Enoch vs. Kuato: Battle of the Babies from Nightmare Alley and Total Recall
When we think about the history of cinema, there are not many movie babies that come to mind. Sure, there’s movies like Baby’s Day Out and Baby Geniuses, but since those movies suck, no one cares. Plus, the babies from that movie are portrayed to be cute, which gets annoying after a while, especially when we compare it to the horrifically ugly babies we’re about to focus on.
These two babies are deformed little guys that leave a lasting impression on the viewer, and their similarities to one another are so striking that it’s impossible to deny the influence of one on the other. These two babies are Enoch from Nightmare Alley and Kuato from Total Recall.
WARNING: There are going to be a lot of spoilers here.
Enoch
Enoch appears about 30 minutes into Guillermo del Toro’s 2021 film Nightmare Alley. He is a little baby that lives in a jar. Living in a jar, Enoch is dead. But that does not mean he’s not influencing things. You see, Enoch has an extra eyeball on his forehead. It is possible that this extra eyeball has scrunched his face into an adorable little angry face, but it is also possible that Enoch just has an angry face in general, because all we know about him comes from Willem Dafoe, who tells Bradley Coop that Enoch killed his mother in childbirth and then “flopped around” for a couple days before dying.
This is Enoch. Enoch is from the movie Nightmare Alley (2021). He is a baby who lives in a jar and belongs to Dafoe. He has an extra eyeball on his forehead.
Ole floppin’ Enoch. Now there’s a scene I’d like to see! If you are reading this and Guillermo del Toro is your friend, please ask him a) to make a sequel called Nightmare Alley: The Rise of Enoch and b) to include a scene of Enoch flopping around for days, preferably with some slow-mo.
Coop meets Enoch when he goes to hang with Dafoe in his circus lair. Dafoe refers to his collection of jarred babies as his “little angels.” It’s evident he is particularly fond of Enoch because he gives the little baby his own personal display and refers to him as “a rare one.” It’s therefore safe to assume that Enoch is better than Dafoe’s other jarred babies. Dafoe says he named Enoch after the Bible, which means that God is involved.
Despite initial appearances, it is made known that Enoch is not a good guy. Instead, Enoch is a bad guy. He sort of follows Brad Coopie around through the movie, which is nailed home when Enoch winds up on Tim Blake Nelson’s desk when Tim Blake Nelson appears at the end of the movie. Since Enoch is dead and contained to a jar, this is an impressive feat.
Some reviewers have claimed that Enoch IS Bradley Cooper. However, that is stupid and wrong. Clearly Enoch is not Bradley, considering Enoch lives in pickle juice inside a sealed jar, whereas Brad does not. Also, Brad has two eyeballs, and Enoch has three.
Dafoe
What is more plausible is that Enoch is an undead sorcerer. From his jar, he is performing offscreen black magic throughout the movie. He is working through Toni Collette, who pulls Tarot Cards that signal bad things a-comin’ for Coop. He also works through David David Strathairn, who is a great actor that people should talk about more. I mean, the guy’s been great since A League of Their Own, which also starred Hanks. And remember him in LA Confidential as Pierce Patchett? What a great name. Go watch that movie again right now!
Anyways, Enoch is a dark sorcerer influencing events with Bible magic. Since he killed his mom and scowled while doing it, we know he’s not influencing things in a happy way. Also, the movie is called Nightmare Alley, and Enoch lives in a place where a man is kept in a cage, beaten in the face, and left out in the rain to teach him a lesson. Plus, the whole circus is run by the man who was once the Green Goblin, so what do you expect?
That’s Enoch, the delightful movie baby from Nightmare Alley. And now, let’s take a look at the film baby that I thought of the second I saw Enoch in a jar, who had to have influenced Guillermo del Toro, whether he was aware of it or not.
Kuato!
Kuato is a mutant baby in Total Recall. I’m of course talking about the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger version, and if you thought I was talking about the Colin Ferrell version, then you need to go away!
While Enoch lives in a jar, Kuato lives on a man’s stomach. That’s because it’s Mars, and anything is possible there. And not only does Kuato live on a man’s stomach — Kuato can read minds! All he has to do is say “Open your… MIND! Open your… MIND!” about six times in a row while touching you with his weird little hands, and voila! Mind read!
Kuato’s hands have only three fingers and a thumb. They are also not that little, come to think of it, but close to the size of his face.
This is Kuato. Kuato is from the movie Total Recall (1990). Unlike most babies, he is attached to a man’s torso.
One interesting thing about Kuato is he might not actually be a baby. There’s a chance he’s just as old as the man whose torso hosts him, and I’d put him at mid 40s at least. Kuato, after all, can speak, and he’s apparently very smart and the leader of a revolution and stuff. That’s impressive for a baby. Of course, when we look at Kuato, we cannot help but notice that he looks just like a baby. He has little baby hands, a cute little baby face, and the inability to walk on his own. In fact, Kuato can’t even crawl.
Similar to Enoch, Kuato is pretty gross looking. It’s really amazing he’s alive at all. He looks like he’s made of some clay-like substance that was dipped in acid and glued to a man’s torso. Kuato’s mouth is sort of tilted, as if his lower jaw got knocked about two centimeters to the left and just stayed there. Kuato also has some strange hair. It’s very thin and kind of red, and clearly his Dad never gives it a good comb!
