To make a decent horror film with a strong story, several things are essential. It is not enough to have murdered, jump scares, gore, or action. Most good horror films thrive at building suspense as the plot unravels piece by piece until the essence of the plot smacks us in the face.
Babysitting movies are a wonderful basis for writing a terrific horror movie. There is a lot more to discover when a new individual moves into a new property with only children. It is much better if the child is the issue.
Since the adults have left, no one can help you. The babysitter, who is vulnerable, is also in a completely new environment with no one they know. Evil forces and creepy killers can exert their power since the dwellings are often located distant from the main town in a rural and abandoned place. A house with no grownups, children who are sent to sleep, and a teen-in-charge has the freedom to include some fanservice for the audience.
But, let us face it, scenes when the head is hacked off, the intestines are spilled out, the blood is sprayed, or the body parts are chopped off are true fanservice for horror aficionados. There are other movies about babysitters in which this occurs. To put it another way, there is a lot of flexibility here. And every now and then, the plot turns around and makes the babysitter the bad guy.
We have a list of eight horror stories about babysitters in this video, ranging from Satanic cults to crazed babysitters to strange dolls to serial murders.
Before we get started with the programming, we have a tiny request for our viewers. Please consider being a Marvelous Videos subscriber. Like and comment on our videos, and click the bell button to get notified when we add new ones. We would be grateful, and we hope to provide you with the greatest nerdy stuff possible. Let us go straight into the video without further ado.
Babysitter Wanted (2008)
Talk about a part-time job gone wrong. Protagonist Angie is starting her life anew in this movie as she leaves Bakersfield and her religious mother for college in Yreka. Fortunately (or not), she finds a babysitting job from a poster and decides to go for it. But Angie finds herself in the second-worst job situation of all time, the worst is obviously part-time jobs that pay you with exposure.
Meanwhile, she realizes that some man is stalking her. But she does not pay much heed to it at first. She goes to meet the family she was going to babysit for and meets Sam, a young boy who always wore a hat and acted sus. Angie also meets his neighbor Rick, who develops a crush on her.
The next day, Angie finds a poster of herself on her door which reads that she may go missing if she goes for her babysitting job. Terrified, she goes to the cops and tells them about it. She gets their number to call in case she finds herself in an emergency situation.
After she reaches Sam’s house to babysit, Sam’s father notices Rick who was around as Angie was having some troubles with her car. Sam turns out to be a quiet guy who does not bother Angie but all is not as good as it seems. Sam having a taste for rare meat just makes things a bit more complicated.
The house is far away from the main city so when things go south, Angie cannot run to the streets and call for people. So when she begins to get calls from an anonymous number at Sam’s place itself, she decides to call the cops and tell them about her situation.
Her stalker arrives at Angie’s destination as well and locks the house from the outside. Angie believes that the guy is the main perpetrator of the problem so when he breaks into the house, she attacks him. She manages to kill him off but Sam’s hat is gone. Angie notices a pair of horns popping out of his hair and realizes that the child is a demon while the man was a priest who wanted to kill it.
Sam’s family arrives and realizes that Angie has learned their secret so now they must get rid of her. This paired with Sam’s fondness for raw meat helps you take a good guess at what happens to be in store for Angie. And of course, the cops do not arrive on time. So Angie has to fight a demon and his guardians to save her life.
The movie takes the time necessary to set its premise and build the plot but it is executed in a manner that makes the audience less bored and more eager. There’s horror, there’s action, and the movie boasts a concoction of elements that make the perfect slasher film. The suspense makes you curious, the pacing keeps you on the edge of your seat, and the action makes your adrenaline go into overdrive. It also does not shy away from showing dismemberments and generous splatters of blood so you’re in for a ride.
The House Of The Devil (2009)
Demonic entities are particularly good at scouting big houses far away from the town but this comes with a slight problem – a lack of people. For a cult that needs humans for sacrifices or rituals, this becomes a hindrance but babysitting in horror movies has turned out to be the perfect cure for this issue.
Set in the 1980s, the movie shows us Samantha Hughes, a college student who is broke and finds herself unable to pay the rent to her landlord. She finds a well-paying babysitting job and decides to go for it. Her best friend Megan gives her a ride to this faraway mansion where Samantha re-negotiates the amount after learning from Mr. Ulman that she has to take care of his old mother and not a child. Samantha tries to dip but an offer of four hundred dollars for a mere four hours would excite anyone.
