Netflix Review: The Babysitter (2017)

"If John Hughes made a Horror movie..."

A great Horror Comedy is a rare thing.
 
Over the past few years, some really great Horror Comedies have come our way. Movies like Deathgasm, Cooties, What We Do in the Shadows, The Final Girls, and Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse have entertained the hell out of us in their own special ways, and they stand above their peers in quality.

We're happy to say that The Babysitter can join that short list with pride, as it's the most fun we've had watching a genre flick all year.

*This review is going to contain some spoiler-ish material, but we won't spoil anything the trailer didn't give away.

Cole is a timid yet lovable 12-year-old kid who's afraid of needles, gets bullied at school, and has the hottest babysitter that has ever been know to man, Bee. Bee is a sexy, witty, closet nerd who really likes Cole, and they spend their time together nerding-out about Sci-Fi flicks and discussing how Cole should put the moves on the neighbor girl.

BUT UNDERSTANDABLY, COLE IS A BIT TOO IN LOVE WITH BEE TO GO MESSING WITH OTHER GIRLS.

Bee is also an insane Satanist who needs sacrificial blood to make the dark spells in her evil book come to life. Cole is supposed to be sleeping when Bee and her Satanic Scooby Gang decide to offer their latest sacrifice to Gog, but instead he witnesses the act, which puts him at deadly odds with Bee.

...and we've already said too much.

SHE'S ABOUT TO LOSE HER SHIT.

Gory, funny as hell, sexy, and oddly touching, The Babysitter is one of the best genre flicks that we've seen this year. Somehow, McG made the crazy plot (and even crazier visuals) work, where they should have made for a silly mess of a flick.

And the real surprise was that the movie had some sentimentality going for it, in the form of Bee and Cole's friendship. Sure, Bee is a crazy Satanist and all, but she genuinely cares for Cole, and the way that played out gave the movie a John Hughes-esque quality. Samara Weaving and Judah Lewis made the movie special.

Speaking of Samara Weaving (Hugo's niece), she's a star in the making. Not only is she gorgeous, but she's got range; she's got these insane looking eyes that go from wicked to tender on command, and even though she's the movie's big bad, we couldn't help but love her character. She was the heart of this movie, and she rocked it.

And to be honest, everyone else in the cast delivered as well, every one of them making us laugh. Robbie Amell is surprisingly funny, and I don't know where in the hell Andrew Bachelor came from, but dude had us rolling.

The only part of the movie that didn't jibe with us was the part with the car, but that's a small thing considering how much fun the rest of the movie was.

AND LET US NOT FORGET ABOUT BELLA. SHE SPECIAL.

The blood flows freely in this one, including some creative fire poker usage, gun violence, throat slitting, and neck skewering.

HE PROBABLY HAS AIDS NOW.

Aside from Robbie Amell going shirtless, there's no nudity here. There is, however, a kiss between Samara Weaving and Bella Thorne that makes the sapphic kisses from movies like Jennifer's Body and Wild Things look like amateur hour.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!

"All that blood was just in his boner."
"Carrie would have been better is she was black. She would have been covered in Hennessy."
"What the hell are you wearing? Lookin' like Big Bird's side-bitch."
"Why is he shirtless?"

BIG BIRD'S SIDE-BITCH.

Wat a genuinely pleasant surprise this movie was. Where we expected The Babysitter to underwhelm, it instead spent 90-minutes making us laugh, and left us marveling at how clever it all was. McG still has a stupid name, but if he keeps making movies like this, we might just end up being fans of his.

See it, and see it now.

A-

The Babysitter is streaming now on Netflix.

Samara and Bella might be the sexiest babysitter tandem ever.

Theatrical Review: Nocturnal Animals (2016)

"Highbrow Neo-Noir with an A-list cast."

Amidst each year's more typical genre offerings, there are always a few higher-minded Thrillers that come along and, well, thrill us. Most of these Thrillers tend to be foreign films -S.Korea and France do them well, and there's nothing quite like a good Scandi Thriller- but every now and then we get one out of Hollywood that just ends up being gold.

Nocturnal Animals is one such flick.

There are going to be SPOILERS below, because it's hard to discuss this movie without delving into that territory, so maybe skip "The Bad" section so as not to ruin the movie for yourselves.

Susan is a sexy art gallery owner who is trapped in a marriage with a cheating bastard, so when her ex-husband sends her the manuscript for his new book, she figures "hey, my marriage sucks, so I might as well curl up on the couch and get to reading." After all, he's in town promoting the book, and he's asked her to dinner, so the least she can do is read his book before she meets him, because as miserable as her life is, why not cling to the memory of the man that she left for greener pastures? The girl has issues.

