Appalling movie is better not watched
From Wake in Fright to Wolf Creek, Bad Boy Bubby to The Babadook, Australia has produced its fair share of sweat-inducing, nightmare-producing movies.
But nothing as decidedly unpleasant and seemingly culturally tone-deaf as what’s about to be unleashed in select Kiwi cinemas from today.
Forget the unpalatable prospect (now erased) of the disgraced Kevin Spacey appearing as John Paul Getty in next month’s All the Money in the World, the release of ‘‘subversive’’ horror Better Watch Out during the current flood of tales of Hollywood sexual harassment seems far more insensitive and inappropriate. In fact, I wonder, if pitched now, whether it would have got made at all.
Written by Zack Kahn and directed by Aussie Chris Peckover, Better Watch Out starts out as a kind of Adventures in Baby-sitting-meets-Home-Alone-by-way-of-Scream, before venturing into something more akin to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, The Strangers, or We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Our two anti-heroes – Luke (Pan‘s Levi Miller) and Garrett (Paper Planes‘ Ed Oxenbould) – are looking forward to the arrival of Luke’s 17-year-old babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge), with Luke convinced this is his last chance to ‘‘seduce’’ her before she heads off to college.
‘‘Fear makes girls wet,’’ Luke believes, thanks to Mr Google. And so once his parents have left for the evening, he begins his campaign, initially of charm, but then of fear to try and have his way with her. Oh, and did I mention Luke’s 12?
Now, I’ve watched many a stalker/slasher movie over the years – everything from The Stepfather to Sleeping with the Enemy, countless Friday the 13ths and Nightmare on Elm Sts – but I’ve never felt as utterly appalled or upset in more than 20 years of movie reviewing as I did while watching this. Everything about it feels like a disturbing teen fantasy, a manipulative power game, and just plain nasty.
It seems to revel in its ‘‘bad boy getting away with murder’’ and luxuriate in its leading lady’s character facing one humiliation after another.
At a time when Hollywood is awash with sexual assault allegations, it seems unconscionable and almost beggars belief that here is a story that leaves a teenage girl bloodied and broken, while an even younger boy seemingly gets away scot-free. Justice is not served and the take-away message is wrong on so many levels.
Even the backdrop of a bright young woman about to embark on the next stage of her life bears an unfortunate resemblance to a reallife 2008 event in New Zealand – namely the brutal murder of Sophie Elliott by Clayton Weatherston – that should have also made distributors question the wisdom of releasing the movie here.
I could be overreacting. In fact, many American reviews have been very complimentary (‘‘From the shockingly raunchy dialogue to the ironic yuletide pop songs, this movie is a fun kind of nasty,’’ wrote the Los Angeles Times’ Noel Murray) and I’m the first to acknowledge Peckover shows plenty of promise and no little art.
But like Roger Ebert.com‘s Simon Abrams, I just can’t shake off the uncomfortable horror of what I witnessed, especially when its stars are best-known for their involvement in recently popular kids’ movies.
As he wrote, it is a film that ‘‘starts out as one kind of unpleasant, then switches gears to a higher level of unearned nastiness’’.
Fortunately, our censor has seen fit to make it illegal for those under 16 to watch this (unlike Australia where under 15s can visit with their parents), however I really do wonder if this is really the kind of movie that should be getting a cinematic release this holiday season.