My Review

I’ve already watched one Bella Thorne-starring horror movie that was released this weekend, and that didn’t go so well. I approached this film with some trepidation, but luckily, it was unfounded, because The Babysitter is a very solid, genre-blending film. It’s part Satanic cult movie, part home invasion thriller, and part action movie, all dashed with a healthy dose of black comedy, and while the tone is completely all over the place, that’s part of the fun.

Horror has a long fascination with babysitters, as I detailed in my review of Better Watch Out, another new horror movie from this month that I reviewed here. From Halloween to When a Stranger Calls and beyond, babysitters are a recurring plot device in an extremely high number of horror films, because they have the potential to combine two themes that resonate with American audiences — sex and property ownership. Babysitters in film are often young, beautiful girls, and in leaving them alone with your children, you’re also leaving them alone with your house; when something goes wrong, they protect your child and your property. Or, I suppose, if they’re evil Satanists, both your child and your house are in danger.

The Babysitter would make for an interesting double-feature with Better Watch Out. Both movies are about a beautiful blonde babysitter caring for a precocious 12-year-old when some unexpected guests arrive in the house. Both movies take place during the holidays, although for some reason The Babysitter never says which holiday is happening. Both movies are a blend of genres, and both movies explicitly reference Home Alone. But in some ways, The Babysitter is everything that Better Watch Out is satirizing.

Better Watch Out understands that the blatant objectification of babysitters can be dangerous, having a negative effect on both the girls themselves and the young boys they’re meant to protect. The Babysitter aims for no such nuance. In this one, the boy is in love with the babysitter not because he’s the product of an unhealthy culture that forces unhappy men to prove their masculinity by abusing women; he loves her because she’s hot and she talks to him and she can hold her own in a conversation about spaceships and aliens. In Better Watch Out, Patrick Warburton’s character is meant to be gross for ogling the babysitter. In The Babysitter, we get several point-of-view shots from the 12-year-old staring at her breasts.