READING. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

The book itself is about a man, wife, and daughter who are traveling down a desolate West Texas highway in the dead of night, when three local creeps run them off the road, assault the women, and hunt the man down in an attempt to kill him. So it's a love story, essentially.

"I AIN'T DONE RAPED NOBODY WHO AIN'T KIN."

When Susan realizes that the story is about she and her ex-husband, and the events that lead to the demise of their relationship, in unexpected ways, it starts to mess with her head. And ours. So, she puts on a red dress and gets ready for the best dinner date ever.

Some genuinely satisfying "take that!" revenge ensues.

THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!

Nocturnal Animals is an excellent Neo-Noir Thriller, of the psychological variety. It boasts a tight script that is acted out by an insanely talented cast, all of which is brought together perfectly by the direction of Tom Ford. Well, almost perfectly. It was really close.

This is a gritty movie, and a psychologically demanding one, but it's really the emotional weight of the story, and the baggage carried by the characters that make it so harrowing, albeit on a completely different level than we had imagined before seeing it.

It's Neo-Noir done at the highest level, and it's exactly the kind of movie that we crave.

The more I think about it, the more I really loved the ending of this movie. Without giving anything away (we've saved the spoilers for the section below), Amy Adams' journey throughout Nocturnal Animals, and especially the place she ends up in the last scene, is so damn fitting that it hurts.

This was definitely Amy Adams' movie, and she does her usual stellar work here; and Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon pull their weight equally well (especially Shannon, who killed his role in a big way) but for us it was Aaron Taylor-Johnson who stole the show with his intense and creepy turn in this one. In a movie that boasts such a stellar cast doing really solid work, that's saying something.

YOU JUST CAN'T BEAT THIS MAN FOR INTENSITY.

***BEWARE SPOILERS!***

As much as we loved the movie as a group, I also found this movie to be challenging, because it's a bit too high-minded for its own good. Most Thrillers have to come with a shocking twist or two, that's just how it goes, but I am not a big fan of movies that offer twists which negate what I've just experienced. The twists at the end of Nocturnal Animals are well done and intriguing, and they serve the narrative well, but they also negate everything that happened throughout the movie... because those things never happened. It's all an allegory in book form, written by one character to another, to convey his feelings about being dumped, and to get some sort of psychological revenge against the woman who broke his heart.

Again, it works well, and makes for an excellent, emotional narrative, but man does it ever suck when all kinds of cool and intense things happen in a movie, only to find out that none of it ever really happened.

***END OF SPOILERS***

KEEP DRINKING, IT WON'T HELP.

Dropping a deuce while naked on a toilet on your front porch? And we have to see the dirty toilet paper too? What I the hell is going on in West Texas?!?

SORRY AARON, BUT THAT'S INDOOR BUSINESS, MAN.

This is not a gory movie at all, but it does have plenty of violence throughout.

HE CAME TO BRING THE PAIN.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson takes a naked number 2 on his front porch...

...WHILE AMY ADAMS REMAINS FULLY CLOTHED. WHERE IS THE JUSTICE!

Relationships are terrifying. Also, you should never throw over true love in order to marry someone who has a better pedigree, because you'll only end up feeling cheated and miserable in the end.

POOR JAKE...

A great movie, even if we didn't exactly love the twist that drove the whole thing forward, Nocturnal Animals is one that will surely please fans of Psychological Thrillers with a romantic bent. It may not end up being what you expect by the end, but it's a journey that's well-worth taking anyhow. The more I think about it, the more it haunts me... and I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's the truth.

Go see it.

A-

Nocturnal Animals is in theaters now.

Oh, Amy Adams, the things you do to us...

Blu-ray Review: 10 to Midnight (1983)

"An underrated 80's gem."

(aka Not Death Wish Part 2.)
Release Date: March 11th, 1983.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: William Roberts.  
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson.
Starring: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens, Gene Davis, Geoffrey Lewis, and Wilfred Brimley.

Having been scorned by a hot chick at work, because he's creepy and really awkward with women, Warren Stacy decides he needs to kill the bitch. He's as smart as he is creepy though, so he heads off to a theater to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where he blatantly harasses a couple of girls so he has an alibi. Then he slips out the bathroom window, runs to the woods where the offending bitch is making sweet love with her boyfriend in a party van, he gets naked, and and then kills them both.

WELL, SHE DID THROW HOT COFFEE IN HIS FACE...

