The Babysitter (2017) 1h 25m

I've heard mixed things about this Netflix original.  It's a McG production and, despite sounding like a forgotten 90's McDonald's mascot, you probably recognize that name if you've ever watched the credits to an episode of Supernatural... or Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.  I'm not going to judge you, the Charlie's Angels remakes were actually trashy good.  Just avoid the PS2 game as it's stick your dick in salted glass shards bad.  Now the question is, is The Babysitter that bad?

I just had to look at the IMDB because I forgot everyone's name in this.  Cole is one of those super geek kids that is supposed to be 12 but looks like he is about to graduate high school.  He has an awkward knowledge of sex (despite being able to look up and read the entirety of the plot to Mad Men in a night), thinks Pluto should be a planet again, and still has a babysitter.  Enter Bee: the super cool/hot older girl that Cole has a crush on because puberty crushes on your babysitter isn't weird at all.  Of course that gets complicated by the fact that Cole finds out that Bee is running a demonic cult ritual in his living room while he sleeps.  Complete with murder, stereotypes, and the Korean-American girl from the Pitch Perfect films.

Do you like my script?

I wanted to give this movie a fair shot, despite what I had heard.  I made it about twenty minutes into it before I was pretty much done.  It's one of those movies where I picture the person that wrote the script and I assume it's the Steve Buscemi meme of "how's do you do, fellow kids?"

From there it had the goofiness of Murder Party but none of the heart.  The cheerleader is obsessed with her gun shot tit, the jock attempts to get Cole to stand up to his bully while simultaneously trying to kill him, and I don't even remember what happens to the black guy in the movie because that's how unmemorable they made him.  Also, why the hell is the ground so foggy?!  That's probably something bad and you should move!  It'll make your balls shrink or something.

The only thing The Babysitter has going for it is its use of licensed music.  When we first meet Bee it's cued in by Peaches "Boys Wanna Be Her" which has that dirty 70's two-note guitar riff which probably has the power to give erections in some cultures.  We also get the ending scene backed by Queen's "We Are the Champions," but it doesn't fit as well.  Shaun of the Dead already used "Don't Stop Me Now" perfectly, so I think this should've been swapped out with some "Stone Cold Crazy" or maybe the guitar solo into the end of "Death on Two Legs."  I would much rather write about Queen songs than this movie, in case you couldn't tell. 

I give The Babysitter a 2 copies of Adventures in Babysitting out of 5 because it has merit, just not that much:

Little Evil (2017) 1h 34m

This is the third fuckin' horror movie I'm doing on here that has Adam Scott in it! Piranha, Krampus, and now the Netflix original, Little Evil!  Is he becoming the new Christopher Walken, popping up all over the place because he doesn't want to get bored?  I'm not complaining.  He became a boy mayor and blew the town's money on a giant winter sports complex named Ice Town!  And if you don't understand that then go watch Parks and Rec you uncouth fart!

Little Evil is a horror comedy based around the premise of The Omen... or maybe just an AC/DC album since the kid looks more like Angus Young than Damien.  Gary marries the woman of his dreams without having ever spent time with her son Lucas.  Lucas is literally the child of the devil, conceived through some strange cult ritual.  Gary just wants to be a good step-dad for his step-son, Lucas wants to bring about the apocalypse, the mother is oblivious.  It's a step-dad support group vs. a doomsday cult while Gary attempts to become the father he never had.

Netflix hasn't really been pumping out good content when it comes to their original horror films (ex: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House) but they do a much better job when it's a cross-up such as this.  It's like an America swing at making a film in the vein of Shaun of the Dead.  We get nods to The Shining, Poltergeist, and some Ghostbusters humor thrown in.  We're also treated to one of the best uses of Rush's "Tom Sawyer" for a device reveal.  I had a good time watching Little Evil.  It's one of those films where you could have some friends over, order some food, and make a Friday night of it.

I give Little Evil 3 copies of High Voltage out of 5:

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) 1h 29m

Lily, the main character in this film, is from Altoona, PA.  I grew up about 20 minutes from Altoona so I'm going to give you some fun facts that I remember about that town:

1) Sheetz started there.  If you're not familiar with Sheetz, it started the whole Made To Order gas station food thing.  The main strip of Altoona has something like six Sheetz that you can all see from each other.  It's also Western PA's version of Wawa.

