Kim Basinger in The 11th Hour (Brainstorm Media)

“We’ll just be a sad couple.” This is what Maria (Kim Basinger) is told by her husband, Peter (Sebastian Schipper), after a devastatingly violent miscarriage. After years of Maria trying to have a baby, Peter is rightfully frustrated by their situation, though his harshness seems completely uncalled for. It’s an early scene, and the rest of the film proves to be filled with strange moments just like it. In what may seem like a fairly normal, though clearly heartbreaking, scenario of the road to motherhood, The 11th Hour makes the almost everything seem so unrelatable.

Constantly haunted by the spirit of an unborn daughter (both seen and heard throughout), Maria suffers the miscarriage, which leads her doctor to conclude conception is impossible. It seems to be the final straw in a long 10-year struggle to have a child. Living in Denmark, the couple appears to have it all, otherwise. Both are successful in their careers and enjoy a wealthy lifestyle. Still, Maria is determined to have a child even after the miscarriage sends Peter over the edge; he’s unwilling to consider adoption (even though it seems the couple had done so in the past), and so the two part ways.

After Maria overhears that children are being sold into prostitution near Prague, she decides to take a road trip through Europe. If she cannot get a child through legal channels, she’s determined to save one illegally. She picks up a dwarf hitchhiker nicknamed Petit (Jordan Prentice) and plans to use him as a distraction in the brothels. He sees the scheme as insane, but she gets him on board by offering him $10,000, which he needs to fuel his heroin habit. He eventually helps Maria by kidnapping a teenager prostitute’s baby. Neither he nor Maria seems overly concerned with how the mother feels about this, and the two become unlikely allied criminals. Of course, there is fallout from such an act and the last half of the movie plays out like a thriller, complete with a cameo from veteran character actor Peter Stormare.

There are a lot of problematic plot issues. The casting of Basinger would lead one to believe the character would likely be beyond childbearing age. Other than her inability to carry to term, this is glaringly left unaddressed. Also left unexamined are Peter’s coldness and Maria’s inability to consider alternatives to kidnapping, especially bearing in mind her wealth.

Basinger’s portrayal of Maria also puts into question the character’s sanity. This performance seems to go beyond a woman in a desperate situation; Maria’s actions are so wild that it’s baffling her husband or doctors aren’t worried about her mental state. It also makes it impossible to be completely on her side, as the audience watches her make one irrational choice after another. Petit may be the only voice of reason in the entire film. Though he eventually aids Maria, his initial horror at her request represents the concerns of the viewer.

Writer and director Anders Morgenthaler succeeds in creating an extremely dark world. In a story of children and new life, there is little reason here to be optimistic. There are some striking visuals, especially of nature. That, plus the chilling child voice-over, adds an otherworldliness, which might have been intriguing had it been examined further. There are a lot of issues that could have been explored, including sex work, human trafficking, and the pressures of motherhood. None of that quite comes through, though. In this deceptively simple plot about a woman wanting to have a child, the film never lets up on the shocking moments.