Emelie starring Sarah Bolger is a pretty good evil babysitter-home invasion movie. It's surprisingly dark in places for a film with a fifteen certificate which really is its biggest strength. Sarah Bolger's Emelie is a psychopath who has kidnapped a babysitter and infiltrated the residence she is meant to be looking after three children on the night of their parents anniversary. (this isn't a spoiler because it's explicitly shown in the films opening).
The first half was definitely stronger than the second and third acts, we're not quite sure what Emelie wants or why she's there, the thing that actually hooked me and really disturbed me in the first half is that there is an undercurrent of sexual perversion in the way that Emelie is manipulating the children, not something you often see in horror with a female antagonist.
You feel helpless watching her corrupt the young children who are left in her care, the reactions from the children are natural and never over the top, they normalise her behaviour until they can't any longer. This is what the film should have focused more on, it was really quite original and off-putting in the best possible way.
The concept of what would happen if children were left under the influence of a horrifying psychopath is a great idea and one that needed to be explored more.
The child actors are really good in this and are a credit to why the movie works so well in the buildup to the second act, then the second act happens and it becomes less interesting a film.
One golden rule of horror, we don't always need to know a villains motivations, in fact often it's best that their reasons are left up to the imagination. Emelie was far scarier to me when I thought that she was a merciless psychopath with no backstory.
The film still retained my interest throughout but I have to say It lost what made it disturbing in the first place by the end and settled for an ending that while fine was needlessly generic.
It's still going on my recommendations list for this month because I really was shocked by the first half, I just wish it committed to where it was going and how far it needed to go to pull the whole thing off.
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