HORROR YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: BABYSITTER WANTED (2008)

BABYSITTER WANTED (2008)

Babysitter Wanted is a low budget horror surprise that may tread familiar ground, but does so in an effective and entertaining manner and not without a few clever curves of it’s own. The film gets off to an unsettling start with the murder of a pretty young captive to let us know right away that something sinister is going on. This gives the flick an atmosphere of foreboding as it then focuses on pretty young Angie (Sarah Thompson) who leaves her home for the first time to go away to college. With her car breaking down and a missing bed in her room, Angie needs to get some much needed cash. So she takes a babysitting job, despite being scared by ghoulish tales of murdered girls from her roommate (Jillian Schmitz) and that it’s starting to seem obvious that someone is watching her. She arrives at the remote farm of Jim and Violet Stanton (Bruce Thomas and Kristen Dalton), a nice couple with an odd little boy named Sam (Kai Castor). But as the parents leave and Angie settles in to her evening of watching Sam, she starts to hear strange noises and get ominous phone calls and soon it is evident that she and Sam are not alone on the secluded farm.

This familiar…or is it…story of the imperiled babysitter is treated with spooky atmosphere, some nice suspense and a good splattering of blood and gore in a well directed little horror from Jonas Barnes and Michael Manasseri. It’s obvious that the filmmakers have a love of these kind of movies and not only know how they work, but know what we are expecting and have a little fun with it. They give the film some amusing twists that deviate from from the usual formula of this type of horror tale and it adds to the ghoulish fun that the flick has a slightly demented sense of humor as well.

The cast are all good with Sarah Thompson playing the sweet Christian girl next door forced to face a night of horrors and turning into quite the spunky heroine when all hell breaks loose. Thomas and Dalton make a believable and charming couple as the Stantons and they are fun to watch as they come home to find their babysitter in the middle of a nightmare and their reaction is not quite what we’d expect. There are some cameos too, from horror favorite Bill Moseley as a cop and Deep Space Nine’s Nana Visitor as Angie’s ultra-religious mom.

A cool little horror flick that’s full of surprises and ghoulish fun and deserves far more attention then it got on it’s limited theatrical release. Not perfect, but a clever and entertaining little horror flick.

3 solid scared sitters!