Better Watch Out (2016)
I love a movie with a good twist. Better Watch Out starts out seeming like it’s going in one direction and ends up somewhere very different. It’s impossible to describe any of the details without going into spoilers. Suffice it to say while I was enjoying the film beforehand, the twist takes this from a decent thriller set around the holiday season to a new level of psychological horror — anchored by a villain whose sociopathic behaviour, like an onion, keeps revealing new characteristics of jaw-dropping evil the more layers you peel back.
The film begins simply enough. Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) is a 17-year-old babysitter looking after 12-year-old Luke Lerner (Levi Miller) while his parents attend a Christmas party. Luke and his best friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) are obsessed with sex in a way you’d expect from pubescent boys, but otherwise Luke seems like a sweet, good-hearted kid. He has romantic feelings for Ashley, who has a boyfriend Luke thinks is a jerk. Ashley rejects Luke’s advances. While watching a horror film, the two hear strange noises from outside. A rock hurled through the window bears the message “U leave and U die.” Soon they find themselves stalked by a home invader.
I can’t really discuss much of the particulars of this film, which I highly recommend to horror fans, without going into spoiler territory. You have been warned.
Spoilers ahead.
CW: Misogyny, sexual violence, torture, murder
While hiding in a closet, Ashley notices that the figure hunting them is wearing one of Luke’s masks. It turns out the invader is Garrett, and the two had staged this home invasion as a way for Luke to impress Ashley by “saving” her, after finding inspiration in an article that links fear to arousal:
Luke: [reading an internet article] “Want to put her in the mood? Watch a horror movie. When we’re scared our brain pumps out dopamine, the same chemical we release when we’re aroused.”
Garrett: So, fear really makes girls wet?
Luke: Told ya.
Ashley justifiably erupts at the two. “What delusional infant thinks that staging a break-in is going to get you to second base?” she yells. A running theme up to this point has been Luke trying to attract Ashley while she thinks of him as just a kid, one she’s babysat for years. Ashley tells Luke he’ll be in big trouble when his parents get home. She’s preparing to go downstairs when Luke suddenly slaps her, causing her to fall down the stairs and to go unconscious. Ashley wakes up to find that Luke and Garrett have tied her to a chair with duct tape over her mouth. From this point on, we begin to understand who Luke really is: a psychopath and sadist who by the film’s end has become an unrepentant serial killer.
As effective a thriller as this film is, it can be difficult at times to suspend our disbelief. Yes, serial killers are often charming and good at hiding their true selves. Until the end of the first act, Luke appears to be a nice, well-meaning boy who does some dumb things because he’s attracted to his babysitter. Later we learn Luke had killed Garrett’s pet hamster while claiming it was an accident. In one of many creepy scenes, Luke whispers in Ashley’s ear that it wasn’t an accident. A recurring trait among serial killers is torturing and killing animals before moving on to human victims. One moment where he forcibly attempts to kiss Ashley, which before the twist seems like just a bad and awkward attempt at a come-on, afterwards feels like evidence of an underlying rapist mentality.
The fact that a 12-year-old boy could turn out to be a psychopathic serial killer isn’t the main issue. Child serial killers unfortunately have existed, although in many cases they murdered infants or other children. Here, we’re asked to believe not only that Luke is able to kill grown men physically stronger than him, but that he is able to fix the crime scene perfectly to blame Ashley’s ex-boyfriend Jeremy (Dacre Montgomery) for carrying out the killings as a murder-suicide. Everything I’ve described above happens during the few hours that his parents are attending a holiday party. It’s a little hard to believe.
If you can accept that, however, this is an excellent film that continually shocks us at Luke’s depravity and sadism. The scenes in which he forces Ashley at gunpoint to play “truth or dare” and touches her breasts while she’s tied to a chair are stomach-churning. When Ashley’s current boyfriend Ricky (Aleks Mikic) shows up, he ends up finding himself the target of Luke’s sadistic game inspired by Home Alone to see what would happen if a person were really hit in the face by a paint can. The results, needless to say, are far more gruesome than the cartoonish violence in Home Alone.
Part of what makes this film so fascinating is its exploration of the darker aspects of male sexuality, embodied in its 12-year-old villain. Luke in the first act seems like a young version of your prototypical “nice guy”. He complains that the object of his affection only dates jerks, while Ashley insists that Ricky, for example, has a sweet side. The rest of the film makes clear that this “nice guy” is in fact a murderous sociopath capable of unimaginable rage and sadism. It’s the classic incel mentality. Incel forums are full of self-pitying boys and young men — often in their teens — who praise and glorify mass murderers. Luke is every woman’s nightmare: the apparently “nice guy” who turns out to be a serial killer, the horror in this case compounded by his young age.
One of the ways director Chris Peckover, who co-wrote the script with Zack Kahn, visually illustrates the dynamic between Ashley, Luke, and Garrett is through the fact that they all have similar heights, despite the fact that Ashley is five years older. At 12 years old, girls are often taller than boys of the same age. At a petite 160 cm or 5’ 3”, however, DeJonge is barely taller than Miller or Oxenbould. This conveys in visual terms the story’s themes of a boy trying to prove he’s a man, while the young woman of his affections sees him as just a kid. During the first act, Ashley can appear to be the protector of Luke, other times vice versa. The actors’ similar heights is a good way to show the shifting dynamics of who appears to be protecting who.
The performances are excellent. Olivia DeJonge has been a favourite up-and-coming actor since she portrayed Priscilla Presley in Elvis, but her work here is much more multi-layered. DeJonge gives her character more depth than there is on the page, which primarily views Ashley from the perspective of her relationships with male characters. Miller, though, is probably the MVP. He plays a seemingly nice if awkward boy in the first act, then becomes an ever more abhorrent monster for the rest of the film. It’s an impressive feat for such a young actor to feel like a genuine threat, and to make your skin crawl the way Luke does in the last two acts.
The last question I need to address is one familiar to anyone who’s discussed the holiday merits of Die Hard: is Better Watch Out a Christmas film? On the surface, yes. This film has plenty of Yuletide visuals and Christmas songs on the soundtrack. But like Die Hard, this being a Christmas film is almost incidental. The same plot could have taken place at any other time of year. Still, if you’re looking for a Christmas-themed movie darker than the usual holiday fare, Better Watch Out is a solid choice. Just don’t watch it thinking you’ll end up with a benevolent feeling of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
9/10