2) It's known for the Horseshoe Curve which is just a horseshoe shaped section of train track in the mountains.  I rode a train on it in fifth grade as a class trip.  It wasn't impressive.

3) Benzel's Pretzels started there.

4) It had a Chuck E Cheese's which had the arcade game Crossbow and my friend Dustin and I would go as adults and play the shit out of it.

5) There's a bowling alley there that I ordered a cheeseburger at in 1999 and since then it has remained the best burger I've ever eaten in my life.

It's pretty bad when I'm more interested in telling you about Altoona than talk about this movie.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a Netflix original that I wish they wouldn't have made and put that money back in to doing another season of Sense 8.  Lily is a nurse/caretaker for the elderly and she has been sent to the North East to take care of an author nearing the end of her life.  From what I could gather there is a ghost that haunts the house named Polly.  Her body is hidden in the wall after her husband killed her in early 19XX or late 18XX.  I don't know for sure.  Time is really an illusion when it comes to this movie because we find out that Lily had been working there for a year at one point and I have no idea how that passage of time happened beyond three days.  The ghost starts fucking with Lily and it's dumb.

Most of this movie's exposition is done in voice over from Lily but it's done in that way where it seems like she's trying to seem more interesting than she is.  When she's reading one of the author's books it becomes even more apparent because the book is so well written in comparison to the dialog.  The writer (and director) of this movie wrote both things, why could they not see that one makes the other sound pretentious and annoying?

I think that this film was written with an "ABC" concept.  We have "A" with "B" and "C" is the outcome but everything in-between is filler.  Very dimly lit, monotone, and boring filler just oozing out of the cracks.

I give I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House 0 Casper comics out of 5:

Death Note (2017) 1h 41m

I knew this day would come.  I fucking knew it!  I just hoped that it would be much later than this, and on Halloween of all days!  So I've read all of the original Death Note manga, saw all of the anime, and own two of the three Japanese films (Death Note and Death Note II, but not L Saved the World).  When Netflix said they were going to make their own movie based on Death Note it was met with some excitement and some skepticism.  Then it came out and all I heard about it was that it was trash upon trash.  So how does this really measure up?

If you're unfamiliar with the premise, Death Note is about an ultra intelligent teenage boy named Light.  He finds a notebook labeled as a "Death Note" and a list of rules inside of how to use it.  The book itself belongs to a Shinigami (death god) named Ryuk who acts as an influencer and voyeur to Light's use of the Death Note.  After donning the name "Kira" (an indirect form of the word "killer" in Japanese), Light uses the Death Note in a self-conceived notion of global morality by eliminating criminals.  A special operative, another teenage boy of extreme intelligence, known only as L is put on the case to flush out Kira.

That pretty much sums up what is maybe the first quarter of the original story and more info than you're given for the entirety of this film.  If you know nothing at all about Death Note then you might like this film.  If you know even the slightest bit about Death Note then you know this is a bastardization of the source material set in America.  I could go on and on about why this wasn't good, but those reviews already exist so I'll jump to the two things I did like about this.  First, Ryuk (and more importantly Willem Dafoe's voice acting) was a shining star in the black void of this film.  The lines were dead on, the look was great, and Willen Dafoe fucking kills it with his laughs and line deliveries.  Second, this version of L was much more proactive than the original.  He took risks that were out of character for L, but it made him a bit more interesting.  It doesn't help that I'm not really a fan of L in the manga/anime and much prefer Near, but with this film you have no clue what I'm talking about.

So is this movie the turd sandwich people say it is?  Ehhhh... Like I said, if you have even flipped through the manga then you know this movie is trash.  Although, for people that have no clue about Death Note, maybe this will be their gateway into the real thing, or maybe it will be their intro to manga and anime.  So I can't really shit on that.  Kids still get into metal based on new Metallica albums.  If it leads to them finding good metal or visiting the old Metallica albums, then good for them.  Metal up your ass...

I give Death Note 1 apple out of 5 (in honor of Willem Dafoe's Ryuk):