The Babysitter (2017)
Directed by McG
Horror comedy usually isn’t one of my favorite genres but lately people have been hitting it out of the park with movies like Tucker and Dale vs Evil and The Final Girls. I kind of stumbled upon The Babysitter on Netflix, the trailer played after I endured Cult of Chucky. It caught my attention so I added it to my watch list. I was looking for something to watch the other night and I noticed it clocked in at 1hr 25min and that caught my attention, I didn’t have much time to watch a movie before bed and this fit perfectly.
The Babysitter’s plot focuses around a preteen boy named Cole and his super hot, super cool babysitter Bee. Cole’s parents go out of town and Bee spends the weekend with him, doing the things they normal do such as dance and watch movies. Bee offers Cole a shot, he pretends to take it and throws it in the house plant. She puts Cole to bed and he starts spying on her and her friends. Cole watches them play spin the bottle but things take a turn for the worse, and Cole begins to see Bee for whom she really is. Mentioning anything more than that ruins the craziness that follows, so I’ll stop there.
The acting is great, you feel the closeness of Bee and Cole as the movie progresses. Bee’s friends are all pretty stereotypical. You get the wise cracking black dude, the shirtless asshole jock, the cheerleader that is obsessed with her looks, and the strange Asian girl. The stereotypical roles are played quite well and parodied nicely. There is a scene where the is standing there shirtless and Cole wakes up and questions “why is he shirtless.” That made me laugh pretty hard, because I was thinking the same thing. Judah Lewis plays Cole and he has some pretty witty moments. The only thing I found off is that he’s supposed to be the awkward kid that everyone picks on but I thought he was pretty cool, so that either says something about me or that the character wasn’t developed enough. I guess I’m kind of dorky/nerdy as well so maybe it’s the former. Samara Weaving plays Bee and she’s pretty solid as well, she’s hot, smart, and persuading to say the least. I have to admit when I saw the trailer for a minute I thought she was played by Kate Upton, then I noticed she didn’t have an amazing rack then had to look up on IMDB to see who it was haha. The dialogue is also pretty solid, you get a good back and forth with Bee and Cole. The other characters also converse pretty well and you get the sense that they are friends, which is a good change from some of the awkward and clunky fake dialogue in a lot of horror movies.
Another thing I have to mention is the kind of 4th wall breaking moments of the movie. There is a scene where Cole is searching his room for a weapon to defend himself and he pulls out a pocket knife and “POCKET KNIFE” pops up on the screen in big font. There are plenty of instances where this happens, a lot of those moments made me laugh out loud. The biggest example of this is when shit starts going down and you see Cole mouth the words “What the fuck!?” and “WHAT THE FUCK” spells out under him. It gives the movie a bit of a comic book feel and it is both cool and entertaining.
The special effects are pretty damn good, you get a bit of CGI stuff thrown in, but also some solid practical effects. The blood is plentiful and intense, sometimes for comic relief. The action scenes demand your attention and hold it for the rest of the movie. There are some pretty intense parts of the movie that keep you waiting. The effects help increase the movies effect, especially in death scenes. The death scenes are amazingly gruesome and it takes you back in time to the 80s where masters like Savini were making brutal and intense death scenes. Any gore hound will appreciate the blood, exploding heads, broken necks and other goodness.
I had a good time watching this movie, its funny when it needs to be funny and its intense when it needs to be intense. I kind of saw this as a slasher movie meets Home Alone in ways. The added graphic/word additions in scenes were done very well and reminded me a bit of Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Like I mentioned before the effects were great, I loved the kills and the brutality. The movie gets kind of emotional in parts and you feel the emotion through the acting, I always welcome that with open arms it is great/refreshing to watch a horror movie that reaches that level. The Babysitter is a fun movie, if you have Netflix, you should watch it. I give this movie an A. There isn’t much to complain about, its solid entertainment.
