The Babysitter (2017)

November 17, 2018 11:22 PM

When Cole stays up past his bedtime, he discovers that his hot babysitter is part of a Satanic cult that will stop at nothing to keep him quiet.
posted by DirtyOldTown (7 comments total)

We can talk about whether this is any good later, but first things first... can we just take a step back and reflect on the moral of this story, as it is presented? The moral being: sociopaths can teach us important things about self-actualization.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:25 PM on November 17, 2018

This is not good per se, but it is a lot of fun. Plus the sub-commentary on the babysitter using the idea of social media fame as a lever to recruit her friends as helpers is darkly amusing.
posted by Samizdata at 5:33 AM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I agree with Samizdata. Not sure it's "good" but I really enjoyed it. Netflix's record on original movies is very spotty but I thought this was one of the more successful ones. Plus Samara Weaving has great charisma and screen presence which is what carries a film like this.

More fun stuff like this one, less... whatever it is they are doing with most of their original movies. Dunno why Netflix seem to have better luck with series than one-offs but they do.
posted by Justinian at 6:25 PM on November 18, 2018

Yeah, not sure if it is "good" so much as very well made. But I really liked it. I will say, however, that the last 60 seconds of the movie, including the hero's final line, are absolutely perfect.
posted by seasparrow at 8:20 PM on November 18, 2018

McG is very talented, but within a fairly narrowly proscribed circle. He excels at glib, energetic, style-driven stuff that doesn't try too hard and focuses on fun more than depth. This being right in his wheelhouse, he made a pretty entertaining movie. It's about as substantial as cotton candy, but nearly as fun as cotton candy, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:29 PM on November 20, 2018

I noticed Netflix has a trailer up for 'The Babysitter 2: Killer Queen' dropping on 9/10/20, so I decided to finally give this movie a look-see. I agree with everyone on this being successfully entertaining, hopefully the sequel will match it.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:13 AM on August 30, 2020

I rewatched this yesterday on request from our kiddo (who is slowly becoming a horror comedy aficionado). And while the sex talk wasn't awesome to watch with my kid and the bullying was harsh, I realized I had not given this movie enough credit for inverting the slasher movie paradigm.

In a standard slasher movie, a single killer pursues a group of ostensibly good kids who are killed off one by one after displaying some form of moral failing (sex, drugs, etc.) until the Final Girl remains.

Literally, this is a slasher movie in which there is a single hero pursued by a group of villains, who are mostly each killed after displaying humanizing behavior, until our hero has to kill The Final Girl, who is herself the Big Bad.

That's maybe much more clever than I gave this credit for initially.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:31 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]