The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020)
Rated TV-MA
Score: 3 out of 5
Watching The Babysitter and its sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, back-to-back made me realize just how good of an actor Samara Weaving really is. I mean, I'd known for a while that she's a great actor, but never was it more readily apparent than here, by virtue of the fact that her role this time amounts to a bit part and the film both suffers in her absence and really takes off once she shows up. She played a vital part in the chemistry that made the first film so much fun, a badass horror movie heroine who just so happens to be the villain in this version of the story, such that it rightfully became her big break in Hollywood. This film spends most of its runtime trying to make that chemistry work again even as it felt like they could only get Weaving on set for a few days at most. To its credit, though, the film does try, and largely avoids rehashing the original while hiding a few new tricks up its sleeve. The non-Weaving parts of the first that worked there -- the memorable supporting cast, the great kills, the unabashedly goofy sense of humor, the retro '70s/'80s flair -- are still here and accounted for, the plot offers some new twists and turns, and overall, while it's not as good as its predecessor, it's still a worthy follow-up.
Two years have passed since the first film, and Cole is now a teenager in high school, seen as a weirdo ever since that incident where he stole his neighbor's car, crashed it into his house, and defended himself with some bizarre story about his babysitter being a Satanist. His parents are getting ready to send him to a psychiatric boarding school, causing him to run off with his childhood friend Melanie to a lake where they and some friends are planning to party on a boat. Melanie, after all, believes his wacky story. Not only was she there that night, but since then, she too has been seduced by the power of Satan, setting up a new cult and arranging another human sacrifice so that she can achieve her dream of becoming a social media influencer. (Wow, have we lost our ambition from the days when we sold our souls to become rock stars, huh?) What's more, Melanie has figured out a way to bring Max, Sonya, John, and Allison from the first movie back from the dead and recruit them into her cult. With a dead body on the boat and Melanie after the blood of the innocent, Cole makes a quick getaway with the "alternative" girl Phoebe in tow, running through the desert to stay one step ahead of Melanie and her cultists, all while Cole and Melanie's fathers, none the wiser, head off into the desert to find where their kids ran off to.
A big part of the first film's heart and soul was the interplay between Judah Lewis and Samara Weaving as Cole and Bee, and not only does this film suffer in the absence of the titular babysitter, it seems to know it. Throughout the film, we get flashbacks to Bee's original cultists showing how Bee recruited them, scenes that have little to do with the rest of the film and seem to exist solely to make the most out of what little time they were able to get Weaving on set. It felt like a film made out of compromises, one that was originally written to have Bee come back in a big way and had to be hastily rewritten around Weaving's absence, but too late to come up with a real original story, forcing them to shoehorn Melanie into the role they originally wrote for Bee. It was Scream 3 all over again, which had the exact same problem of having to work around Neve Campbell's tight schedule (and the Columbine High School massacre forcing them to rewrite the whole film from scratch, but that's a different story), leading to a film whose plot and writing are among its weakest elements. I wished that they had simply gone all-in on Melanie and her cult as the sole villains rather than continue to contrive a reason to bring back the rest of Bee's cult, as all of the villains here felt sorely underused. Whereas Bee had a softer side to her evil that made her a somewhat more complicated and interesting figure, one that gets explored further here once she finally makes her grand return, Melanie turns into a one-note psycho killer after the reveal, even though there was a golden opportunity lying right there to explore how Cole's feelings for her might come into play just as they did with Bee. And while the returning cultists from the original still have their fun personalities to keep my attention (especially Robbie Amell as Max, who gets some of the best lines in the film), the new ones that Melanie brought with her were so forgettable that I never even caught their names. (The parents of one of them own the boat that serves as an excuse for the desert lake setting, and... that's it.)
At least we still had Cole. Whereas the film seems to have no idea what to do with its villains, it does have plenty of ideas for Cole, who's given a new love interest in Phoebe. Judah Lewis and Jenna Ortega work pretty damn well together, Ortega's Phoebe having her own motives for coming to the lake that turn out to concern a mysterious past involving Bee, a plot point that actually does get resolved pretty well. Cole is still the same outcast he was when he was in middle school, only now with a "high school nerd" feel, complete with a corduroy suit that was apparently a Wes Anderson shout-out. And overall, he still made for a great protagonist, somebody who doesn't needlessly turn into a bratty asshole like his character easily could have but still gets to kick ass, take names, and get the girl. Speaking of, Ortega was also very fun to watch, a more involved version of what Melanie was like in the first film who gets to throw down with both the cultists and random assholes. For the B-team, Ken Marino and Chris Wylde respectively play Cole and Melanie's fathers, with the latter in particular stealing the show by expanding on his small but memorable part in the first film as a middle-aged douchebag who's still clinging onto his teenage years. As a manchild who obsesses over his classic car, is really into video games, and smokes a lot of weed, Wylde is hilarious, especially with Marino by his side as the "straight man" in their comic relationship, even if their roles are ultimately fairly insubstantial.