Enter tough-as-nails detective Paul Kessler, who plays by his own rules, and just loves ridding the street of scumbags. When he discovers that the girl who was murdered is a close friend of his daughter's. he's determined to find the bastard who did this, which he very promptly does. Unfortunately, the bastard who did this is shrewd and leaves no evidence behind, and also has an air-tight alibi for the night of the murder... but Kessler knows it was him! He knows!

IT GETS NO MORE INTENSE THAN CHARLIE BRONSON.

As Kessler and his partner tries to take Warren Stacy down, more girls die at his hands, and he even sets his sights on killing Kessler's 80's Hot daughter, Laurie... which we think is supposed to happen at 10 to Midnight, or else the title doesn't really make very much sense. Either way, it's mano-a-mano time between Charles Bronson and Patrick Bateman's far less classy little brother!

ONE OF THE BEST ENDINGS EVER.

Was there anything better in the 80's than watching Charles Bronson dish out some cold hard justice to scumbag criminals who had it coming? The man kicked ass and brought a very special brand of tough guy attitude to the screen, and at 61-years-old, he was as kick-ass as he ever was in 10 to Midnight.

This is a fairly typical Cannon Films effort from the 80's, complete with plenty of violence, gratuitous nudity, and a silly plot that exists only to give the movie's hero a platform on which to kill the bad guy and serve up some justice, but there's just something really enjoyable about it on a base level. It's also pretty intense and even creepy, especially during the last murder sequence.

Aside from the awesomeness that is Charles Bronson, the cast also boasts plenty of other 80's mainstays, including the adorable Lisa Eilbacher, and a young Kelly Preston in her first movie role. Gene Davis made for a pretty convincing Serial Killer, even if is a bit over the top at times.

LISA EILBACHER: THE DEFINITION OF 80'S CUTENESS.

The thing that always grabbed us about this movie, was that it mirrored the cases of two real-life Serial Killers. The murders at the end are absolutely based off of the murders of 8 student nurses in 1966, at the hands of Richard Speck. If you want to read a chilling, real-life story, Google him. The killer in the movie also resembles Ted Bundy; he even drives a VW Bug like he did. And I don't care what anyone says: Brett Easton Ellis saw this movie when he was a teenager, and based parts of Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) off of the killer. While watching this Blu-ray, I actually said "Hey, that's Patrick Bateman!" Even though there are all kinds of differences between the two characters, there are also some striking similarities as well.

10 to Midnight also boasts one of the best endings to a movie ever. Seriously, it's perfect. 

REMEMBER HER FROM MICHAEL JACKSON'S THRILLER?

We really wish that the murders had been shown in graphic detail. After all, this is basically a Slasher flick masquerading as a Cop Thriller, and it was released int he early 80's, which was the Golden Age of the Slasher flick, so give us some good, nasty FX shots!

LIKE HE'S NOT GOING TO FIND YOU. LOL.

Whatever happened to Katrina Parrish, the sexy girl from the theater? She was way too hot to have never starred in anything else. Gah!

THANKS FOR WEARING THAT OUTFIT SO WELL, KATRINA.

There's plenty of blood throughout this one, but most of the the murders take place off-screen, and aren't very graphic.

WE'LL TAKE WHAT WE CAN GET THOUGH.

Boobs. Boobs galore. The killer runs around naked in this one too.

WE'D BE CRYING TOO.

"No we won't." A frigging classic.

ONCE AGAIN, KATRINA PARRISH. JUST BECAUSE.

This Blu-ray from Twilight Time looks and sounds good enough, but it's nothing to marvel at. I wanted to own this movie because I love the movie, and this is most likely the best it's ever going to look. The fact that the video has some bothersome black crush, and that the audio is a bit underwhelming, doesn't bother me in the least, but it will most likely irk a true Videophile.

Overall, this disc looks and sounds great, as long as you're not super picky.

Special Features: 

Aside from a few trailers, and a halfway decent commentary, there are no special features to be found on this disc. We're fine with that though, because we just wanted the movie in Blu-ray.

*This disc is Limited to 3000 copies, so if you want a copy, be sure to grab one quick.

THE 80'S LOOK SUPER SEXY IN 1080p.

10 to Midnight is an excellent 80's Thriller that has Charles Bronson hot on the trail of a Serial Killer who gets naked to kill sexy women. It's also got one of the coolest endings that we've ever seen. It's also kinda cheesy in that special 80's way, but the good here far outweighs the bad. It's just a really cool flick.

The best way to see this movie is on the new Twilight Time Blu-ray, but if $29.99 is too much money for you to blow on a blind buy, then just see it on DVD or VOD. 

A-

10 to Midnight is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

The collective 80's hotness of Lisa Eilbacher, a young Kelly Preston, and Anne Lockhart (to name a few) are on full display in this one.