What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

I tried going into this with an open mind, but the audio balancing is truly awful. I understand it's an older film, but my ears hurt so much from the miserable music and shrill screaming. I powered through a lot of it, but there's much more in this that I just don't like and plainly can't understand. There's a ceaseless stream of dumb character choices. This whole plot relies on the wheelchair-bound lady being stuck in her room, yet she calls for help with only a whisper and doesn't plan around Baby Jane Hudson coming and going. She probably makes like three fatal mistakes back to back. Being as vague as I can to avoid spoilers, there's another character who turns their back on Baby Jane after putting a weapon right in front of her. There are a couple more like that, but this explanation is getting a bit too long. It's a big pet peeve of mine when horror movies have dumb characters, but what can one do?

Also, I think Letterboxd has failed with its tags by calling this a horror movie. It's a thriller for sure, but there's not an ounce of horror to be had here. The idea of being trapped is terrifying, but it relies on characters being in unfortunate circumstances, and when they're so dumb that it's their own fault they're in those situations, I can't help but feel more confused than scared. That's not to mention the absurdly long runtime and how the ending isn't earned, but that's another story. This all felt like a waste of time to me.

That's not to say everything was horrible. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Victor Buono were truly wonderful in this. That's the whole reason why this isn't getting a lower score. I can't bring myself to hate this movie completely because the performances were sublime. The cinematography was also great for 1962, and I can appreciate this from a historical perspective.