Babysitter's Club... and Knife, and Gun...

A while back, I wrote with modest praise for the horror film Ready or Not. One of the high points of the goofy slasher was the lead, Samara Weaving, who gave an intense and largely realistic performance amid the over-the-top shenanigans. But that movie was not her first brush with the genre. One of her earlier horror roles was in the Netflix movie The Babysitter.

Pre-teen kid Cole is obsessed with finding out what his babysitter Bee does after he goes to bed. But when he stays up late, he finds himself in the middle of a horrific, ritualistic bloodbath -- pursued by multiple killers and barely staying one step ahead of them.

It may tell you everything you need to know about the tone of this movie to point out that it's directed by McG, the high-energy director of the Charlie's Angles movies, Terminator: Salvation, and more. Writer Brian Duffield hasn't had as long a career, but his titles also paint a clear picture with movies like Underwater and Jane's Got a Gun (and the as-yet-unproduced-but-Blacklist-famous Your Bridesmaid Is a Bitch).

Almost from minute one, The Babysitter pegs the needle hard, slathering the screen in dopey gore. Just in case you were mistakenly taking any of it seriously, freeze frames and cartoonish on-screen captions make sure to drive the point home: this movie is all killer, no filler. If you love bloodbath horror movies, you're probably going to like this.

But I do wish the movie had tried just a little bit harder with plot. The characters don't have a very clear motivation for anything that happens, and few have even a basic, archetypal personality. There are jokes, and they are funny, but I found even the swift 1 hour and 25 minutes too long a stretch to keep my brain completely switched off the entire time.

The movie was in many ways cut from the same cloth as Better Watch Out, though I found it not as engaging. That movie zagged where this movie zigged, the performances there were a bit stronger, and the modicum of character psychology on display made it a little more fun for me. But once again, Samara Weaving is a good thing in a movie that wouldn't be nearly as good without her. It's a very different role than she had in Ready or Not, even if the movie overall had a similar tone, and she's equally good at both. There's also stupid fun in a running gag surrounding the character played by Robbie Amell, star of the TV series Upload, leaning into the nonsense as hard as possible.

This is not a great movie that's going to turn anyone into a fan of bloody slashers. And yet even though I'd say it's only a C+ movie, I can see why it spawned a recent sequel. Basically, sometimes I am in the mood for a movie like this (though I generally hope they're a bit better than this one). If you like comedy-horror and haven't seen The Babysitter, you might want to check it out.