A
babysitter (Olivia DeJonge) watches an awkward teenage boy (Levi Miller) while
his parents are at a Christmas party. He
has a big crush on her, so he gets drunk on champagne and tries to put the
moves on her. Before long, they’re
menaced by a psycho who makes threatening phone calls and vows to murder them
if they leave the house.
To
tell any more would ruin the surprise. (Imagine
if Bret Easton Ellis wrote a John Hughes Christmas movie and that might give
you an idea of what to expect.) Better
Watch Out does have a rather good twist that occurs early on; right after the
first act, in fact. By placing the twist
so early in the narrative, it doesn’t really leave the movie anywhere to
go. It also causes the tension to
flatline and the plot quickly gets repetitive from there.
There’s
a ring of truth here if you’ve been a boy that’s too old to have a babysitter,
and a hot one at that. This was done
slightly better than The Babysitter though.
Even though that movie was a bit more outrageous, it still found a nice
balance between the sitter and the sittee.
DeJonge
has a Kristen Bell quality about her. She’s
especially good when trying to reason with her attacker. Miller is a bit too annoying though. While he plays the whiny teenager role
adequately enough, he just isn’t up to the task later in the film. At least Patrick Warburton and Virginia
Madsen get some laughs as Miller’s kooky parents.
AKA: Safe Neighborhood.
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