Thursday 26 April 2018

Aaron’s Spoiler-Free review of Emelie

Well, well, well. What do we have here? Bad babysitters? You had me at “bad babysitters”! So, with that in mind, let’s continue, shall we?

There’s something about this genre that just does it for me.Perhaps it’s the play of a strange adult being given power over children forced to do their twisted bidding, all of which can unravel an entire cacophony of mind-chilling madness and cinematic depravity. Maybe I just have some deep-seated dominant matriarchal issues that are in serious need of addressing. Either way, I’m rock hard, so let’s continue!

What we have here is a film about a babysitter (obviously) named Emelie who, after having schemed her way into babysitting for two loving parents, has a whole other agenda at mind when she starts allowing the children to play inappropriate games, eat what they want, do what they want, and even stay up past bed time. That’s not a horror story is it? That’s a kid’s dream come true! Yeah, well…give it a minute. You’ll see.

As mentioned before, I love the babysitter aspect of horror. There’s something about an overruling adult who uses and manipulates kids to do their foul bidding that just makes for an excellent wrong'un, and throughout the film you just find yourself rooting for the kid to get out of the terrifying situation, bringing out that wannabe-heroic ten-year-old that lingers in all of us as they fight the powers that be! It’s like the rebellion of our youths taking on those mean, mean grown-ups that try to pin us down, whilst also proving that, even though we’re just kids, we can be heroes too! Yes! We! Can!

That being said, this film was shit. Nah, I’m only joking! Not a bad flick here, so to speak. We’ve got the bad babysitter who turns up to look after three kids, all of which are played fantastically, particularly the old brother, so kudos to our three young child actors there (I’m sure Rob will add the names. Even as he reads this he’s thinking “Oh, sure, yeah, Rob’ll do it! It's not like I have anything better to do!”)...

...

IMDB has them listed as Thomas Bair, Carly Adams and Chris Beetem. I assume, anyway.

Top points though, go to our leading lady playing the titular character, whose motives are very dark and twisted, who gives a fucking chilling performance and is definitely one I would like to see in more genre films of the like.

Now, this film is clearly not without its faults, and unfortunately, for me, just around the halfway point it does slowly begin to lose steam which is really unfortunate as this film had really strong legs to start with. What's weird is that as it then starts to go downhill, it also loses its momentum, which I’m pretty sure physics shouldn’t allow (Thanks, Obama!).

Still, not a bad flick, just not a particularly great one either, which is a real pity, because it really could’ve been, especially with such strong acting, pretty solid writing on the whole, and more than adequate direction.

Aaron's Spoiler-Free Rating: Just wasn’t for me, I guess. Oh, well. – 5/10


Aaron James Waters is a best-selling Pulp Fiction writer who has written more books than he's actually read.

He's also the rotten apple of the group who thinks this whole Star Wars thing needs to hurry up and die already.

You can find Aaron's debut novel on Amazon!





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