She also meets Mrs. Ulman, a woman who keeps her fur coats in her basement. After the Ulman’s leave, Samantha decides to navigate through the house. Considering the fact Mr. Ulman’s mother does not need much help, she gets the time to do so. She finds photographs of a different family. In the picture, they stood in front of a car that Samantha and Megan had seen outside the mansion. She realizes that something is not right. A separate scene shows those three members as corpses in a Pentagram.
A random stranger finds Megan in the car, who was waiting outside to pick Samantha up after she was done. On realizing that she is not the babysitter, the stranger shoots her dead.
Samantha begins to hear strange noises in the mansion and finds a sink full of hair. She deals with the suspicious events by ordering pizza because a good ‘ole pepperoni pizza helps you find some solace. Unfortunately for her, the pizza is delivered by the stranger who killed Megan. Samantha stops eating it after realizing that it tastes weird but the damage has already been done.
It was the night of a lunar eclipse, which has a lot of significance when you think about the presence of a Pentagram in the house. The drugged pizza causes Samantha to pass out. When she wakes up, she is bound to the Pentagram and surrounded by the Ulman family, who were a Satanic cult and wanted to use Samantha’s body on the night of the eclipse so that the Anti-Christ could be reborn.
Now, Samantha has to protect herself from the unfortunate fiasco she becomes a part of, proving that four hundred dollars in four hours, that too in the 1980s, is too good to be true. In fact, in the 80s, a generous percentage of Americans believed that abusive Satanic cults as such did exist, which is why using the 80s as a premise for the movie works well. Another reason why this is a suitable era is that back in the day, it wouldn’t have been impossible to save a generous amount of money via babysitting for your rent, which is a distant dream now, thanks to inflation.
The movie drags on a wee bit until Megan’s death, after which it keeps getting more and more intense. Dabbling into some Satanic, some ominous references here and there, and graphic scenes add more flavor to the movie. Watching Samantha choose to not have cheese pizza with pepperoni is a heartbreaking moment but you gotta do what you gotta do if your enemy is the Antichrist.
Halloween (1978)
The movie is set in a fictional town called Haddonfield in Illinois. On Halloween, a six-year-old Michael Myers finds a mask and a knife. He stabs his sister, killing her. He is then incarcerated at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium for fifteen years where his psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis believes that Michael is nothing but pure evil.
As he was escorting Michael to a court hearing, Michael manages to get out of the situation by stealing a car. He kills a mechanic and steals some supplies. From a local hardware store, he steals the iconic white mask that can be recognized by lovers of horror from all over the world.
It is Halloween again and the Myers household is now believed to be an abandoned and haunted house. Laurie Strode is a high school student whose father is also trying to sell the house. She was being stalked by Michael but her friends did not pay much attention to her concerns. Dr. Loomis arrives at Haddonfield to find Michael. Meanwhile, Laurie must babysit Tommy Doyle that night while her friend Annie is busy with Lindsey Wallace in another babysitting job across the street.
Michael kills the Wallace household’s dog and is noticed by Tommy. Annie takes Lindsey to Laurie and Tommy and leaves to pick her boyfriend up. However, Michael reaches her car and kills her via strangling and a throat slice. Their other friend, Linda, goes to the Wallace family’s house with her boyfriend Bob but finds it empty.
Michael gets his hands on Bob and kills him. He also strangles Lynda with a phone cord while she was on a call with Laurie, who thinks the whole situation is a joke. But when suspicion hits, she goes to the Wallace house and finds the corpses of her friends along with the headstone of Judith Myers, Michael’s sister who he had killed. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis finds the car Michael had stolen and closes in on him.
Michael finds Laurie and slashes her arm. She runs away to the Doyle household to save herself and the kids, Tommy and Lindsey. The telephone stops working so they cannot reach anyone for help. But she is unable to avoid Michael as he reaches her and now, she has to fight a killer who she cannot kill. She must also save the two kids and deal with the death of her friends. The only one who can be of some help to her right now is Dr. Loomis, provided he arrives on time. But Michael isn’t one to go down so easily.
Halloween was directed by the legendary filmmaker John Carpenter and happens to be one of the greatest slasher films of all time. This was also Jamie Lee Curtis’ debut film. The film is renowned for its iconic score, composed by John Carpenter himself, and is a Halloween classic. The movie is loved critically and commercially. Plus, there’s a reason why Michael Myers kills. He really hates teenage sexuality. You’ve got to watch the movie if you want to find out more about him and get a breathtaking experience of one of the best horror films and most influential works in horror.
