Director: Ehrland Hollingsworth
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Plot:
Taking a babysitting job, a woman is asked to watch over a troubled young woman in a house monitored with security cameras to protect her from herself, and the longer they spend time together, she realizes the daughter’s unhinged behavior might not be an act like her parents initially told her.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly fun and enjoyable offering. The film gets several impressive things right from the very start, with the reason for the camera monitoring the house and what this is intended to solve, as we get the horrific backstory that triggered her disorder and the treatment she exhibits once they finally meet. With everything pointing to a strange disorder of some kind but the underlying hint that something is still fundamentally okay with her so long as she remains calm and in control of herself, these early scenes of their interactions like every normal babysitter that has to take care of a special needs child makes them carry on with a hint of underlying tension when you’re never sure how she could possibly snap. This has the fun context to later be manipulated rather well when their traditional activities are twisted and warped into not being completely sure if they’re genuine or if something disturbing is about to happen, enhancing the tension here greatly.
It all leads into a solid enough finale where it starts to bring together some really intriguing prospects. Introducing the full context of what’s going on and the series of reveals bringing that to the forefront, the finale makes it all work into delivering quite the effective twist on everything that we’ve learned until then, since it takes the socially awkward but well-meaning young girl into a totally different direction than what’s been hinted at until this point. With the finale making it clear that there’s more going on, not just with her but with her family as well, there’s quite a lot to like here, against only a few minor drawbacks. Since the first half is more about the psychologically unhinged nature of what she’s doing to the babysitter and how it all comes together, some of it would make clear sense to leave before anything else happened, which is a bit underwhelming but doesn’t impact it all that much.
Overview: ****/5
A solid and generally likable genre effort, this one comes together far better than expected and features enough to hold it up over a few minor, mostly insignificant flaws present. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre approach or who are curious about it will have a lot to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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