FILM
BETTER WATCH OUT ????????????
(MA) Selected cinemas (89 minutes)
Christmas movies are all about ringing the changes on familiar themes, and that goes double for Christmas horror movies like Better Watch Out - no relation, incidentally, to the cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! directed in 1989 by the great Monte Hellman.
This Better Watch Out is a modest but punchy second feature from the Canadian-Australian director Chris Peckover???, set in the US but shot in Sydney, with a trio of young Australian leads and a plot craftily built around a single location.
On Christmas Eve, suburban parents Deanna (Virginia Madsen) and Robert (Patrick Warburton) head out, leaving their son Luke (Levi Miller) and his best friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) in the care of teenage babysitter Ashley (Olivia DeJonge).
With snow all around, the family home from a distance has a Christmas card look, while indoors all is cosy and bright. But from the outset, the script by Peckover and Zack Kahn brutally undercuts these reassuring visual cliches. Everyone swears and shows a blunt interest in sex: Deanna delivers an especially crude verdict on her husband's taste in Christmas tree ornaments.
We're cued to anticipate something nasty, but for as long as possible Peckover avoids revealing just what form it will take. What eventuates is both familiar and unexpected - riffing in particular on Home Alone, a classic Christmas family comedy with a premise that could easily be repurposed for a "home invasion" horror-thriller.
Even after the main surprise is sprung, the actors are able to keep us guessing about what their characters might be capable of. This applies especially to Miller, who looks older than Luke's supposed age of 12 but retains the angelic precocity which not so long ago won him the role of Peter Pan.
While the film is more cartoonish than psychologically believable, it's willing to go to some genuinely uncomfortable places. It's also a technical showcase for Peckover, who unlike most 21st-century directors has a gift for using the widescreen format in ways that are dynamic rather than decorative - such as when a character in one part of the frame is oblivious to a threat lurking elsewhere.
