The Babysitter (2017)

I've been diving into Netflix originals a bit more lately, falling down various rabbit-holes of reviews and suggestions and recommendations. It took a few steps for me to find "The Babysitter", and I'm glad I found it.

I never had a "babysitter" in the sense of a neighborhood girl making a few extra bucks on the weekend. I came from a large family, so it usually ended up being one of my aunts. Thus, I never had the cliche babysitter fantasy (because, gross). I do understand the allure though, of being a preteen with a smoking hot girl alone with me in my house. Add in the desire all kids have to know what goes on after they go to bed, and crank the blood and gore up to 11, and you get "The Babysitter".

Cole is not a cool kid. He's not popular, he dresses dorky, he gets bullied. Things aren't great at this time in his life, with one exception: his babysitter. Bee is fun, confident, into sci-fi and pop culture, and smoking hot. One night Cole decides to stay up and see what his dreamgirl does late at night. Instead of some teenage groping, it turns out Bee is the leader of a Satanic cult. Fun! A human sacrifice kicks off the bloodbath, Cole gets busted for spying, and ends up fighting for his life for the rest of the night.

This was pure silly gleeful insane stupid gore. We get stabbing, shootings impaling, slitting, exploding, all with copious amounts of blood. The movie admits with a wink that it turns into an uber-violent "Home Alone", with the young kid defending his home from intruders. Kevin McAllister put the Wet Bandits through hell, but Cole definitely sends these Satanists there.

My major nitpick has to do with the sound editing. I know it's an odd thing to park on, but when I'm stuck riding my remote for the entire length of a movie, something went wrong in the editing process. The action sequences were loud as hell, so I'd have to turn down the volume, then the dialogue got so quiet that a few times I had to rewind; turning up the dialogue meant the jumpscares blasted my speakers.

I also wasn't the biggest fan of some of the stylistic choices of director McG, who brought certain elements like displaying text messages on the screen and adding some odd text graphics just hit me the wrong way. Other than that, the story was good, the script was decent, Judah Lewis & Samara Weaving had good starring roles, and strong support from Ken Marino and Robbie Amell and others made this a fun trip.