There’s something very wrong with the new sitter.
Michael Thelin’s Emelie is now streaming on SCREAMBOX, which is great news because it’s a damn good horror film that flew pretty far under the radar when it was released in 2015.
Written by Rich Herbeck and directed by Thelin, Emelie stars Sarah Bolger as the title character, a young woman who shows up at a couple’s home and poses as Anna, the last-minute replacement babysitter they’ve never so much as seen a picture of. Though “Anna” at first seems like the perfect babysitter, allowing the kids to do things their parents would never allow them to do, the night quickly takes a turn for the worse when she makes them play a series of increasingly disturbing games.
Only a few things tend to be fairly off-limits when it comes to horror movies, and one of them is subjecting children to the sort of torment and torture that is typically visited upon adults in the genre. Most filmmakers wouldn’t dare make a movie wherein young kids are the primary targets of the villain’s madness, but with Emelie, Thelin dares to smash even the most off-limits of horror taboos, and it’s nothing if not a notable film because of his brazenness.
As soon as the blissfully clueless parents exit the house and head out on an anniversary date, Emelie’s figurative claws come out, and Thelin rarely pulls punches in an effort to showcase just how sinister the character is. Pitch-perfectly played by a devilish Bolger, Emelie is one of the most memorable horror villains in recent years, inflicting psychological torment on the children in a way that’s altogether more terrifying than anything a hulking brute like Jason Voorhees is capable of. A convincingly responsible babysitter when she needs to be, Emelie wields all the power in the world inside the Thompson home, and the delight she takes in being a cerebral assassin is the stuff nightmares are made of.
There are more than a couple of scenes in Emelie that are so tense and unsettling that they’re downright hard to watch, and each of them involves mental rather than physical torment. In one scene, without spoiling anything, Emelie forces one of the young boys to participate in something that is highly inappropriate for a kid his age, and another involving the family’s pet hamster will have you covering your eyes and just generally feeling awful and uncomfortable. Of course, that’s entirely the point, and it’s all effectively chilling.
Then there’s a scene involving a VHS tape that, well, you won’t soon forget it.
Even if a disappointing final act admittedly does the film no favors, Emelie remains an exercise in boundary-pushing horror that’s quite unforgettable. Be careful who you invite in.
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