At Christmas, a babysitter and her charge, a twelve year old boy, find themselves under threat from a home invasion...
There's something about Christmas and horror films that just seems to work. Halloween of course is almost perfect for a setting. But the contrast of happy families and horrible events in some ways works even better. One of my all time favourite horror films, Bob Clark's 1974 Black Christmas uses the setting briliantly. Even as recently as 2015, we had the suitably nasty Krampus.
Better Watch Out is suitably nasty little film. To really enjoy it, you need to know next to nothing about it. The brief outline above is really all you need to know. The film has some suitably twisted and surprising developments, which will catch you out.
The story from Chris Zahn and written by Zahn and Chris Peckover has a lot of humour to offset the more brutal and nasty moments in the film. Peckover also directs the film well, staging the brief action well, but also wringing as much tension from the story as possible.
The cast are good too. Olivia DeJonge plays the babysitter, Ashley and is very good in the lead role. She's matched by Levi Miller as her charge, Luke although he is clearly over the age of twelve! Ed Oxenbould offers good support as Garrett, Luke's friend. Virginia Madsen and Patrick Warburton have small roles as Luke's parents and add some nice humour in their brief scenes.
I was, like most of the FrightFest audience I suspect, caught totally off guard by this film. I don't want to say much more about the story as it is one for the audience to see cold, but I will say that Better Watch Out is funny, surprising, twisted and nasty and simply a good, fun time.
I really liked it and I suspect most people will too.
Rating - 4/5
(A very brief teaser but fits the tone of the film well!)
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