Review: Better Watch Out

Levi Miller is being babysat by Olivia DeJonge, an older girl he has a crush on. His best mate Ed Oxenbould (rounding out the trio of young Aussie actors here) thinks he’s dreaming. However, it’s Christmas, he’s alone with DeJonge and Miller has plans for he and his crush. Meanwhile, there appears to be an intruder on the premises. It’s going to be anything but a jolly Yuletide evening as DeJonge (showing some decent spunk alongside her “The Visit” co-star  Oxenbould) needs to see that both she and the minor she’s in charge of see it through the night alive. Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen appear early as Miller’s parents who are out at a party for the evening.

There’s nothing worse in cinema than a film that completely and utterly squanders potential. I’m not saying this 2017 Christmas-set horror-thriller from director Chris Peckover (whose previous effort was 2010’s “Undocumented”) and co-writer Zack Kahn (who wrote for an animated TV show version of the popular “Mad” magazine) was ever going to be a good film necessarily. However, there’s enough here to suggest that in other hands it could’ve been a lot better than it is. Sadly, what it is…is not ultimately worth watching.

The first 30 minutes in particular are dreadful, Nickelodeon, “Goosebumps”-ish sanitised ‘horror’. Even the music score has a cutesy vibe to it. When we’re suddenly – and at least for me – shockingly hit with quite a gleefully nasty twist at the 30 minute mark it just makes you even more pissed off that Peckover and Kahn have wasted 30 minutes of your time and a nasty twist on a film that even after the twist still isn’t much good, so much as less bad. ***** SPOILER ALERT ***** In fact, for the most part it plays like a poor man’s “The Good Son”, giving a pretty horrific idea the “Home Alone” treatment. I didn’t mind “The Good Son” for what it was back in 1993, but this could’ve taken the basic concept and gotten a lot nastier with it. At least “The Good Son” gave us that shocking ‘Mr. Highway’ scene. There’s a nice visual involving yellow paint and red blood dripping, but even then if you’re gonna steal the paint can bit from “Home Alone” but for a horror film, why do you not then ramp up the gore factor? 10 minutes to go and we finally get a bit of darkness and nihilism in practice to go with the nihilistic and dark concept, but it’s too late. I think this one got an MA15+ rating in Australia purely for swearing. It can’t be anything else. ***** END SPOILER *****

At the end of the day, the film would be absolutely unbearable without Levi Miller (Ed Oxenbould’s character isn’t in the film enough), and isn’t much good regardless. It also wastes the talent of Virginia Madsen and Patrick Warburton, who aren’t in the film after the first scene pretty much. Who hires David Puddy and only uses his awesomeness for the first five minutes as a vanilla ‘Dad’ character that gives him nothing to do? No, this one didn’t do it for me I’m afraid.

A safe and frankly dickless treatment of a potentially ballsy idea for a horror film. It’s all a bit awkward and far too tame in execution.

Rating: C-