Upfront, I had mixed feelings sitting down for The Babysitter. In my early years, I was interned at the local daycare. Staffed by women young and old, at the tender age of 5, I declared my favorites to be my girlfriend. This was encouraged behavior by my parents and the staff. I grew out of this behavior as soon as I was able to feel embarrassed. Today, I cringe when I think about it and I cringe when I am confronted with it. So the marriage of the hot babysitter, young boyish ward, and ritual satanic murder in a campy, high contrast horror film caused a mild nostalgia stroke. Unfortunately, even with all of those fantastic elements, The Babysitter has a tendency to drop the ball.

McG, of television (Supernatural) and film (Terminator Salvation) fame, puts together a nicely wrapped package. Its well thought out and delivered, but once you open it up, it’s lukewarm in places. An example is the way the film takes jabs at certain tropes. In one scene, our hero Cole (Judah Lewis) is bound to a chair, and with the help of a trusty pocket knife and a bit of conversational procrastination, he tries to free himself, only to have pointed out to him that they can all see what he is doing via a mirror beside him. Its funny, but the focus lingers on this joke for a bit and you recognize that it’s stale almost immediately. The film ends up putting a focus on how formulaic the setup is with these lingering jokes, of which the film is full of. Its somewhere between Home Alone and Halloween, so it has plenty to lampoon. From setting up silly traps to lopping of heads, the film takes time to fit it all in.

I really enjoyed the film, and I wish I had more of a handle on it, but this was a slippery character. It’s not new, yet I found it hard to classify. Samara Weaving, playing Bee the titular character, does a great job sticking the sexy killer but she is honestly overshadowed by the zany characters in her employ. It’s not a bad thing, but I can’t help but feel she’s just the setup for crazier antics, something to help contrast since she doesn’t really bloom at the same rate as her friends. Ultimately, The Babysitter doesn’t break the light-bulb oven mold, but it fills it with a mixture of creepy crawler glue and blood and delivers an experience worth watching for all the jokes you will end up loving even if doesn’t satisfy as whole.

~* 7.5/10 *~