Emelie (2015)
Dan and Joyce had four kids, Jacob, Sally, and Christopher. They had decided to go out to celebrate their thirteen-year anniversary so a girl named Anna was supposed to babysit the kids. However, a woman named Emelie and another man kidnap Anna. Emelie goes to the house to babysit, posing as Anna while the family is oblivious of it. But, Emelie is straight-up crazy.
Instead of the babysitter being pursued by the antagonist, the babysitter in Emelie is the antagonist. She opens the safe of the house, turns off the internet modem, feeds Sally’s pet hamster to Jacob’s python, and makes the kids do odd things. She even makes Sally and Christopher watch a sex tape of their parents, much to Jacob’s disgust. Meanwhile, Jacob steals Emelie’s purse and realizes that she is only posing as Anna. At the same time, the man who helped kidnap Anna looks over Dan and Joyce in the restaurant.
Emelie tells Sally and Christopher a story about a mama bear who lost her cub. After its death, the Mama Bear met with a Skinny Hyena. They got into trouble and escaped to a new place to search for a new cub. We find out that Emelie is the Mama Bear while the other man is the Skinny Hyena.
She had a child once but he died after she accidentally suffocated him to death after falling asleep on the couch. She met the other man and couldn’t have children with him or adopt. One day, while staring at the kids on a playground, she texted the Skinny Man saying that she had found her ‘cubby’.
The kids had a regular babysitter called Maggie. She checked in on them as she hadn’t heard from Anna but Emelie lied about Anna being under the weather which is why she was unable to make it. But while Maggie was leaving, Sally shoved a note into Maggie’s bag, asking her for help. When Maggie reads it in her car, Emelie arrives and knocked her unconscious.
Emelie is desperate to take Christopher with her as she thinks that she is the Mama Bear and he is her cub. She makes the kids drink a cough syrup that will make them sleep but Jacob, who was being a hindrance to Emelie ever since he had found out about her real name, spat it out in secret. He then pretends to sleep but in Emelie’s absence, tries to contact his friend Howie for help.
On the other end, Dan and Joyce were taking a cab home when the Skinny Man crashes his car into theirs. However, the Skinny Man ended up dying instead and from the police, they realized that the man had no identity plus his car was stolen. They also found Anna’s corpse in the trunk of the car and realized that the kids were unsafe.
Back at the residence, Jacob unravels everything Emelie has been doing and fights back, waiting for the police and his parents to come.
Even without any demonic entity or supernatural element, Emelie manages to be horrifying. Maybe it succeeds so well because she is a regular person, which makes it all too real and possible. Emelie’s twisted character and deranged behavior shine in the first half of the film as it gives rise to several creepy and problematic scenes, such as the one where the kids are made to watch their parents’ sex tape. As the second half rolls in and the plot unravels, the mystery becomes a thriller.
When A Stranger Calls (2006)
Several homicides had been committed at a house. The local sheriff of that area enters the scene and reveals that three children and their babysitter were the victims of the murder case. They were all slaughtered brutally and there were no traces of a weapon. Bare hands only.
The scene shifts to a town called Fernhill in Colorado, one twenty-five miles away from the house we just saw. A sixteen-year-old girl called Jill Johnson had run her phone bill so high that her parents had punished her by arranging a babysitting session of hers with the kids in the wealthy Mandrakis family. She was not having the best day as she had seen her boyfriend Bobby kiss her friend Tiffany.
She arrived at the Mandrakis residence where the parents of the kids showed her around the house, told her about the live-in housemaid Rosa, and Todd, the kids’ father’s son from his previous marriage who lived in the guesthouse nearby.
While the two kids slept, Jill began to explore the luxurious house. The family was so rich that anytime she entered a room, it was detected by the motion sensors, causing the lights to switch on. However, while trying out some jewelry, she heard someone outside.
She gradually became a victim of receiving strange phone calls from someone who never spoke but constantly called her. So, she begins to think that it is either her friends playing a prank on her or her boyfriend Bobby calling. But when she calls them to confirm it, they deny any such activity. She also meets the live-in housemaid Rosa, who was feeding the fishes. Jill also begins to notice the motion sensors get activated at random times but it happens to be the housecat. If not, she suspects that it must be Rosa.
