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Join UsA Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Movie Review Rating: 3/5 Stars (Three stars)
Star Cast: Tom Felton, Tamara Smart, Indya Moore, Oona Laurence
Director: Rachel Talalay
What’s Good: A new horror-comedy to watch during the Halloween month.
What’s Bad: It’s a movie, not a series.
Loo Break: You can take if it’s nature’s call. But boo, beware of the monsters!
Watch or Not?: Love Tom Felton? Please watch!
User Rating:
The movie starts with 5-year-old Kelly Ferguson trying to sleep after her babysitter puts her to sleep. However, she’s scared of the toys in her room. Little Kelly knows her toys come to life and do scary activities during the night. Suddenly, a frightening hand comes out of the cupboard, and the scene immediately takes us to a classroom. Kelly is now around 15, a high school student, played by Tamara Smart. During her childhood, she tells people about the night when she saw monsters. Hence, everyone calls her a ‘Monster girl’.
Kelly’s life comes to a full circle in the 30 minutes of the movie – from having a babysitter to being one. Her mother requests her to babysit her colleague’s son Jacob (Ian Ho) during Halloween night. Jacob has trouble sleeping because he also experiences similar activities of toys and monsters in his room as little Kelly did. Tom Felton’s Grand Guignol finally reveals himself and takes away Jacob. That’s when Liz from the Babysitter world comes in the pictures. It’s then an adventure for both Kelly and Liz.
A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Movie Review: Script Analysis
The movie is an adaptation of Joe Ballarini’s book of the same name. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not aware if the tone in the book is serious or comedic, as we saw in the movie. The story for the film is written by Joe as well, so I’m assuming the book sets a similar mood. Horror is the crux, but there are some hilarious moments. The writing is simple, and the story is easy to understand for kids as well as adults. Despite having the word ‘monster’ in it, there are no graphic scenes or foul language used in it. The movie can easily be termed as a clean horror-comedy.
Tom Felton is a brilliant actor. He’s the nightmare in the movie. However, his character lacked an excellent backdrop because one would want to know his intentions for everything he is doing. They do have a reason, but it’s tough to take it seriously.
A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Movie Review: Star Performance
Tamara Smart plays Kelly Ferguson well. As a teenage character, Tamara perfectly portrays the shyness, anxiety, being weird in front of her crush scenes.
Oona Laurence is quite sassy in the movie. She’s quite proud of what she does, but yet, empathetic. Oona gives a fantastic performance as Liz.
Tom Felton channels the evil side of Draco Malfoy. In the Harry Potter movies, we saw how much he enjoyed troubling Harry and his friends. Here, as the Grand Guignol, he’s scaring the sh*t out of kids and enjoys every bit of it.
Ian Ho is cute as Jacob and played his part well.
A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Movie Review: Direction, Music
The movie is a comedy horror, but one can figure out that it’s made for the audience of all age. Yes, there are monsters. Yet, they look cute and are called Toadies. No doubt that Tom Felton is a nightmare for every kid. But he has his dumb moments too. So director Rachel Talalay has taken good care of showing a clean horror movie. One doesn’t always need blood and deaths to present Halloween stories. But this is indeed a creepy Toy Story in parts.
The spooky Halloween mood is captured perfectly. There are monsters, an evil man, kids, adults partying, teenagers having fun and lots of funky lights and colours. Credit goes to Gregory Middleton for capturing the essence to the T.
The movie ended on a cliffhanger. But I think this would’ve made into a perfect web series than a movie. It would give us an insight into every character better; especially Grand Guignol.
Matthew Margeson gave the music for the film. Just like the movie, the music is upbeat and light.
A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Movie Review: The Last Word
Overall, A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting is an entertaining horror-comedy. Yes, it’s not scary AF, but it’s not dull either. The characters do fall short, but you’ll have fun while watching it. Also, Tom Felton playing the bad guy again; no one wants to miss that.
Three Stars!
A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting Trailer
A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting releases on 15th October, 2020.
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