Better Watch Out (2016)

Better Watch Out had a premise that should have been a lot of fun. A babysitter dealing with what appears to be a home invasion during Christmas is a good setup, and the marketing suggested a mix of suspense and dark comedy. I was interested in seeing what it would do with that combination. Unfortunately, the more the story developed, the less I believed in any of it.

There is a particular challenge when you write young characters who are supposed to be clever and dangerous. They still need to sound and behave like the ages they're meant to be. Here, I kept feeling like the dialogue was written for adults and then handed to children. The way they talked, the choices they made and the entire situation became harder to accept as the movie went along.

I don't need perfect realism in horror, especially in a story that deliberately plays with genre expectations. But the characters have to operate within a world that feels coherent. This movie repeatedly asked me to accept decisions I couldn't believe, and it didn't give me enough entertainment in return. Rather than getting tense about what might happen next, I was questioning why any of it was happening.

The cast includes people I enjoy watching, including Virginia Madsen and Patrick Warburton, but they don't have enough screen time to make much difference. The central story rests on the younger characters, and that was exactly where it lost me. A few darkly comic moments might work for viewers more receptive to the premise, but I wasn't laughing much.

The other frustration is that it felt longer than it was. It's a fairly short film, yet I kept wanting it to move along. By the time the ending arrived, I wasn't interested in what the movie had left to reveal. That's a bad place to end up with a thriller.

I know Better Watch Out has an audience, and I can appreciate that some people will enjoy its twists. It just didn't work for me. I wanted a clever Christmas horror comedy with an entertaining home-invasion premise. Instead, I got an implausible story and characters I couldn't connect with. This is one holiday movie I won't be revisiting.

I was hoping Better Watch Out would be a fun little Christmas thriller. The trailer made it look like Home Alone with a horror twist, and after enjoying a few other holiday movies I thought we might be on a roll. Instead, I spent most of it getting more and more annoyed. This was not the Christmas movie night I wanted.

I had worked a long day and was looking forward to sitting down with a good dinner and watching something entertaining. The premise sounded like it could be suspenseful and maybe a little funny. I didn't find much of either. Once the story got going, I had trouble believing the characters or caring about what happened.

The kids were the biggest problem for me. They didn't talk like kids, and their behavior felt so unnatural that I kept getting pulled out of the movie. I know children in horror movies aren't always written realistically, but these characters were especially hard for me to accept. If the movie is going to depend on them, I need to believe they could actually be in that situation.

There were actors I liked in the cast, too. I enjoy Virginia Madsen, and Patrick Warburton is always fun. Unfortunately, they barely figure into the story. That left me spending nearly all my time with the characters who were making me irritated.

What made it worse was that the movie seemed to last forever. I remember looking at how much time was left and being shocked that we still had so much of it to get through. I wasn't frightened in a fun way, I wasn't laughing, and I wasn't invested in any of the twists. I just wanted the night back.

I understand that other people might enjoy the dark humor or the unusual direction the story takes. For me, it didn't work on any of those levels. I came in ready for a fun holiday thriller and ended up in a bad mood. There are too many Christmas horror movies I'd rather spend time with to ever choose this one again.