Like any modern-day urban wasteland intellectual, I am a huge fan of the “so bad it’s good” genre of film. Think “The Room” or “Troll 2,” films which touch our heart with bizarre dialogue, cumbersome characters, and dubious filmmaking competence. In this vein, from time to time some friends and I will get together and watch some truly garbage pieces of cinema with the complete awareness that we are about to embark on a journey of landfill enlightenment. One of the best examples of a diamond in a rough I have received from this tradition is the movie “Legally Blondes” (2008) which comes in with a whopping 37% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, was made direct to DVD and does not even possess a critic score on the site. While this film is not a part of our journey today (but everyone reading this should immediately watch it), it is important for what brought me to the gem that is “The Babysitter.” Ever since watching Legally Blondes, I have tried to recreate that feeling of pure joy I felt in seeing this masterpiece unfold, and so for our next viewing my fellow Intellectuals and I searched for “worst movies on Netflix,” which listed “The Babysitter” as an option.
It looked like it had everything I was searching for. A supposed “Comedy-Horror” which would likely be overly-sexualized with cringy dialogue was exactly what the doctor ordered in this situation. Little did I know, but I would be gravely disappointed by the outcome. Much like our leading character Cole, what was initially childlike innocence was eventually met with the horror and dread of realizing that I had not in fact selected a “so bad it’s good” movie, but in fact had begun to watch a legitimately well-made and competently crafted film.
I should have known what I had gotten myself into from the onset. The dialogue in the opening scenes was eerily too good, and each scene much too stylized and thought out. In one of the initial scenes in the first act, our hero is having a conversation in a vibrantly colored schoolyard setting while all the other kids are slowed down running around him. My brain initially couldn’t comprehend what was happening, but I eventually was forced to come face to face with my worst nightmare: I was watching a legitimately above average movie. It was like if Wes Anderson was asked to make Scream or Cabin in the Woods: a quirky and hyper-stylized take on some classic horror tropes that I somehow thoroughly enjoyed. Furthermore, there was some actual clever writing going on here with a nice little character arc for Cole and Bee (the titular Babysitter), and a moment where I rolled my eyes at a clear Chekov’s gun which later turned out to be totally self-aware. That being said, the film certainly babied the audience a bit too much, and I think a few scenes with the supporting cast made very little sense (I’m looking at you random shirtless young Christian Bale dollar-store knockoff).
On top of these character issues, I would characterize the performances as fairly average across, the board, with some over the top, some flat, and very few standouts. My one major compliment on the performance front is that this is one of the first films I have seen in awhile where the child actors are actually good, so I’d consider that a pretty solid accomplishment. Really, the standout features of this film were some clever bits of writing and dialogue (which were undermined occasionally by flashback shots to remind the audience that they were in fact watching this movie and expected to remember what happened in it) and some truly great visuals which were surprisingly engaging.
Some standout scenes included the opening schoolyard shots, the treehouse, and the “dance party” between Cole and Bee. The overall story is a quintessential simple yet effective premise, which I think was the correct choice for allowing the writing and direction to actually flesh the movie out. Nevertheless, there were some scenes I could have done without (basically everything with the cops), and the ending was so cliché I almost died (but I guess it’s a modern “horror” movie (even if in name only), so what can you really do). Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with this movie, which to be totally fair, may have been due to the fact that I watched it expecting to see something like Legally Blondes or The Room, and ultimately what I got was a film with a bit of a voice and soul to it. I guess it just goes to show you that you can really only depend on direct to DVD movies for terrible quality rather than direct to Netflix.
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MD INDEX:
Script/Story: 7
Acting: 5
Characters: 6
Visuals: 9
Sound: 7
Overall Impression: 7
Total Score: 41