A last minute replacement babysitter is not what she seems.
Directed by: Michael Thelin
Starring: Sarah Bolger, Joshua Rush, Carly Adams, Thomas
Bair, Randi Langdon
Sarah Bolger is an Irish actress who bears more than a passing
resemblance to her compatriot Saoirse Ronan. Curiously, both actresses came
to prominence in 2008 by starring in young adult fantasy movies - Butler in
The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ronan in
City of Ember. While Ronan has gone on to
high profile roles, Butler has found herself relegated to second rate horror
fare like The Moth Diaries and
The Lazarus Effect, and a recurring role in TV show Once Upon a Time. She seems to have become typecast as a wide-eyed innocent in genre fare,
but with Emelie, Bolger is given the
chance to play the villain, and boy does she make the most of it!
Director Michael Thelin opens his film with an unsettling single
take, filmed from a voyeuristic vantage point as a teenage girl is bundled
into a car against her will on an average suburban American neighbourhood
street. We're then introduced to the Thompsons - Dan (Chris Beetem)
and Joyce (Susan Pourfar) - who are heading off to a restaurant in
the city to celebrate their 13th anniversary. Their usual babysitter has
bailed at the last minute, but her replacement, Anna (Bolger), seems just
perfect.
With their parents away, Anna is left in charge of 11 year old Jacob (Joshua Rush), nine year old Sally (Carly Adams) and four year old Christopher
(Thomas Bair). At first it seems Anna simply has a more liberal
approach to babysitting, allowing her charges to create a mess and eat more
cookies than is healthy, but it doesn't take long before she's displaying
some seriously creepy behaviour - asking a highly embarrassed Jacob to help
her out with a 'woman's matter', indulging in some horrifying animal cruelty
and making the kids watch one of their parents' "private" home movies.
Realising this is no ordinary babysitter, Jacob decides he's going to have
to grow up quickly in order to save his siblings.
Countless horror movies have employed virginal female teenage protagonists
to add a psycho-sexual dimension to their narratives, and babysitters have
been terrorised since John Carpenter's
Halloween. What's most interesting about
Emelie is how it reverses this trope,
making the babysitter the villain, and giving us a young male protagonist in
the midst of puberty. Over the course of the movie, Jacob both literally and
metaphorically 'becomes a man', and young actor Rush does some excellent
work here, particularly when portraying a young boy's fear of female
sexuality and all its mystery.
Bolger is terrifying as the child minder from Hell, and the film's gradual
escalation of her particular brand of crazy makes for a highly effective
slow burning thriller up to the point when the full extent of her
motivations are revealed. It's at this stage that
Emelie retreats into mediocrity,
delivering a finale that plays too close to Home Alone to be taken seriously. At a mere 80 minutes, the climax feels all too
rushed, and the film could greatly benefit from another 10 minutes or so of
build-up. A sub-plot with Jacob's friend next door is redundant in its
contribution to the overall narrative. It's the middle section, during which
Bolger and Rush excel in their characters' psychological game of cat and
mouse, that elevates Emelie above
Lifetime movie of the week territory, but it's ultimately a frustrating
movie that could have greatly benefitted from another couple of passes at
the script.
Emelie is on Prime Video UK
now.
