The Babysitter – Film Review

A twelve-year-old boy named Cole (Judah Lewis) finds out his beloved babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) belongs to a murderous satanic cult of teenagers. Cole must put his crush for his babysitter aside and escape their grasp before they sacrifice him for personal gain.

Few movies truly embrace all aspects of their camp as The Babysitter does, and that shouldn’t really come as a shock considering how it’s directed by McG. Haven’t heard of the name? Well, surely you’ve heard of his films which include Charlie’s Angels, Terminator Salvation, and 3 Days to Kill. Although not all of his movies are campy, a lot of them are. The problem, though, is that most of them don’t embrace them. They try so hard to be legitimately excellent dramatic films and they fail because they’re just way too silly to take seriously.

The Babysitter doesn’t have that problem because from the moment it begins to the moment it ends, it knows exactly what type of movie it is and it never strives to be anything more than eighty-five minutes of ridiculous, over-the-top horror nonsense and that’s why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Because the running time is so short, McG had a tough task in having to make such a short film feel like it wasn’t too rushed, and thankfully, it doesn’t.

Strangely enough, this movie kind of reminded me of if Home Alone was given a modern update and an R rating. Does that sound like it would be a lot of fun to you? If so, you’re probably going to get some enjoyment out of this wild film. There are some scenes that do get a little bit too over-the-top and you just can’t take it as a joke anymore. While the majority of the film is enjoyably ridiculous, a few scenes do stand out as just plain dumb, no if’s, and’s, or but’s.

By far my favorite aspect at play here is Samara Weaving as Bee. Weaving is one of the most underrated actresses ever in my opinion, and watching her here reminded me that she can truly never deliver a bad performance. She is perfectly over-the-top here while also having a strange and mysterious edge to her for the entire film. Her character is so unpredictable and a lot of the charm is due to Weaving’s committed performance.

And Judah Lewis also does a really good job in the role of Cole, the young boy who has to fend for himself when all hell breaks loose. He’s not the most talented child actor in the world but he definitely gets the job done even if it’s clear that he still has some kinks that need to be ironed out with his acting talent.

The Babysitter doesn’t do anything game-changing for the horror genre and it isn’t going to leave you wanting more, but it’s a heaping of over-the-top campy fun and I think that’s something we all need right now.