the rest of the passage. The LSD-fueled trope fest nauseatingly orbits a bad-news babysitter who changes her eerie demeanor from a nervy goody-two-shoes to a seasoned seductress faster than you can blink and the murderous wunderkind whose screams stab deeper than his switchblades. Morgan’s film had a functional plethora of frights at its disposal and was morosely choked by its infallible desire to be unnerving in each frame. A greedy and clearly overestimated treatment of something that is neither grounded enough to be a run-of-the-mill thriller nor menacing enough to be a subversive representation of bad trips made it impossible for “Spoonful of Sugar” to be anything more than an experience you would regret giving a shot. And that’s coming from someone who quite enjoys gory massacres every now and then.

Spoilers Ahead

Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘Spoonful Of Sugar’?

21-year-old Millicent is en route to an interview for a babysitter opening. Her gaping, lingering look at the breastfeeding mother on the bus gives a disturbing prognosis of what may be going on behind that puzzling face of hers. A spacesuit-clad silent Johnny is immersed in his drawings while his mother, Rebecca, sternly interrogates the young girl, who shudders at the mention of a boyfriend. Millicent has taken a year off to focus on her thesis, which “luckily” correlates to what afflicts little Johnny. You name a thing, and you would be shocked to learn that Rebecca’s son is allergic to it. Rebecca’s solemn protectiveness for Johnny makes you wonder if he wouldn’t spontaneously combust when air touches him. Busy in her super successful career as an author who has recently written a book that navigates themes of relationships and sex, things that she thinks Millicent is too innocent for, Rebecca doesn’t have the privilege of staying home to be at the constant beck and call of her special-needs son. Millicent is expected to fill the time that wouldn’t be spent on tending to Johnny with light chores around the house. Rebecca doesn’t seem to mind Millicent’s gawking appreciation of her noticeably younger and conventionally attractive husband, Jacob. From what we hear of it later, just as the husband and wife are about to engage in a mid-afternoon escapade that is interrupted by a screaming Johnny, Jacob has allowed his carnal urges to get the better of him with other sitters that came before Millicent. What we can also deduce from their rather awkward erotic endeavor is that Jacob finds it hard to unrestrainedly sexualize Rebecca because she is a mother. Expert in advising her readers about ways to keep the fire alight in a relationship, Rebecca has more than a few tricks up her sleeve about the same. She would be doing just about fine in life if it weren’t for her diabolical son, who has, quite a few times, attacked her physically. Whether it was stylistically intended or not, Jacob comes off as more of a boyfriend riding the money pony than a supportive husband who would come up with something better to say than a tepid “hey buddy. Calm down” when he sees Johnny violently spazzing out.

What Is Millicent’s Life Like?

Milicent has had a life that would sully the good name of “troubled.” Hopping from foster home to foster home, Millicent found a few kind mothers, but the fathers were always the same. Through her shrink, Dr. Welsh, Millicent has gotten her hands on a vial of LSD. She rather likes the psychedelic hallucinations one drop of the magic potion brings forth. Chasing the half-eaten apple all across the other side of the bus, Millicent gives into the feverish mirage of a large man with a Baphomet-esque head pleasuring her. Her vision cuts back to a little Millicent being grazed the same way by someone who, in all probability, was one or more of her devilish foster fathers. Her adolescent aesthetic is curated to cater to her current father figure, who seems to have her tied up in a wildly inappropriate fetishized dynamic. She can fluently switch personas depending on what the circumstance warrants. Dr. Welsh isn’t the exemplary therapist that a girl as scattered in her mind as Millicent should be seeing. He would rather disregard Millicent’s concerns about her violent inclinations with a “women can’t be violent” dismissal and prod her further to drown herself in her tremendously volatile notions of motherhood than actually help her. Devoid of any sense of normalcy, Millicent finds her real world in the cataclysmic hallucinations of a severed finger scuttling on the floor and climbing right up her leg. Her entrance into the tricky territory of arousal finds its acquiescence in Jacob, whose picture Millicent steals and pleasures herself with.

How Does Millicent Form A Bond With Johnny?

An oddball recognizes another oddball. Johnny doesn’t speak. And what his father candidly calls out his mother for is her denial about Johnny’s exceedingly transparent mental health issues. From the get-go, Johnny seems to take to Millicent more than he was ever inclined to like his mother. The tug his disorderly tendencies feel when another harbinger of chaos is in his vicinity is what he wants to test out when he shows Millicent the gloomy secret he buries in his garden. Coming close over a shared love for drenching their hands in blood, Millicent is thrilled to guide the strange little boy through the right way to skin a rabbit. Johnny’s taciturn bearing comes alive in the liberating embrace of the babysitter, who’s just as capricious and violent as him. The boy who throws a screaming fit if he’s brought outside the bounds of his home feels safe to venture out with Millicent. Alone in the grotesque world the LSD she stole from her shrink creates just for her, Millicent would be more than happy to have someone in there keeping her company. She laces his medication with drops of LSD and pulls him into a shared psychosis. When Johnny speaks for the first time and calls out for his mommy, he drags Rebecca down the wretched path of getting her hopes high, only to come to know that by ‘mommy’, his son was addressing Millicent. Spun around in her lacerated mind that holds more darkness than the world can comprehend, Millicent has a hazardous understanding of motherhood. In Johnny’s dysfunctional disposition, Millicent has found the perfect vessel for her disastrous motherly affection to thrive.

