A Good Baby is not quite a Southern Gothic, not quite a tale of the supernatural, and not quite a straightforward drama or suspense story. An intriguing, uncategorizable film that ultimately proves too tentative for its own good, writer/director/editor Katherine Dieckmann's feature debut is more notable for what it avoids than for what it achieves. Henry Thomas, the youngest brother in a country clan known for its scrapes with the law, happens upon an abandoned baby in the woods. Knowing that reporting his find will only cause him more trouble, he wanders through his isolated community looking for the mother, puzzled to find most of the women strangely reluctant to help, and most of the men unsympathetic on principle. A traveling salesman (David Straithairn) with odd ways takes a suspicious interest, however, and Thomas soon finds something in the woods that leads him to suspect foul forces at work. Dieckmann's potentially exploitative film deserves credit for never taking the easy way out, its slow pace and contemplative tone allowing the details of A Good Baby's corner of the world to reveal themselves from general stores that still serve as social centers to winding back roads that offer both privacy and danger. But after a while, it becomes clear that Dieckmann doesn't have much more to offer. Thomas, Cara Seymour, and Straithairn (in an uncharacteristically creepy turn) play their roles with conviction, but they never convert their spark into the flame that this promising but frustrating debut badly needs.