Babysitter Wanted

I always cringe whenever I see things like "it's like X movie only with an X movie twist!" on the cover of a dvd. What that tells me is that the movie is either A) not exactly original or B) so bad that it helps to compare it to other films to give you an idea as to what the creators were shooting for but may have missed the mark. So that brings me to the movie I watched tonight, Babysitter Wanted. This didn't necessarily have one of those wonderful descriptions on the cover, but if it did it would probably read something like "it's House of the Devil, Hostel, and The Omen all rolled into one!".

Don't want to completely spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, so I won't be going into any specific plot details, but it literally borrows elements from all three of those far superior films. It barely does anything to differentiate itself or stand on it's on in any way. As you can imagine, in the end you sit there wondering why you don't just watch one of them instead. At least that was my reaction to it. The other important thing is, if you're going to blatantly borrow concepts from other movies and combine them to make your movie, it's important that they gel well together. Again, Babysitter Wanted misses the mark a bit here too. It tries to do just a little too much, and in the end there are some pretty obvious plot holes, and plenty of things that just really don't make much sense at all.

In all fairness, I've been all negative so far, and I should give Babysitter a little credit. If nothing else I was at least interested enough in it to see how things played out, even if some of it made no sense whatsoever to me. There are a couple of scenes that gorehounds will appreciate, those being the "like Hostel" ones, though not exactly torture, but still Hostel-like in the proceedings. The lead role of Angie is played pretty well by Sarah Thompson, an actress I wasn't familiar with but turns out I've seen in several things after viewing her filmography. Other notables were some familiar names to long-time horror nerds, as both Nana Visitor and Bill "Chop Top" Moseley appear but are criminally underused. I especially felt like there was a lot more to the relationship between Angie and her mother (Nana) but we didn't get to see any development there.

In the end, Babysitter Wanted ended up being yet another disappointment for my "a blog I read said this was great" file. Maybe it's just me, but I was irritated by the multiple concept mash-up. I suppose it might be worth watching for anyone who hasn't seen the movies it's ripping off before, but I would still recommend skipping this one and just watching them instead.