A Film Addict Reviews! The Babysitter

Horror movies aren’t usually my cup of tea. I don’t like the thrill of being scared but oddly enough I enjoy scaring people on Halloween. So when someone suggests that I watch a horror movie, I deny it. This is one of those cases where the film isn’t so much horror, it’s more comedic.

The Babysitter is a 2017 Horror-Comedy film released by Netflix. It puts you into tue shoes of a 12 year kid, Cole (Judah Lewis), who discovers that his babysitter, Bee (Samara Weaving), is part of a cult.

The story of this film kinda plays out like Home Alone mixed with the usual 80s horror tropes. There are five cult members and they are the usual people that get killed in most horror movies. You got the jock, the preppy girl, the one black guy who’s unsure of everything, the foreign person, and the leader of them who happens to be Bee. It doesn’t delve too much as to why they are doing cult activities other than a book says they get whatever they wish for when they sacrifice. I wished it would explain more as to what the book was or how they got the book. Granted, now that I know there is a sequel, I might need see that to see if it explains more. The cult portion also isn’t really explained either cause it looks like a bunch of friends that found an ancient book and are killing to appease it for some reason. I think the writers could have done better with fleshing out the whole story and the world they have created.

The main characters of this are Cole and Bee. Again, not much is really know about either of them as the film goes on. You just get a base understanding of who they are and what they are like. Cole is a social outcast whose afraid of needles and gets bullied. That’s all I know about him. Bee is a pretty babysitter that references movies and is cool to hang out with until you realize she’s a cultist. I didn’t feel the characters changed much throughout the film. Cole’s arc went from him being a social outcast to becoming a jerk who can stand up for himself only because he was about to get murdered that night. It just feels like a 180 flip when he drives a car into his house killing Bee.

The comedy portion of the film was a bit too raunchy at times for me but enjoyable. I like one scene where the Jock goes from trying to kill Cole to helping him solve his bully problem then goes right back to killing Cole. There were also a couple of other scenes that got me to chuckle but other than that it was alright in the comedy department.

Horror wise, it played on the gore and jumpscares. I liked how gore related it got. It made it feel more dark and gave Coke a reason to run away cause of how gruesome the killings were. The jump scares were really easy to predict. I pretty much called out all of them before they even hinted at it.

Let’s talk a little about the cinematography. There was at least one interesting shot that I saw that I’m still trying to figure out. Cole and the girl he talks to a lot, are talking and everyone around them goes in slow motion. Visually, I loved that shot. I’m glad they did it twice. I still don’t know what it signifies but it was a great shot. The colors of the house plays really well in the dark and gave it that horror house feel to it. It was great. The foreshadowing of the knife being used was alright. I know it was gonna he used cause of how much they hung on those shot of just the knife.

To summarize what I’ve said over this review is, the story is alright, the cinematography gets interesting at times and the main characters don’t really develop over time. I’m honestly torn wether or not I like the movie or not. If you are looking for a movie you could just zone out to, go ahead, this movie is great fun in those regards. If you are looking for a horror-comedy like Evil Dead where it fleshes things out more, then you got to look else where. Other than that, felt like a nice homage to 80s horror movies.