This holiday season, you may be home, but you’re not alone… In this fresh and ingeniously twisted spin on home-invasion
horror, babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge “The Visit”) must defend her young charges (Levi Miller “Pan”, Ed Oxenbould “The Visit”) when intruders break into the house one snowy night–or so she thinks.
“Better Watch Out” is a hard R movie; I defiantly recommend watching it through VidAngel. It soon turns in to a slick home-invasion thriller that flips at the 35-minute mark into something totally surprising. In its long disgusting history of the “Christmas horror” sub-genre, there’s never been a movie quite like “Better Watch Out,” an unusually well-acted thriller, which plays with relevant things about suburbia, holiday entertainment and toxic masculinity.
A cast of expert Australian child actors convincingly evoke upper-middle-class Americana, with Olivia DeJonge playing Ashley, a teenage babysitter who takes a last-minute gig to look after 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller). What Ashley doesn’t anticipate is that Luke who’s long had a crush on her has enlisted his nerdy friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) to help him win her over. The plan almost immediately takes some unexpected turns, as other guests drop by. Gradually, Ashley figures out what’s going on, and has to protect herself and the household she’s been hired to safeguard.
“Better Watch Out” will likely become an enduring cult favorite with how attuned Chris Peckover in his 1st directorial movie and his co-writer, Zack Kahn, are to the nonsense of Christmas movies and the perverse fantasies of adolescent boys. From the shockingly raunchy dialogue to the ironic yuletide pop songs that are just perfect, this movie is a fun kind of nasty. They do a great job providing a firm hold of what were used to seeing in horror, quickly setting us up to take the bait.
Rated R for disturbing violent content, language throughout, crude sexual references, drug and alcohol use – all involving teens
(LOGAN AT THE MOVIE) gives it a A+
