Victoria Harkless
Assistant Editor-In-Chief
With the spookiest month of the year coming to an end I wanted to focus on a new children’s Halloween movie on Netflix. A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting was released on October 15th and it was quite a watch.
The plot for the movie can be simply explained as a girl named Kelly Ferguson loses the kid she is supposed to be babysitting to a so called boogie man, played by Tom Felton, and joins a secret society of babysitters in order to get him back.
While the plot lacks creativity the main villain is an interesting character. Tom Felton did extremely well in creating an unsettling villain. He has powers of sorts that bring nightmares to life and true to children's nightmares this alleged boogie man comes out of the closet the first time we see him. He is also fairly amusing to watch as the script was well written, he seems a bit sadistic and yet is kind of funny in almost a Joker-ish sense.
The boogeyman's assistants or rather accomplices to kidnapping are little monsters. These monsters, called Toadies, are clumsy and cute. In one scene they attack Kelly and it is quite funny to watch as we get to see from their point of view of what is going on. They also apparently love to eat newborns.
Toadies help with kidnapping the boy and fighting the babysitter. At one point during the prementioned fight she hits one with a lamp that in turn lands in the little monster's mouth which it then eats. It offered some humor to something that would have otherwise been serious.
I do not appreciate that the babysitter that rescues Kelly is a very generic character. She is the same as every other character that saves people. She comes off as rude and does not seem to care about anyone but herself.
I also did not like that they brought a baby to save Jacob. If the job of a babysitter is to protect a baby taking one on a rescue mission seems counter intuitive to me.
With the plot feeling like every other kids movie it was easy to lose interest, especially if my phone was around or if I had someone to talk to. I did find myself more interested in the villain whose name I did not learn until half way through the movie. You also did not learn his goal for a while and that made the movie harder to keep interest in.
Overall, I would give the movie like a six out of ten. That is only because I liked the villain and the Toadies, but to be completely transparent I did not finish the film because I simply lost interest. That is why at the highest I would give it a six but I do suggest watching it yourself just to see if the ending makes up for it.
Image Credit: Jonathan Bowers on Unsplash
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