USA. 2017.
Crew
Director – McG, Screenplay – Brian Duffield, Producers – McG, Zack Schiller & Mary Viola, Photography – Shane Hurlbut, Music – Douglas Pipes, Visual Effects – The Artery (Supervisors – Vico Sharabani & Asaf Yeger), Special Effects Supervisor – Jesse Noel, Production Design – Kristen Vallow. Production Company – Netflix/Boies-Schiller Films Wonderland Sound & Vision/Boies-Schiller Film Group.
Cast
Judah Lewis (Cole Johnson), Samara Weaving (Bee), Robbie Amell (Max), Bella Thorne (Allison), Hana Mae Lee (Sonya), Emily Alyn Lind (Melanie), Andrew Bachelor (John), Doug Haley (Samuel), Leslie Bibb (Mom), Ken Marino (Dad), Miles J. Harvey (Jeremy), Chris Wylde (Melanie’s Annoying Dad), Carl McDowell (School Nurse)
Plot
Twelve year-old Cole Johnson is bullied at school. However, he has the smokingly hot babysitter Bee who steps in as his protector. Bee is left to look after Cole while his parents go away for a few days. Cole’s school friend Melanie tells him how babysitters bring their boyfriends into the house after the kids go to sleep. Determined to see what is going on for himself, Cole sneaks out after going to bed. He is witness as Bee and several friends who form a satanic coven kill an innocent nerd they have lured to the house as sacrifice. Cole then realises that they want him as part of the ceremony and flees as they come after him.
With the passing away of Joel Schumacher in 2020, there is the question of who will inherit the crown of the worst director currently at work in mainstream Hollywood. Michael Bay is a clear contender, although his films are at least watchable in terms of their effects spectacle. Other contenders like Renny Harlin appear to have abandoned Hollywood in the last few years and Stephen Sommers hasn’t made anything since 2013. There are the flag-waving masturbatory fantasies of Peter Berg worth considering. However, the most likeliest contender is McG.
McG, or to give him the less pretentious birth name of Joseph McGinty Nichol, emerged as a music video director in the 1990s. He became a hot Hollywood name on the basis of his first film Charlie’s Angels (2000), which was a hit but also an empty-headed work that strip-mined a tv series brand name and reconceived it as an action movie built around a series of slick action moves. While the public seemed to like Charlie’s Angels, most of them switched off when it came to McG offering more of the same with the sequel Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003).
McG subsequently directed the sports film We Are Marshall (2006), Terminator Salvation (2009), the spy romcom This Means War (2012), the spy action/comedy 3 Days to Kill (2014) and the Young Adult alien invasion film Rim of the World (2017). Indeed, McG seems to have spent more time lending his name as producer to various tv series, including Fastlane (2002-3), The Mountain (2004-5), Human Target (2010-11), Nikita (2010-3), Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments (2016-9) and the huge hits of The O.C. (2003-7), Supernatural (2005-20) and Chuck (2007-12), along with occasional films such as the absurd videogame horror film Stay Alive (2006) and the Stephen King adaptation Mercy (2014). The film comes with a script by Brian Duffield who also wrote Insurgent (2015), Love and Monsters (2020), Underwater (2020) and directed/wrote the hilarious Spontaneous (2020) and the alien invasion film No One Will Save You (2023).
McG feels exactly like a fifteen year old boy whose sole filmmaking diet has been watching MTV and action movies who has suddenly been given the controls of a big studio film. McG doesn’t direct so much as make films that are postured poses borrowed from others. The Babysitter is a film that in its first half seems like it is desperately trying to want to convince us it is hip, filled with pumped-up energy and that McG’s jumpcut editing is some kind of cutting edge cool. All it adds up to feels like a bad attempt to copy a Michael Bay film.
The film is filled with inane scenes with characters snarling insults and retorts that no human being would ever say; of montage scenes of Judah Lewis and Samara Weaving dancing. Judah and Samara don’t simply sit down to watch a video together – they watch Billy Jack (1974) projected onto the side of the house and enact all of the moves and dialogue on the front lawn. They amuse themselves playing trivia games about naming their ultimate SF team, which comes illustrated with pop-up graphics on the screen. A game of Spin the Bottle takes the point-of-view of the bottle and pauses to name all the participants.
When Judah Lewis sees the coven sacrifice Doug Haley, the words “What the Fuck” pop up on the screen. There is the use of lazy song shortcuts to punctuate scenes – Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy (1982) plays as the girls kiss, or Queen’s We Are the Champions (1977) as Judah Lewis gets behind the wheel of the car. It is hard to think of a film that yells out at an audience how try-hard it is being.
At least the film gives us Samara Weaving in a leading role and she rises to the occasion. On the other hand, McG is like the same fifteen year old and sexualises fairly much everything she does – scenes of her stripping to a bikini in slow-motion, or else a long drawn-out scene with her kissing Bella Thorne.
In between this inane MTV posturing and constant visual affectation, it is hard to believe that The Babysitter is also meant to be a horror film. There’s a Human Sacrifice scene in mid-film but that is the most we get of any horror element. The rest of the film is like a version of Home Alone (1990) but where the burglars are replaced by comically inept teenage Satanists. About the point where Judah Lewis drives a muscle car through the living room of his house and his parents return where their only concern is for his wellbeing rather than outrage about has happened to their house, you realise that this is not a film that even makes a pretence to taking place in the real world.
The sequel was The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020), featuring the return of McG, Samara Weaving and Judah Lewis.
Trailer here