Better Watch Out (2016)

December 17, 2019 4:12 AM

While a suburban couples goes out to celebrate Christmas Eve, their babysitter must defend a twelve-year-old son. from strangers breaking into the house, only to discover that this is far from a normal home invasion.

On Christmas Eve, 17-year-old Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) is busy babysitting 12-year-old Luke Lerner (Levi Miller). What seems like a low key evening of pizza and movies with her charge quickly spirals out of control when a home invasion sets things into motion.

posted by miss-lapin (10 comments total)

I think one of the most impressive things is the performance of Levi Miller who gets his voice to crack PERFECTLY on some lines really adding to the creepiness of his character.
posted by miss-lapin at 4:13 AM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I watched this last year around this time and found it delightfully horrifying. Good performances from the young cast, best use of a Home Alone reference I’ve ever seen, and I thought the ending really stuck the landing.
posted by ejs at 6:38 PM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

The ending was great. I also liked the "Risky Business" feel when the kid is cleaning, but in a dancing kind of way.

I went in not expecting much and was very pleasantly pleased with it. A nice twist on the "danger is coming from INSIDE the house."
posted by miss-lapin at 10:21 PM on December 17, 2019

Thanks for this XMess horror series of posts, miss-lapin. This one sounds great.
posted by mediareport at 2:16 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

You're welcome. I have a soft spot for christmas horror so I thought I would share it. :)
posted by miss-lapin at 2:47 AM on December 19, 2019

This is currently free on both Tubi and Crackle.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:40 PM on December 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed this when I saw it last year, shortly after The Babysitter, interestingly/inversely enough. Luke's scheme was involved but not insanely so and a little hand-wavey about how he'd actually get away with it.
posted by phearlez at 1:03 PM on December 31, 2019

I was a little wary when the film started out with a few rounds of people engaging in low grade homophobia. There is a subset of genre filmmakers who pine for the age where towheaded boys called each other "f****t" all the time. But after the twist at the end of the first act, it all made sense: that stuff was in there as a way of showing us that these were shitty, entitled people.

Anyway, in the end, I really liked it. It's more or less Home Alone by way of Funny Games, which, wow... Good on them for even thinking of that combo.

I notice the filmmaker's previous feature Undocumented also looks interesting and was produced by MeFi's Own Keith Calder. I'ma have to check that out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:17 PM on December 31, 2019

I watched this the other night for some seasonal horror fun, and did not enjoy the experience! The main character is very well-acted, but I feel like he's the only actual character in this movie and everyone else is just set dressing for his story (and I didn't enjoy spending time with him, so this focus made the movie unbearable).
posted by quatsch at 5:57 AM on December 20, 2022

Just watched this tonight. I can't tell you how relieved I was that Ashley survived and that that little shit Luke wasn't going to get away with everything.
posted by orange swan at 8:49 PM on October 14, 2023