The Babysitter: Killer Queen Review

Synopsis:
Two years after Cole survived a satanic blood cult, he’s living another nightmare: high school. And the demons from his past? Still making his life hell.

Cast: Judah Lewis, Jenna Ortega, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Hana Mae Lee, Ken Marino, Leslie Bibb, Chris Wylde, Carl McDowell, Samara Weaving

Directors: McG
Writers: Dan Lagana, Brad Morris, Jimmy Warden, McG, Brian Duffield (based on characters by)

In my review for 2017’s The Babysitter I said it was “surprisingly a lot of fun,” and praised the film for the “less than 90 minutes of bombastic” violent fun. The Netflix film had a lot of charm thanks to a great cast lead by Samara Weaving and a script by Briand Duffield which was perfect for director McG’s music video style shooting. The sequel, The Babysitter: Killer Queen is 20 minutes longer, missing Samara Weaving and, amazingly, has four writers onboard — none of which are Brian Duffield. It’s missing everything that made the first film fun as McG doubles-down on the things he must think made the first film a success.

Cole (Judah Lewis) is now in High School with Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind) who, like everyone else in the film, is treating Cole like he’s losing his mind after the events of the first film. His parents — Ken Marino & Leslie Bibb having a great time once again — think Cole just drove Mel’s dads’ car into their house for fun. No one questions where the dead students from that night have gone. No one cares to bring up, well, if Cole is making this up, where is Bee (Samara Weaving)? Where are the dead cops that showed up during the night? This is just the start of an awful script that, again, took four writers.

To help Cole deal with his stress Mel invites him on a weekend trip to the beach to relax. Just when everything seems to be going smooth, surprise! It’s Max (Robbie Amell), Allison (Bella Thorne), Sonya (Hana Mae Lee) and John (Andrew Bachelor) back from the dead and seeking revenge.

I wish I could spoil the movies first twist, but I won’t. I’ll say it made me roll my eyes. But just wait until the second twist — I was looking like the girl from The Exorcist.

One new character is introduced amongst this mess of plot holes, horror movie tropes and whatever special effects McG can think to introduce that is supposed to make us laugh. Jenna Ortega plays Pheobe, a new girl at Cole’s school who gets a really weird introduction, but is actually one of the better parts of The Babysitter: Killer Queen.

There are some fun kills, but when you’re watching Cole re-kill characters from the first film, it just isn’t as exciting the second time around. Same goes for the recycled jokes. Zing!

I feel like my bar was already very low for this sequel and it somehow slipped under that. As a fan of the original, who has watched The Babysitter twice, I advise you to ignore this complete waste of a sequel.