Better Watch Out (2016) [Blu-ray]
Horror | Thriller

This holiday season, you may be home, but you're not alone... In this fresh and gleefully twisted spin on home-invasion horror, babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) must defend her young charges (Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould ) when intruders break into the house one snowy night--or so she thinks.

Storyline: When you think the suburbs, you think safety, but this holiday night the suburbs are anything but safe. Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) thought this babysitting job was going to be an easy night, but the night takes a turn when dangerous intruders break in and terrorize her and the twelve-year-old boy, Luke (Levi Miller), she's caring for. Ashley defends her charge to the best of her ability only to discover this is no normal home invasion.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 4, 2017 It's kind of interesting that neither Silent Night, Deadly Night nor Better Watch Out, two holiday themed horror outings whose titles refer to classic Christmas songs, really go out of their way to hide the identity of their maniacal culprits, and it's further kind of interesting that the culprits in both films are very badly behaved young(er) boys. Silent Night, Deadly Night perhaps had the misfortune of taking itself seriously, including positing a "killer" Santa Claus, something that evidently didn't sit well with the general (adult) populace at the time of the film's initial release, but Better Watch Out takes a somewhat more whimsical approach to the exploits of one Luke Lerner (Levi Miller), a hormonal pre-teen who deserves a lot of coal in his stocking. Luke's well meaning but basically brain dead parents Robert (Patrick Warburton) and Deandra (Virginia Madsen) are going out for the evening, and despite the fact that Luke is at an age when many parents would let him fend for himself at the home front, babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) has been employed to keep an eye on Luke, perhaps because Deandra is worried that Luke has been sleepwalking. Sleepwalking is the last thing on Luke's mind, as he is planning to lose his virginity with Ashley (without Ashley's foreknowledge, of course), a "plan" that is greeted with some considerable skepticism by Luke's best friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould). Because it's the 21st century and legalization is all the rage, Garrett openly tries to suggest that getting stoned is a much better (and more realistic) alternative for Luke in his parents' absence, though seemingly random and threatening events intervene, something that prevents both potentialities from occurring.

Those seemingly random events of course turn out to be part of Luke's machinations to get Ashley frightened and therefore supposedly more persuadable to become "naughty" (so to speak). But it's after this early revelation about Luke's elaborate plans that some may feel Better Watch Out goes off the rails. Luke more or less becomes an obsessive lunatic, engaging in all sorts of violent behavior that just sort of happens without any real motivation or context. While Ashley is the obvious prime target, first Garrett and then not one but two of Ashley's boyfriends get swept up into the maelstrom, with a rather large body count accruing as a result. It's all played for a combo platter of shocks and laughs, but there's an underlying illogic to it all that keeps everything resolutely in "cartoon" territory, which may in fact have been the original intention all along.

Films as old as The Bad Seed documented the shenanigans of children who were completely out of control, but there have been relatively few which deal with a kid who is more or less a serial killer (or at least serial attacker) which have approached this perhaps provocative material with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Better Watch Out may not have that many laugh out loud moments, but it coasts on a general, and unexpected, geniality that keeps things surprisingly light, despite such sequences as Luke and Garrett doing a "Home Alone experiment" with a paint can and the head of one of Ashley's boyfriends (the "physics" turn out to be accurate, at least according to this presentation). For those with pitch black senses of humor, the film may offer more entertainment value than for those coming to this enterprise expecting a straight ahead horror outing.

Part of what makes Better Watch Out work is the slyly effective performance of Levi Miller. Unlike The Bad Seed's Patty McCormack (playing titular bad seed Rhoda Penmark), whom most viewers want to slap silly (kind of like the pretend "spanking" she gets in the film's closing credits), Miller's Luke is actually kind of sweet, the sort of kid you'd think about hugging while trying to coax him out of his homicidal tendencies. That gives the film an underlying pull of authenticity despite the completely ludicrous plot dynamics. The film almost inevitably loses a bit of momentum as it moves through its litany of victims, but there's a kind of cheeky subtext to the proceedings that helps to keep things from seeming too repetitive.

I have an admittedly (and unapologetically) very dark and jaded sense of humor, and so the whole underlying premise of Better Watch Out played to my curmudgeonly tendencies. Those who think of the holidays as a sweet, nostalgic time of family, friends and faith had best stay far, far away from this film, but those with my same penchant for laughing at horrifying events may find at least a smile or two in this film. There's nothing too innovative in anything presented here, but the cast is fun and director Chris Peckover keeps things moving briskly. Technical merits are generally strong, and Better Watch Out comes Recommended.

[CSW] -1.4- *** (Possible Spoilers) ***
*** My review below may give away important plot points. ***
The movie appears to start off like many cliché horror/thriller movies, but about 30 minutes in it gets somewhat interesting. The reason I say somewhat is because I quickly identified the sociopath. Having more than the average viewer's understanding of the behavior and cleverness of sociopaths, nothing in the rest of the movie was much of a surprise to me. So I patiently almost boringly waited for the predictable outcome. The small twist at the end didn't mean as much to me as there was a second small twist in the credits that meant the actual outcome was still in doubt. For those unfamiliar with sociopaths this should be a pretty good horror/thriller. For me it was almost boring hoping for a major slipup but knowing it was unlikely to happen.
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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