By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When I first heard about The Babysitter, I was a little nervous; after all, it was a Netflix exclusive horror film (strike one) and directed by McG, the guy who brought us Terminator Salvation (strike two). After years of seeing it in my Netflix queue, I decided to give it a shot one night, and the film was an absolute horror revelation that did for the modern slasher what Scream did back in 1996. And it did so by asking the most provocative possible question: what if Home Alone had been a horror film?
The premise of 2017’s The Babysitter is nice and simple: a high school freshman has developed quite the rapport with his hot babysitter thanks to his parents often staying at a hotel for some mommy/daddy private time. He never had any reason to worry about his sitter, but he makes the mistake of checking out what she and her friends get up to after he goes to sleep. It turns out they are full-on cultists, and when he discovers their Satanic shenanigans, it takes all of his wits to avoid becoming their next sacrifice.
While he seems completely doomed at first glance, nobody knows his own house like our young protagonist. This allows him to go full Kevin McCallister on his would-be killers, and he weaponizes everything from bug spray to leftover fireworks. This effectively subverts the typical slasher formula, and it’s great fun watching the increasingly demented ways our final boy can take care of this murderous mob.
The film charms in large part because of Samara Weaving, who plays the titular babysitter. She is at once sexy, supportive, and psychotic, and she imbues what could have been a one-dimensional role with a surprising amount of delightfully deadly depth. On top of that, she has a great rapport with Judah Lewis, the young man who gives our male lead a funny, earnest, and genuinely nuanced performance.
The rest of the cast of The Babysitter really knocks it out of the park, including Ken Marino and Leslie Bibb as the cutely quirky parents who unknowingly hired a murderer to watch their son. Bella Thorne does a killer job as a cheerleader who brings some dizzy-ditzy Mean Girls energy into the circle of Satanists. The real standout cultist, though, is played by Robbie Amell, who amusingly bonds with our hero while making it clear that he’s just in the murder business for the gory love of the game.
As other reviewers have noted, The Babysitter doesn’t dramatically reinvent the slasher genre, as most of its core elements (the housebound slasher, the surprising killer, and the resourceful hero) can be found in countless other genre films. But the movie effectively synthesizes all of these elements into something that always feels fresh, new, and exciting. And even when director McG is flagrantly copying someone else’s homework, he is doing so in a style most horror directors can only scream–er, dream of.
The film was successful enough to warrant a sequel, which deepens some of these characters’ relationships and furthers the lore behind the creepy cult’s motivations. That sequel is worth checking out for many reasons (including a great performance from Jenna Ortega), but there’s nothing quite like the original. And if you’re ready to experience one of the slickest and most perfectly cast slashers of the modern age, be sure to check out The Babysitter on Netflix.
THE BABYSITTER REVIEW SCORE
