← Back to Reviews
in
A comical premise with a lot of potential fails to avoid the tropes it wants to parody. Usually when you are dealing with horror comedies it comes from a place of love for the genre, I get the weird sense that McG might have never seen a horror film before because this film feels disassociated from the genre and the lack of consistency hurts the overall enjoyment of an otherwise decent film.
Cole is a loner who is easily terrified of small everyday things. His parents are going away for the weekend and he has to have a babysitter. He's the only kid his age with one still, but she's hot so he doesn't mind. His babysitter and him have a great connection and he's madly in love with her. His friend tells him that when babysitters put kids to bed, that's when their boyfriends come over and have sex. Cole doesn't believe this but stays up late to see what really happens after kids go to sleep. He discovers that his babysitter is part of a cult and they just sacrificed a teenager in his living room. Now they need the blood of the innocent to complete the ritual and Cole is the perfect candidate.
Newcomer Judah Lewis plays Cole, he looks so much like Hailee Steinfeld in this film that it was distracting to me. He does an admirable job of playing a kid scared to death that by the end must muster the strength to fight these crazed young adults. One might expect the film to become a quasi home alone riff, but it never really goes in that direction. Instead one by one has the crazed killers come after Cole. Maybe everyone go after him at the same time? Instead we get scene by scene of just one person attacking. These sequences are uninspired and lack the comedic punch this film needs.
The Babysitter has a few laughs, mostly from Andrew Bachelor who continuously gets blood in and around his mouth and Robbie Amell, the chiseled quarterback who doesn't care about sacrificing people for rituals, he just wants to kill. Those two are highlights and once they're gone, the film suffers from their absence. Our babysitter in question is played by Samara Weaving, who delivers enough sultry looks mixed with down to earth coolness that she could fool anyone. I never had a babysitter like this...do these people even exist in real life?
There are numerous moments where I rolled my eyes, even at a film that satirizes the genre. The door is open to leave the house, but the kid runs upstairs. Cops show up, one is killed and the other just stands there pointing his gun and not using it to defend himself. The film becomes part of the thing it tries to make fun of. The script is decent enough and I think if there was a more competent person than McG behind the camera, this could have been a really fun time. It feels like his main concern was trying to make sure there was enough blood and not much else and for some weird reason he has a POV scene in the film, I'm still confused as to why. It's as if McG got the footnotes to classic horror films and tried to incorporate them here. Hmm, Michael Myers opens with a POV scene and he terrorizes babysitters, lets put one in. The poster and credits for the film are pure 80's, but nothing about the film itself follows this theme. It's odd.
This is a film that should be right up my alley, it has a lot of ingredients that I can appreciate in a film, things I can easily look past and enjoy the final product. But in the end, The Babysitter is just a mixed result of should have and could have.
The Babysitter
(McG)
Horror Comedy
(McG)
Horror Comedy
A comical premise with a lot of potential fails to avoid the tropes it wants to parody. Usually when you are dealing with horror comedies it comes from a place of love for the genre, I get the weird sense that McG might have never seen a horror film before because this film feels disassociated from the genre and the lack of consistency hurts the overall enjoyment of an otherwise decent film.
Cole is a loner who is easily terrified of small everyday things. His parents are going away for the weekend and he has to have a babysitter. He's the only kid his age with one still, but she's hot so he doesn't mind. His babysitter and him have a great connection and he's madly in love with her. His friend tells him that when babysitters put kids to bed, that's when their boyfriends come over and have sex. Cole doesn't believe this but stays up late to see what really happens after kids go to sleep. He discovers that his babysitter is part of a cult and they just sacrificed a teenager in his living room. Now they need the blood of the innocent to complete the ritual and Cole is the perfect candidate.
Newcomer Judah Lewis plays Cole, he looks so much like Hailee Steinfeld in this film that it was distracting to me. He does an admirable job of playing a kid scared to death that by the end must muster the strength to fight these crazed young adults. One might expect the film to become a quasi home alone riff, but it never really goes in that direction. Instead one by one has the crazed killers come after Cole. Maybe everyone go after him at the same time? Instead we get scene by scene of just one person attacking. These sequences are uninspired and lack the comedic punch this film needs.
The Babysitter has a few laughs, mostly from Andrew Bachelor who continuously gets blood in and around his mouth and Robbie Amell, the chiseled quarterback who doesn't care about sacrificing people for rituals, he just wants to kill. Those two are highlights and once they're gone, the film suffers from their absence. Our babysitter in question is played by Samara Weaving, who delivers enough sultry looks mixed with down to earth coolness that she could fool anyone. I never had a babysitter like this...do these people even exist in real life?
There are numerous moments where I rolled my eyes, even at a film that satirizes the genre. The door is open to leave the house, but the kid runs upstairs. Cops show up, one is killed and the other just stands there pointing his gun and not using it to defend himself. The film becomes part of the thing it tries to make fun of. The script is decent enough and I think if there was a more competent person than McG behind the camera, this could have been a really fun time. It feels like his main concern was trying to make sure there was enough blood and not much else and for some weird reason he has a POV scene in the film, I'm still confused as to why. It's as if McG got the footnotes to classic horror films and tried to incorporate them here. Hmm, Michael Myers opens with a POV scene and he terrorizes babysitters, lets put one in. The poster and credits for the film are pure 80's, but nothing about the film itself follows this theme. It's odd.
This is a film that should be right up my alley, it has a lot of ingredients that I can appreciate in a film, things I can easily look past and enjoy the final product. But in the end, The Babysitter is just a mixed result of should have and could have.