A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting Parent Guide

Whilst babysitting on Halloween, Kelly (Tamara Smart) watches as her young charge, Jacob (Ian Ho) is abducted by monsters. Desperate to save him, Kelly is recruited by a secret society of babysitters tasked with protecting the world from these terrifying creatures. Together the babysitters must find a way to save Jacob, stop a monster invasion, and do it all before Mom gets home.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting seems to be Netflix’s contribution to the family-friendly Halloween adventure genre. Based on a juvenile book series, this film is very obviously tailored to a tween audience. I would venture to categorize it as an introduction to scary movies because there are horror genre tropes and ideas sprinkled throughout, but it never gets really scary. The monsters themselves are pudgy, brightly colored and silly. The action sequences lack any real stakes and the tension stays pretty low. There’s never any indication that a child will actually get hurt; just scared. That said, I’m really glad my four-year-old wasn’t home to watch this with me because I am 100% sure it would have given him nightmares. It’s scary enough that I wouldn’t recommend it for young children, but I could see tweens enjoying the scare level.

As much as I want young audiences to have “scary” movies to give them an introduction to the genre, this particular example is lacking in too many areas for me to fully endorse it. First of all, the acting is not great. I know it’s hard to get child actors that are passable, so I can excuse the youngest actors, but the teenager and adults are terrible too. The one exception to this is Tom Felton, who plays the main villain, the Grand Guignol. He is obviously having a blast and really takes advantage of an over the top bogeyman character. Another problem I have with the film is the writing. There are so many plot holes, not only in the story, but also just in the premise. You really have to suspend all disbelief and not think about any of it too hard or it just falls apart. The story moves from scene to scene almost aimlessly, the characters are at the complete mercy of the plot, and events seem to happen only for the convenience of the runtime.

In the interest of full transparency, I did not enjoy this movie. However, I am very clearly not the intended audience. From what I know about tweens these days, I think that there are most definitely some kids who would like this, but it’s a narrow window of being old enough not to be too scared, but young enough not to roll their eyes at it. There are so few content concerns that I’d say it’s worth a shot if your tween shows interest, but maybe don’t bet on it for the whole family.