Come to think of it, Enoch has some funny hair as well. He appears to have little strands of hair on both sides of his head, sort of like how old people go bald across the top of their heads while keeping the hair on the sides. Honestly, Enoch looks sort of like a 50-year-old man in baby form, while Kuato has maintained a large amount of that baby cuteness, despite the grotesquerie and horror of his appearance. Also, Enoch has a bunch of Frankenstein stitches across the top of his head, so maybe the doctors had to shave his head there in order to put the stitches in.
While Enoch is a bad guy, Kuato is not a bad guy. On the contrary, Kuato is a good guy. In fact, Kuato is the leader of the good guys. This is sort of like how Tibetan Buddhists are led by the Dalai Lama from the moment he gets reincarnated into new baby form, prompting Tibetan Buddhists to revere a baby for several years. Like the Dalai Lama, Kuato preaches about freedom and opening your mind. Unlike the Dalai Lama, Kuato is attached to a torso and does not have legs.
Baby Dalai Lama, who clearly has legs
It’s confusing that while Kuato is the leader of the good guys, he is also constantly scowling, just like Enoch. It makes sense Enoch is scowling, because Enoch is evil and has an extra eyeball on his forehead. But Kuato just wants to free people from the oppressive Agency. Why would he be scowling all the time? Is it because his brow got stuck mid-scowl the same time his lower jaw got stuck two centimeters to the left? Did his torso host man get angry at him at some point and give him a good sock to the cheek? Probably, cause that torso guy seems like an asshole in the five lines he has in the movie before getting killed.
Sadly, Kuato also gets killed. The bad guy named Richter shoots him right in the head, about three inches to the right of where Enoch’s eyeball would be. He’s still able to tell Arnold Schwarzenegger to “Start the reactor…” which is all that needs to happen for Arnie to save the day. But that’s not before Arnold deals with Richter by ripping off both of his arms and letting the rest of his body fall to his doom.
It’s impressive that Kuato, who is just a baby, can survive the death of his torso host and still speak, especially given how impressive it is he can speak in the first place. But this is Kuato we’re talking about, leader of the revolution, a force of good to counter Enoch’s evil.
So, Which Baby is Better?
After all these considerations, we have to ask ourselves: is Enoch or Kuato better?
There are several factors to weigh here. Firstly, as impressive it is that Kuato is able to start a revolution from a man’s torso, it’s arguably more impressive that Enoch is able to dictate the downfall of Bradley Cooper while being dead and living in a jar of pickle juice. Once Kuato died, he was pretty worthless. Enoch, however, suggests that even beyond Bradley Cooper, he will continue driving people to the dark side and destroying them. Like many revolutionaries, Kuato will become an idea, a symbol. Like many bad guys, Enoch will continue being a bad guy.
On the other hand, Enoch appears only to be able to influence one guy at a time — in the case of the movie, he chose Bradley Cooper, an obvious choice. Kuato is able to influence a whole lot of people, as well as mutants. There is no evidence Enoch can also influence mutants. Kuato mobilizes an entire revolution against the bad guys, who have a lot of power on Mars. Also, Kuato was likely born on Mars, which inherently gives him points over Enoch, who was just born on Earth.
Enoch killed his mother when he was born. This knocks him down a few pegs in my book. There’s just no reason to do that. He wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for his mother. Did he not want to exist? Doubtful, considering he could have gone away but chose to continue hanging around in a pickle jar, influencing things like a little brat. Kuato did not kill anyone. This is extra impressive because Kuato grew out of a man’s torso. The fact that he succeeded in that and did not kill the man he grew out of is really impressive. I mean, do you think Enoch would have spared his mother if he grew out of her torso? Not likely. Kuato shows his care just by keeping his host torso man alive, and in my evaluation, that gives him an edge over any baby that kills his mother the second he’s born.
Then again, Enoch did teach Bradley Cooper a lesson throughout the movie. That lesson was, you’re an asshole, and this is what you get for being an asshole. This was an important lesson for Bradley Cooper to learn. We as the audience come to pity Bradley Cooper, because ever since he killed his dad, he has just sort of sucked. He could have chosen not to suck, but he kept choosing to suck, thinking the forces of supernatural evil would not affect him, even after David Strathairn warned him. Enoch showed him otherwise. In this sense, Enoch could be seen as the deliverer of karmic justice. He doesn’t destroy people’s lives for sport. He only does it when those people really deserve it, like Coop.
While Enoch’s influence is metaphysical, Kuato’s is mostly ideological. It is true that he can read minds, which is pretty cool. But still, how many minds did he read before Arnold’s? No one had important information, so if he read their minds, it was probably just intrusive and unwarranted. Maybe he was even showing off, and no one likes a show off. Enoch does not need physical contact with someone to influence them. He just needs to see them with his dead forehead eyeball. Kuato’s powers are less powerful than Enoch’s, leading me to believe if there was a fight between the two of them, Enoch would win. I mean, how do you kill an enemy that’s already dead? Enoch survives death, while Kuato does not. So, there’s a few more points for little Eenie.
Conclusion
With all these points considered, who is better? Hm. That’s a tough one. Both of them scowl in similar ways. Both of them leave a lasting impression in the sense that once you see them, it’s impossible to un-see them. Boy, I know you probably want a winner here, reader, but I think this one ends in a tie for me. These are the two greatest movie babies of all time, greater even than the Star Baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And that’s saying a lot, since Star Baby is the size of a planet.
Which of these two film babies do you think is better, reader? Let us know in the comments, and we will comment back. If you instead rip on us in the comments, we will rip on you as well. Thanks for reading. May Enoch and Kuato visit you in your dreams and waking life, spreading their mystery and wonder to enrich your existence.