The Babysitter is a Blood-Soaked Love Letter to Horror Comedy
Sometimes you don’t need slow-burn dread or atmospheric tension. Sometimes you just need a hot babysitter, a satanic cult, and gallons of neon blood spraying across suburban beige walls. McG’s The Babysitter is the horror comedy equivalent of a sugar rush: fast, funny, gleefully violent, and completely self-aware. This is a film that knows exactly what it is: a teen horror romp that trades genuine scares for laughs, inventive kills, and a visual style that feels like a comic book came to life. If you’ve been drowning in serious horror, or need a brain flush from being so scared for almost three weeks now, this is your fun, fizzy rescue raft.
🥃🥃🥃 – Top Shelf (Highly Entertaining)
🔥 Like a Jägerbomb at a high school party: Not sophisticated, but undeniably fun and surprisingly effective.
“I Think My Babysitter’s in a Satanic Cult.”
Judah Lewis stars as Cole, a sweet 12-year-old who’s hopelessly in love with his gorgeous babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving). She’s cool, funny, protective, and genuinely seems to care about him. So when Cole’s parents leave for the weekend and Cole decides to stay up past bedtime to see what Bee does after he falls asleep, he’s expecting maybe a boyfriend or some Netflix binging.
Instead, he witnesses Bee and her impossibly attractive friends, a jock, a cheerleader, a nerd, and a bad boy, perform a ritual human sacrifice in his living room. Turns out Bee’s in a satanic cult that needs virgin blood for a demonic spell, and now that Cole’s seen everything, he’s next on the murder menu. What follows is 85 minutes of Cole fighting for survival using nothing but Home Alone-style ingenuity, his knowledge of horror movie rules, and sheer determination not to let his childhood crush literally murder him.
Judah Lewis brings genuine charm and vulnerability to Cole, making him rootable even when the film goes full cartoonish carnage. But it’s Samara Weaving who steals the show as Bee, she’s charismatic, funny, surprisingly layered, and completely game for the tonal shifts between genuine sweetness and knife-wielding villainy. The supporting cast (Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Hana Mae Lee, Andrew Bachelor) are perfectly cast as hot-people-who-deserve-to-die, each getting memorable kills and enough personality to make their deaths satisfying.
How McG Turned Gore into Comedy Gold
McG, best known for Charlie’s Angels and high-octane action, (although he did follow up The Babysitter with another hilarious alien movie with kids trying to save the world in Rim of the World (2019), brings that same kinetic energy to horror comedy. The kills are inventive, over-the-top, and punctuated with freeze frames, text overlays, and visual gags that make the violence feel less brutal and more Looney Tunes. When someone gets impaled, the camera lingers on the absurdity. When blood sprays, it’s neon-bright and geysers everywhere. This isn’t torture porn, it’s slapstick horror.
The script by Brian Duffield balances genuine character moments with razor-sharp comedy. Cole’s friendship with his neighbor Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind) feels real, even when surrounded by satanic rituals and exploding bodies. The film also wisely keeps its runtime tight (at 85 minutes), it never overstays its welcome. It gets in, delivers maximum chaos, and gets out before you can overthink the logic of why satanic rituals require complicated blood mixing and demon summoning in suburban homes.
Cinematographer Christian Sebaldt bathes everything in vibrant, primary colors; this is a Netflix production that looks expensive, with slick production design and lighting that makes every scene pop. The soundtrack leans into nostalgic needle-drops and contemporary hits, giving the film a music-video energy that matches its comic book aesthetics.
Reception and Why It Found Its Audience
The Babysitter premiered on Netflix in October 2017 to mixed critical reviews but strong audience enthusiasm. Critics noted its derivative plot (shades of Home Alone meets You’re Next meets teen comedy), but THAT’S what is fun about it. And audiences loved its self-aware humor, charismatic cast, and pure entertainment value. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t aspire to be high art. it just wants you to have a blast, and it succeeds.
The film became a cult favorite on Netflix, with viewers praising Samara Weaving’s breakout performance (which led to her starring in Ready or Not, another excellent horror comedy). McG proved he could handle horror-adjacent material with style, even if he never fully commits to genuine scares. The film works precisely because it knows it’s ridiculous and leans into that ridiculousness with full commitment.
Why It’s the Perfect Halloween Palette Cleanser
If you’ve been marathoning atmospheric slow-burns or legitimately disturbing horror, The Babysitter is the cinematic equivalent of a palate cleanser. It’s horror without trauma, violence without consequence, and mayhem with a smile. The film never takes itself seriously, which makes it perfect for a night when you want something spooky but not something that’ll keep you up at night.
It’s also genuinely funny in ways that most horror comedies aren’t. The jokes land, the physical comedy works, and the film’s self-awareness never becomes obnoxious. McG understands that horror comedy requires commitment to both genres, and while The Babysitter skews more comedy than horror, it delivers on both fronts enough to satisfy.
The movie also has genuine heart. Cole’s journey from bullied kid to survivor feels earned, and his relationship with Bee, despite the whole murder cult situation, has real emotional weight. You understand why he loved her, which makes her betrayal sting even as the film plays it for laughs.
The Babysitter: Killer Queen Diminishing Returns
Netflix greenlit a sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, which arrived in 2020. Cole is now in high school, still traumatized by the events of the first film, and nobody believes his story about the satanic cult. When a weekend trip with new friends accidentally resurrects the cult members, Cole must face his demons (literal and figurative) all over again.
The sequel brings back much of the cast and tries to recapture the original’s magic, but suffers from diminishing returns. The kills are bigger, the jokes are louder, but the charm feels forced. What made the first film work was its simplicity and genuine affection for its characters. Killer Queen feels like it’s checking boxes: more blood, more comedy, more callbacks, without understanding why the original connected.
That said, if you loved the first film, the sequel delivers enough fan service and chaotic energy to be worth a watch. Samara Weaving returns in flashbacks, and there’s fun to be had in seeing how the mythology expands. It’s just not essential viewing the way the original has become for horror comedy fans.
The CocktailsandMovies.com Bottom Line
A wildly entertaining, blood-soaked romp that knows exactly what it is and delivers pure fun. The Babysitter won’t change your life, but it’ll absolutely make your Halloween movie marathon more colorful.
🥃 Rating: 3 Stars – Top Shelf
🔥 Fast, funny, and gleefully violent. The perfect antidote to serious horror when you need to remember that scary movies can just be fun.
The Babysitter and The Babysitter: Killer Queen are both streaming on Netflix.
Cocktail Pairing: The Killer Queen Fizz
