Review of The Babysitter (2017) by Patricia W — 05 Nov 2017

The Babysitter is about a young boy, Cole, who is fearful and bullied at school and who stays up late one night to spy on his babysitter only to discover that she is part of satanic cult. First of all this film is quite visually pleasing, not in terms of the talent (although they are deliberately young and beautiful), but the lighting, cinematography and colour scheme of the film is very easy on the eyes and reminiscent of some classic horror.

The acting as a whole isn't great, with Judah Lewis being the weakest as Cole, but Samara Weaving is pretty solid as Bee, the babysitter, ranging from sweet, to sexy, to psychotic and is by far the strongest actor in the film.

However, this is where the positives for this film end. The Babysitter is supposed to be a horror comedy but it is neither horrific nor funny no matter how hard it tries. This film is clearly trying to be cheesy and over the top with it's comic book style camera work in parts, over the top acting and people's names and thoughts popping up on the screen but it doesn't stick with this tone consistently throughout the film and doesn't push itself far enough to memorable.

There are some very ham fisted references to classic horror, like the noises from Halloween and ridiculous deaths somewhat in the style of Final Destination but they lack originality, intelligence and good delivery so all the jokes and attempts at humour fall flat.

There are also sequences of close ups of the babysitter and a game of spin the bottle that go on for far too long. The film does an adequate job of tying in Cole's fears e.g. needles, spiders, driving etc.

into the scares but telegraphs them so blatantly with flashbacks and poor dialogue choices that they lose any subtlety or impact. Overall, this film feels like it was written by a teenage boy with a penchant for blood and blonde women and your time would be better served watching one of the many other horror comedies that are better than this one.