Mucking with Movies: ‘The Babysitter’

Let’s say you’re sitting around your house with your homies late at night, maybe after a long day of studying and playing checkers, and you’re discussing what you should throw on for your precious Netflix and chill. You want to seem cool; you want a choice that everybody will get a hoot out of?

Throw on “The Babysitter.” You want bloody gore? “The Babysitter.” You want eye candy? “The Babysitter.” You want some fresh visual ideas? “The Babysitter.” Meta-casting? Campiness? Earnest performances? “Babysitter,” “Babysitter,” “Babysitter.” I promise you it’ll make everybody happy. 

Directed by McG, you will be reminded how and why he has quietly pumped out one of the most successful artistic careers of the 21st century. Go look at all the projects he’s produced or directed. His legacy is intact from 15 years of “Supernatural” television to iconic football film “We Are Marshall” and so much more.

What has kept him working is an innate ability to understand how to make the boring extraordinary. Capable of conveying his unique style to avoid any banality, in “The Babysitter,” he shoots with a shallow depth of field that creates deep shapes in the interiors. Shooting each room with a different color that mucks with the viewer’s perception while still being alluring brings us in further, in the forefront, we have the living room with a regularly-lit chandelier backdropped with an ambient green dining room and a haunting red kitchen beyond that. To be succinct, it just makes ish interesting. It is an idea that takes a simple premise and forces it one step further. That’s the simplest and best explanation of strong directing I could make. 

Ken Marino, Andrew Bachelor, Leslie Bibb, Robbie Emmell, and a young Bella Thorn! Almost every actor in this film understood their roles and what McG was looking for. Amell especially deserves a better career for this role alone. He’ll make your couch laugh so loudly, so often, you’ll wonder why he didn’t become the go-to casting choice for any director looking to cast a hunky dunce. Action, horror, comedy, somewhere he deserved a starring role. He’s been around for sure but never got a big bone thrown his way that he could chew on. 

The writing packs about a joke per minute, and the visual gags fill in when those are lacking. The blood spurts like a geyser, and villains take gunshots like they’re in a C-list ’60s Western. All logic is thrown out the window in pursuit of the story being told. At no point does “The Babysitter” approach anything real. In both script and execution, it leans into the ridiculous as much as it possibly can. Inclusions of on-screen text, over-the-top blood splatters, and stat cards of sci-fi legends all add up to a unique experience that makes up for the faults.

Usually, a film will spend at least 10 minutes at least trying to be serious, but “The Babysitter” doesn’t even try to do that. Moments like “It’s not easy having a good time” from “Rocky Horror Picture Show” or the whiteboard scene where the manipulators gamble on how the victims will die provide a nice double entendre that gives the audience something to think about as we wait for our next moment of silliness. “The Babysitter” has no aspirations, even the performances I adore so much add nothing to the film. They are messengers, middlemen between the script, McG, and us. Although they get the message there efficiently, they don’t care to wrap it up in a bow. 

In particular, Judah Lewis as Cole Johnson comes off flat. Not only incapable of adding anything extra, but also unable to keep up with the quippy cadence the rest of the cast can pull off. I would normally loathe to critique a kid, but this film came out in 2017, and I am sure Judah has grown up to be a fine young man who can handle a little criticism. His performances comes off a little stilted, a little halted, and a whole lot of awkward. While I understand his character is supposed to be a dorky little preteen, it certainly feels more like a failure on the actor’s part than a character component. 

Horror-comedy is a genre that has been utilized over and again, and rightfully so. It’s an easy combinational that takes two ideas seemingly at natural odds with one another but relies on similar executions to work. Both need to skewer expectations after building a highly anticipated setup as a means of relief for the audience.

While “The Babysitter” certainly doesn’t break any new ground, McG delivers a pulpy spectacular. 

Jack Simon is a mogul coach and writer/director who enjoys eating food he can’t afford, traveling to places out of his budget, and creating art about skiing, eating, and traveling while broke. Check out his website jacksimonmakes.com to see his Jack’s Jitney travelogue series. You can email him at jackdocsimon@gmail.com for inquiries of any type.