Tiffany enters the Mandrakis house to apologize to Jill for kissing her boyfriend. Jill asks her to leave as she did not want to get into trouble. While Tiffany was leaving, she was ambushed by someone.
At the Mandrakis residence, the security alarm began to go off, which scared Jill. She began to get calls about it from the family but managed to control the situation. She keeps getting more calls. Scared, she contacts the cops and asks them to trace her signal. Meanwhile, she is unable to spot Rosa and realizes that Todd wasn’t home, so the shadow in the guest house must have been someone else.
Jill’s situation gets worse as she finds herself alienated in a new house with the threat of an anonymous killer looming over her head.
In the movie, the majority of the emphasis is laid on the suspenseful elements of the story instead of the regular horror and slasher stuff. It spends a generous amount of time setting up the problem Jill faces. Judging by the title of the movie, it is less about murders and more about the suspicious phone calls that plague Jill’s experience. With each minute, the danger increases, and the ending of the movie add the cherry on top. The moral? Be careful with your phone bills.
The Babysitter (2017)
Cole is a pre-teen guy who has a lot of fears and is not the bravest. But in this movie, he finds himself falling into situations where he has to conquer those fears in the end. His neighbor Jeremy bullied him a lot but Bee, his babysitter, had taken a stand for him and scared Jeremy away. In fact, Bee was one of Cole’s only two friends.
Cole’s friend tells him that babysitters often send the kids off to sleep and call their boyfriends in. To verify that, Cole decided to spy on Bee. On that night, Cole’s parents had left the house to go to a hotel for the night. Meanwhile, Bee had given Cole some alcohol laced with sleeping medication (Cole was oblivious to the latter). Cole disposed of the drink and pretended to sleep.
Later, he spied on Bee and found that she had called four others to the house – Max, Sonya, Allison, John, and Samuel. Together, they played a game called spin the bottle, where the one who spins the bottle has to kiss the person the bottle is pointing towards. When it is Bee’s turn to kiss Samuel, she pulls out two daggers and stabs his skull from both sides. Cole is shaken beyond belief. He notices Bee collecting Samuel’s blood for a ritual since they belonged to a Satanic cult. They used to sacrifice the blood and lives of people to Satan in return for Satan fulfilling their desires and this time, they also needed the blood of an innocent child and in this case, it was meant to be Cole.
He contacts 911 and preps himself with a pocket knife for defense. He fakes being asleep as Bee and the others enter his room and collect his blood for their ritual. He had a fear of needles but pretends to be dead asleep and they use a syringe to get his blood as he did not want to blow his cover. They leave and Cole tries to escape from the window but passes out due to losing a lot of blood prior to this. He was also oblivious to Bee being present there.
When he gains consciousness, he is questioned by Bee and the others. They make stories about them needing Cole’s blood for a science project. However, the cops arrive and both sides engage in a violent altercation. People die, Cole outsmarts the cultists and ends up killing some. Rather, the boy who used to once get bullied becomes a hero in this situation and not only does he save himself but he also manages to defeat the cultists and stop their rampage. Or does he? You’ve got to watch the movie to find out!
The movie is pretty straightforward and any possible twists to the plot are things that have been revealed early into the first half itself. The standout point is not the horror elements of the story but is Cole’s character arc, as he goes from a scared guy to someone who is capable of doing a lot more than taking care of himself.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
Not all spirits are bad. Some can be good. But Annabelle really does command way too many evil spirits for it to not be a generalized problem. Annabelle Comes Home is the third movie in the Annabelle trilogy and focuses on Ed and Lorraine’s daughter Judy.
The Annabelle doll belonged to nurses Camilla and Debbie. It would perform demonic activities in their house and they had contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren to confiscate the doll. While returning with the doll, it ended up summoning evil spirits to harm Ed but he managed to survive. The doll is taken to the Warren household and a glass box is sanctioned from the church. With the help of a priest, the doll is locked in the box and its demonic activities are curbed.
An important case comes to Ed and Lorraine and they have to travel overnight for it. Since Judy is too young, they get a babysitter, Mary Ellen, to take care of her. Judy did not have friends at school as the kids made fun of her since her parents were demonologists. She also had the same gift as her mother, in the sense that she could see spirits as well. One day, she saw a priest’s spirit following her.
