Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Babysitter: Killer Queen’ on Netflix, a McGquel Offering Diminishing Returns

Netflix’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen is a sequel to 2017’s The Babysitter, a guilty-pleasure collection of jokes ‘n’ guts directed by McG. He returns for the second film, along with most of the cast, but not Samara Weaving, who played the devil-worshipping title character like a bat out of hell and died at the end. But some of her goony underlings ate it too — and there they are in the trailer, whooping it up, reanimated. What gives?

THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Two years have passed on the fictional Babysitter timeline, although it’s been three years since the first movie debuted, in which I believe Cole (Judah Lewis) was 12, but now he’s driving a car, which tells me maybe four years have gone by, and Lewis is 19 and struggles to pass for anything under 23, so I’m just confused already. Cole is now in high school, which he says is “worse than a near-death experience,” namely, the events of the previous movie, where he learned his dear babysitter was a bloodthirsty Satanist who wanted to drink his blood and crap. (I hate when that happens.) Now, he’s still a dorkus malorkus, evident by the corduroy suit he wears to school, and he’s still friends with Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind), the girl across the street who smooched him, although that didn’t really go anywhere because she’s dating a guy who’s apparently allergic to sleeves.

Anyway, at home, the house is fixed after Cole quite spectacularly drove a car into it at the end of the first movie, which had me wondering if your son’s insanity is covered by insurance. Insanity? Yes — the universe is gaslighting Cole, as any evidence of his babysitter’s numerous occult malfeasances doesn’t exist, and therefore, he must have hallucinated the whole thing. There’s a large assortment of prescription bottles on his kitchen counter now, and he’s in therapy. He finds out his parents (Leslie Bibb and Ken Marino) want to have him committed, so the poor kid is just all twisted up.

Melanie offers him an out, though. The day of his appointment with the mental hospital, she steals her dad’s and they ditch school, heading to a party on the lake. Her BF and some other hangers-on jump in the backseat, and Phoebe (Jenna Ortega), the new girl in school, shows up to be cool as shit and shit. They’re on the water on a vintage ’70s shag-rug/turntable-system boat when the dingbulbs from the first movie — played by Bella Thorne, Robbie Amell, Andrew Bachelor and Hana Mae Lee — show up, resurrected from the dead via some very unbiblical cabalism that we don’t see, but probably would have made the movie more memorable. Cue the splatterworks as Cole and Phoebe scamper away, trying to avoid being sacrificed to the cacodaemons of the netherworlds, or whatever.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Killer Queen maybe wants to be Cabin in the Woods via Edgar Wright, I guess, but I kept thinking about how it overcomplicates a simple, highly functional formula in a John Wickish fashion.

Performance Worth Watching: I dunno, I like Bachelor as a scene stealer, if any of these scenes were actually worth stealing.

Memorable Dialogue: John offers some meta-commentary: “I didn’t get killed first. That’s some post-Jordan Peele-era horror movie progress!”

Sex and Skin: A “funny” sequence in which rockets launch, trains chug through tunnels, hot dogs are inserted into cornmeal sleeves, etc. GET IT?

Our Take: Ambition has sunk many a decent idea before — and let’s face it, The Babysitter was a flimsy-ass idea, but McG made the most of it, molding it into a nice colorful snug-fit bang-bang 85-minute cheap-thrill comedy. Killer Queen essentially reiterates the same plot, but junks it up with dumb overstylized flashbacks, cutaway gag-sequences, dopey supporting characters and an earnest-emo backstory subplot that’s like finding a stag beetle in your ice cream. There’s no reason this thing should be 101 minutes. No reason.

The sequel reminds us how ably Samara Weaving carried the first film with her confident swagger; the sequel struggles mightily,to fill that charisma void. It has the same jokey freeze-frames and not enough smash-cut one-liners, enough gore to satisfy your corn syrup craving, Joe Exotic and Deliverance references, a title that makes little sense and an ending that makes even less. It’s weird to think that McG could be assembling some invigoratingly glossy big-budget action fodder, but instead is enforcing some weird, phony soundstage/CG visual aesthetic to a horror-comedy that could really use some more devilishness and a little less diddlefarting.

Our Call: SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Babysitter: Killer Queen on Netflix