What Is Millicent’s Ulterior Plan?

It’s only an added perk for Millicent that she is sexually drawn to Jacob. And getting through to him is only made easier by Rebecca’s frequent absence and Jacob’s lack of control over his erotic urges. From the looks of it, a traditional monogamous relationship isn’t what Jacob and Rebecca share. Yet, that in no way suggests a presumed equilibrium between the couple. The more the balance is swung in Jacob’s favor, the more the emotional bulk of the burden that was supposed to be shared between the couple falls right on Rebecca’s overwhelmed shoulders. When a steamy phone call with his wife is cut short by a bad line, Millicent is the first available option for him to let out his impetuous sexual craving. Making use of the undisturbed privacy in his car, Millicent and Jacob give in to the desires that were kept in check by the lack of an agreeable circumstance. Seducing Jacob is far from Millicent’s primary agenda. All she wants is for him to get rid of Rebecca so that she can be a mother to Johnny. She is the only one around whom Johnny has ever really felt safe enough to be himself. His own mother gets a rabid bite on her hand for touching him, whereas he is fine with Millicent giving him a haircut. Letting herself be navigated by Johnny’s psychotic maneuvers, Rebecca has allowed his delusions to go too far. Mutilating her stomach with a blade is the only means through which she can release her pain for not having her motherhood acknowledged by her own son. The crack through which she can make her way into the family seems to be getting wider for Millicent the closer Jacob gets to her. All Rebecca can expect from her life is finely exemplified in the traumatizing drawing that Johnny makes, delineating an intimate moment shared between Jacob and Millicent.

Did Millicent Kill Her Foster Fathers?

A barking dog seldom bites. But when it’s someone whose porous facade of innocence can hardly hold in her darkness, expecting her to be instinctively rabid at the spur of the moment is the only course of thought that makes sense. A life viciously mutilated by monsters who identified as paternal figures taught Millicent a trick or two of the trade. She has been stringing along her current father, who expects horrendous rewards for providing her with the bare necessities of survival. Furious at her for being late to come home on Christmas eve, the nasty man dangles in front of her face all that he has done for her, and that includes murdering his wife so that he could take advantage of her uninterrupted. Millicent quiets him with the promise of the reward that he has long been awaiting and strangulates him with his own belt. Like a little girl’s journal, which glimmers with the tokens of her best days, the memoir chronicling every act of revenge Millicent ever took faithfully flaunts locks of hair taken from each father who has paid dearly for putting their lustful hands-on Millicent. A fate unavoidable for anyone who thinks they can get away with exploiting a helpless girl doesn’t spare Dr. Welsh, who, time and again, has found ways to touch Millicent with insidious intent.

‘Spoonful Of Sugar’ Ending Explained – What Happened To The Babysitters?

It isn’t easy for Rebecca to see Johnny embrace another woman as his mother when he takes giving the cold shoulder to his real mother to a whole other, erratic level. Millicent isn’t necessarily being low-key with her obtrusive plans to take Rebecca’s place in the family. She has slipped a switchblade to Johnny and has cunningly advised him to do her dirty work. With Johnny killing Rebecca and Millicent seducing Jacob, the pathway for the babysitter to replace the mother seems to be a cakewalk. But it isn’t really turning out to be as easy a task as Millicent expected when she is barred from entering the house. But Millicent has no business keeping up her innocent ruse anymore. She attempts to bash her way in, and when that fails, Millicent violently scratches Rebecca’s face. Having faith in the psychotic kid, Millicent realizes that her efforts are of better use elsewhere. She walks into the carpentry shed where Jacob makes God knows what with all his free time and professes her love to him. Jacob asserts that he has never intended to give her the idea that they can be more than what they are. Millicent means to appeal to his non-existent fatherly emotions when she urges him to see that she would be a much better mother to Johnny than Rebecca ever was. Sketching away in his playroom, Johnny hallucinates wonders all over the wall as he holds the switchblade close. He hysterically puts the knife through Rebecca’s unsuspecting hand, and in the fury of the moment, she chokes her little, deranged kid. In his shed, Jacob has once again let go of his inhibitions and gets intimate with Millicent. Their romp, however, proves to be brief when a frantic Rebecca rushes in and stabs Millicent. Unable to overpower Rebecca, Millicent falls at Johnny’s feet and attempts to make her case. But instead of killing Rebecca, the unpredictable kid recreates the infamous ‘Psycho’ shower scene on his porch and makes sure that Millicent dies an agonizing death. What Jacob fashions with his carpentry skills are makeshift coffins for the babysitters whom their homicidal son sends to heaven (and some to hell, I’m sure). What lies buried beneath the apple orchard in their extravagant garden is more ominous than a few dead rabbits. As they contemplate broadening their acreage to accommodate the future nannies Johnny is likely to kill, Rebecca gets an untimely craving for an apple pie. What goes on within the family’s reclusive household holds the darkness of a shared psychotic disorder that is enabled, acted out, and endured by each member. When a kiss from his mother ends with her lip bleeding and endearing smiles on their faces, we finally see Johnny’s true, grisly love language. The transparent evil that Millicent’s heart was wrapped up in wasn’t as seasoned as the hellspawn that is Johnny, and definitely, no match for his insane parents, who plan to plant oranges over the next graveyard their murderous son would lay down.