After Mary Ellen reached Judy to babysit her, Mary’s friend Daniela came over uninvited as she wanted to contact her father’s spirit. She tried to enter the room with the artifacts in it but couldn’t do so since she did not have the key. However, she did succeed in finding it and once inside, unlocked the glass box with Annabelle in it. Its powers were now unleashed and it was attracting more and more demonic spirits. However, it attracted both evil and good spirits.
Annabelle releases the spirits of the Black Shuck, which is a ghastly black dog, The Ferryman, and the Bride among several others. Mary’s crush Bob arrives outside their house to meet her but is attacked by the Black Shuck. Judy comes across Annabelle, who is now in her bedroom while Daniela gets locked inside the artifact room. She finally gets to meet her father’s spirit but instead of being like her father, the spirit is twisted and malevolent. Daniela also gets possessed by a spirit but there’s some help on the way. And it is not Ed and Lorraine.
With several demons plaguing the three girls, they try to lock Annabelle in the jar once again. And with some help of course.
Ever since we saw Chucky, the popularity of dolls in horror has skyrocketed. The fear factor associated with dolls reached an all-time high as well. Combine that with the creepy appearance of Annabelle and you get the perfect blend for a generously creepy horror concept. And yet, Annabelle Comes Home isn’t very scary and this may call for some criticism. However, that is not the point of the movie. It actually focuses on other themes, which become clear once you watch it. And if anything, the movie has a great plot with high emotional value.
The Boy (2016)
Greta Evans, an American, moves to the United Kingdom after a wealthy family called the Heelshires to hire her as a nanny. Her ex-boyfriend Cole is extremely abusive and would constantly track her down, so leaving the country turned out to be a good opportunity for her.
Greta goes to the Heelshires residency where Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire is leaving for a holiday. Surprisingly, the child she has to babysit is not a person but in fact, a porcelain doll called Brahms. The Heelshires speak about the doll the way a regular person would speak about their child. Plus, there was a list of things Greta had to do to take care of it: loudly wake him up every morning, change his clothes, play music loudly, and read him stories loudly, because that’s how Brahms liked it.
Naturally, Greta chooses to not do any of that because it seems ridiculous. She also meets a local delivery man called Malcolm and the two of them flirt and develop an interest in each other. Greta also finds out from her sister that her abusive ex-boyfriend Cole had been trying to find out where she is. When Malcolm stops by, he tells her about Brahms being killed in a fire almost twenty years ago when he was only eight. He also asks her out on a date and she says yes.
Greta takes a shower before the date and ever since Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, shower scenes have been successful at making viewers extremely intrigued and scared for what’s about to come. The coral dress and jewelry Greta had selected go missing while she showers. When she comes out, strange noises from the attic lure her inside but she falls and becomes unconscious.
Malcolm comes over but leaves after he is unable to contact Greta. The next morning, Greta is mysteriously let out of the attic and she contacts Malcolm to explain everything to him. She learns from him that when Brahms was alive, Mr. Heelshire would describe him as ‘odd’. Meanwhile, the porcelain doll would often change his place, which was extremely creepy to Greta.
She begins to hear a child sobbing, the phone calls get cut off, and a phone call has a child urging her to follow the rules. At first, Greta locks herself in the room but she then finds a plate with peanut butter and jelly sandwich left for her, outside her door. The child’s voice tells her that he will be good. Greta begins to believe Brahm’s spirit is in the doll and starts following the rules. She weirdly begins to want to take care of him and live with him and talks about him the way the Heelshires did, as if Brahms was a real person. She tells Malcolm about his shyness which worries Malcolm and he tells Greta a story about the real Brahms killing a girl by crushing her skull.
The Heelshires drown themselves, leaving Brahms to Greta and they leave behind some notes. Greta begins to believe that this is her chance to be a mother as Cole’s physical abuse towards her had caused her to suffer a miscarriage in the past. But who is Brahms? What’s the deal with the guy?
To answer this question, you have to watch the movie. And a certain plot twist makes it a lot more interesting. The movie might not be super critically acclaimed but it did extremely well with the audience. The movie sets itself up for some serious spook factor the moment the Heelshires openly treat Brahms like a real person. But there’s a lot more to Brahms than what meets the eye.
What did you think about these movies? Did you enjoy this video? If yes, don’t forget to like and comment on this video. Till then, goodbye and have a nice one!