The Wrong Babysitter is a 2017 thriller about a single mom worried about leaving her daughter at home for an out-of-town trip until a neighbor offers to help.
There’s a slew of conveyor belt-produced movies like George Mendeluk‘s curious little caper The Wrong Babysitter, a made-for-TV flick that’s found its way to Netflix. These are films unnaturally cheesy, hopelessly expositional, made on shoestring budgets, and full of stiff unconvincing performances, all things crucial to broadcasters like Lifetime. However, the lengths these movie goes to in being all of that and more is downright gleefully absurd, productions so rigidly artificial it’s sort of entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Babysitter is simply one more and as such, if you’re new to this rabbit hole of lunacy, be prepared. It’s a hoot.
Susan Brown (Daphne Zuniga) is still dealing with the loss of her husband a year ago, he having been killed while investigating a child kidnapping. She’s been raising her teen daughter Christy (Ava Hughes) since, looking to get back to a real life. She’s even on the dating train again, with the uber nice Chad (Seann Gallagher). However, when a pair of kidnappers named Kendra (Britt Irvin) and Wade (Matt Bellefleur) take another girl, Susan’s husband’s detective friend (Lochlyn Munro) shows up asking for help. Not long after, Susan and Chad leave town for an art show, leaving Christy alone, asking next-door-neighbor Teri (Lisa Marie Caruk) to look in on her. But uh-oh, turns out she’s … say it with me … the wrong babysitter.
There’s a whole list of ‘The Wrong …’ movies made for television, covering all the bases from boyfriends to neighbors to girls to woman and more. With The Wrong Babysitter, it’s pretty much more of the same though it makes for a great drop-in point to this subgenre. These movies are, constricted by their format, unable to be violent or graphic, despite the horrific nature of many themes they explore. But let’s stick to this one, a movie with a title more fit to a Nancy Drew mystery than what we actually get.
Plots and dialogue are painfully simple of course, everyone saying everybody’s name the first time on screen so we know exactly who they are, dropping lines of explanation like concrete blocks. Christy, the teen daughter of Susan literally wears a baseball cap with the words ‘teen angst’ written on the front, though she’s about as ‘bratty’ as a daffodil. Naturally, since some of this is aimed at her age group, she’s exceptionally more clever than anyone else and is many steps ahead of those attempting to do her harm. You find yourself in this weird limboland where you’re angry for the insulting manner in which the filmmakers lay it all out but find so much fun in having it be so, you can’t help but feel kinda happy.
There’s no escaping the over-the-top necessity of it all, as if the entire cast are high school students in a stage play believing it’s an acting competition with each trying to ‘act’ more than the others. Zuniga is a terrific actor with a long list of proven credits, but dials it up here, perhaps (hopefully) knowing what she got herself into and simply plays along to get the most out of it. There’s not a genuine moment in the film from anyone, but the Dick and Jane writing style and hamfisted delivery bring surprising fun to the show that aren’t intended but worthy just the same. Good for a few laughs and a must see if you’re any kind of addict to these TV movies, The Wrong Babysitter is another in the silly showcase of baser entertainment.