Josh's Review of THE NIGHT SITTER
Starring: Elyse Dufour, Jack Champion, Jermaine Rivers.
Written and directed by: Abiel Bruhn and John Rocco.
If you are in need of a cheesy horror comedy fix, then The Night Sitter might be just your ticket. Written and directed by Abiel Bruhn and John Rocco, respectfully, the film introduces us to Elyse Dufour's Amber, a young woman who answers an online babysitter ad placed by a wealthy widower and occult collector to look after two kids. However, all is not as it seems as there is more to Amber than meets the eye. You see, despite her innocuous babysitter act, she is, in fact, revealed as someone supplanting herself in the lavish home so that she can rob it once are the children are asleep.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, in order to set up the plot), the children(mentioned earlier) don't go to bed as planned and stumble across a manuscript called 'The Book of the Three Sisters' housed in the father's forbidden room. As you would expect, in their curiousity, they unwittingly unleash The Three Sisters - a coven of witches - when they open the book and manage to spill blood (of course) onto it; thus setting the events of the film in motion. As a result, Amber finds herself doing a "heel turn" as she changes her robbing ways to eventually become the children's protector against the growing power of the Three Sisters.
If you can imagine what a Adventurers In Babysitting meets The Evil Dead movie would look like, then you would have The Night Sitter. Sadly, I have to confess that in the case of this film, it comes with far less charm or humor. Though the movie tries to get by on a lot of troupes such as "the house full of cursed items" or "the kid with a disaffected father" it just falls flat in some cases. For instance, in referencing the cursed items, in one particular scene, we're treated to a sequence lifted right out of The Evil Dead, when the Book of the Three Sisters, levitates in midair as it flips its pages.
While the film fervently tries to be a horror comedy in the same vain as The Evil Dead, most of the jokes are normally pretty juvenile and not that funny. Still, with that said, the two best parts of this film are Elyse Dufour and Jack Champion. As a veteran of such shows as The Walking Dead, Sleepy Hollow, and Constantine, Dufour is an excellent actress and does a great job of making her character's transition from thief to hero quite seamless. Similarly, Champion does a great job of portraying a sympathetic, sensitive kid who just wants his father's attention. Thanks to their great performances, they allow the movie to be far better than it deserves to be. All in all, while not on par with the superior Raimi classic mentioned above, The Night Sitter is a good, solid time.
Overall grade: B-
The Night Sitter arrives August 6 on DVD and VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment.
