If you've seen and enjoyed McG's 2017 film The Babysitter, check out Emelie from two years earlier, a nifty little shocker that also sees a young lad having to do battle with a child minder who is up to no good.
The nutty babysitter in this case is Anna (Sarah Bolger), who starts to act weird as soon as the kids' parents leave the house, searching the rooms, breaking into the family security box, asking eleven year old Jacob (Joshua Rush) to pass her a tampon while she is sat on the loo, and allowing the children to draw on the walls. As the evening draws on, Anna gets progressively loopy, feeding Sally's hamster to Jacob's pet python, playing a most unsuitable video for the children, and reading little Christopher (Thomas Bair) a very strange bedtime story about a young woman whose mind cracks after she accidentally kills her baby. It turns out that Anna is actually called Emelie and that she intends to take Christopher as a replacement for her dead infant.
With competent direction from Michael Thelin, natural performances from the three children and an extremely chilling turn from Bolger as a total whack job, this is, for the most part, a very effective (and sometimes rather disturbing) thriller, which is only let down by a somewhat weak payoff that feels like a set up for a sequel.
The nutty babysitter in this case is Anna (Sarah Bolger), who starts to act weird as soon as the kids' parents leave the house, searching the rooms, breaking into the family security box, asking eleven year old Jacob (Joshua Rush) to pass her a tampon while she is sat on the loo, and allowing the children to draw on the walls. As the evening draws on, Anna gets progressively loopy, feeding Sally's hamster to Jacob's pet python, playing a most unsuitable video for the children, and reading little Christopher (Thomas Bair) a very strange bedtime story about a young woman whose mind cracks after she accidentally kills her baby. It turns out that Anna is actually called Emelie and that she intends to take Christopher as a replacement for her dead infant.
With competent direction from Michael Thelin, natural performances from the three children and an extremely chilling turn from Bolger as a total whack job, this is, for the most part, a very effective (and sometimes rather disturbing) thriller, which is only let down by a somewhat weak payoff that feels like a set up for a sequel.