When it comes to the special effects and production values, this is still very much in the same wheelhouse as the first movie, even if the humor has gotten goofier. While the kills can be a bit too reliant on CGI, they are still creative and especially gory, with heads and limbs getting chopped off, eyes getting impaled, blood spewing everywhere, and some grisly instances of spontaneous human combustion. The tone is as firmly rooted in a '70s-inspired heightened reality as it was before, now with a full-blown dance sequence set to "Apache (Jump On It)" by the Sugarhill Gang and a decidedly campy fight scene inspired in equal measure by '70s martial arts movies and the old Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games that homaged such. The fact that the film ostensibly took place in Illinois left me scratching my head at the desert setting, the filmmakers barely even trying to hide the fact that they filmed this in California, but again, the willfully over-the-top atmosphere meant that I was able to just roll with it as one of this film's quirks.
A big part of the first film's heart and soul was the interplay between Judah Lewis and Samara Weaving as Cole and Bee, and not only does this film suffer in the absence of the titular babysitter, it seems to know it. Throughout the film, we get flashbacks to Bee's original cultists showing how Bee recruited them, scenes that have little to do with the rest of the film and seem to exist solely to make the most out of what little time they were able to get Weaving on set. It felt like a film made out of compromises, one that was originally written to have Bee come back in a big way and had to be hastily rewritten around Weaving's absence, but too late to come up with a real original story, forcing them to shoehorn Melanie into the role they originally wrote for Bee. It was Scream 3 all over again, which had the exact same problem of having to work around Neve Campbell's tight schedule (and the Columbine High School massacre forcing them to rewrite the whole film from scratch, but that's a different story), leading to a film whose plot and writing are among its weakest elements. I wished that they had simply gone all-in on Melanie and her cult as the sole villains rather than continue to contrive a reason to bring back the rest of Bee's cult, as all of the villains here felt sorely underused. Whereas Bee had a softer side to her evil that made her a somewhat more complicated and interesting figure, one that gets explored further here once she finally makes her grand return, Melanie turns into a one-note psycho killer after the reveal, even though there was a golden opportunity lying right there to explore how Cole's feelings for her might come into play just as they did with Bee. And while the returning cultists from the original still have their fun personalities to keep my attention (especially Robbie Amell as Max, who gets some of the best lines in the film), the new ones that Melanie brought with her were so forgettable that I never even caught their names. (The parents of one of them own the boat that serves as an excuse for the desert lake setting, and... that's it.)
At least we still had Cole. Whereas the film seems to have no idea what to do with its villains, it does have plenty of ideas for Cole, who's given a new love interest in Phoebe. Judah Lewis and Jenna Ortega work pretty damn well together, Ortega's Phoebe having her own motives for coming to the lake that turn out to concern a mysterious past involving Bee, a plot point that actually does get resolved pretty well. Cole is still the same outcast he was when he was in middle school, only now with a "high school nerd" feel, complete with a corduroy suit that was apparently a Wes Anderson shout-out. And overall, he still made for a great protagonist, somebody who doesn't needlessly turn into a bratty asshole like his character easily could have but still gets to kick ass, take names, and get the girl. Speaking of, Ortega was also very fun to watch, a more involved version of what Melanie was like in the first film who gets to throw down with both the cultists and random assholes. For the B-team, Ken Marino and Chris Wylde respectively play Cole and Melanie's fathers, with the latter in particular stealing the show by expanding on his small but memorable part in the first film as a middle-aged douchebag who's still clinging onto his teenage years. As a manchild who obsesses over his classic car, is really into video games, and smokes a lot of weed, Wylde is hilarious, especially with Marino by his side as the "straight man" in their comic relationship, even if their roles are ultimately fairly insubstantial.
When it comes to the special effects and production values, this is still very much in the same wheelhouse as the first movie, even if the humor has gotten goofier. While the kills can be a bit too reliant on CGI, they are still creative and especially gory, with heads and limbs getting chopped off, eyes getting impaled, blood spewing everywhere, and some grisly instances of spontaneous human combustion. The tone is as firmly rooted in a '70s-inspired heightened reality as it was before, now with a full-blown dance sequence set to "Apache (Jump On It)" by the Sugarhill Gang and a decidedly campy fight scene inspired in equal measure by '70s martial arts movies and the old Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games that homaged such. The fact that the film ostensibly took place in Illinois left me scratching my head at the desert setting, the filmmakers barely even trying to hide the fact that they filmed this in California, but again, the willfully over-the-top atmosphere meant that I was able to just roll with it as one of this film's quirks.
The Bottom Line
The Babysitter: Killer Queen is a lesser film compared to its predecessor, no doubt about it, but while the writing suffers, its better qualities still make it a bloody good time on Netflix. Check it out.
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