I have recommended this movie to numerous people. Time to explain why.I should mention, Tom Noonan is in this, and he played Frankenstein is Monster Squad. AJ Bowen, Dee Wallace, and Lena Dunham are all in this. Ti West directed this, and he has potential. Let’s watch this.
Samantha is looking at an apartment, and the landlady is like, hey, it’s yours. The landlady is Dee Wallace. She is in so many films that I have seen. I should start recognizing her as one of my favorites. This definitely has an 80’s vibe to it, and the music is great along with how they are doing the intro credits. I absolutely appreciate it. Larry Fessenden is a producer on this. Go figure. Samantha goes to her old apartment, it’s morning, and her roommate Heather has put the sock on the door. Bitch. Samantha sees a Babysitter needed flyer, so she gives it a call. She calls from a payphone. Her phone number is 815-1920. 9 Deuce y’all! She calls, leaves a message, walks away and the phone rings, and it is Mr. Ulman. He wants to meet her right now.
Sam goes back to her room, and it is just a fucking mess, clothes all over the place. I assume Heather is the slob. Her boyfriend wakes up and gives her this smile like, hey, I just got laid. So she waits and waits for the guy. She gives up, and gets up, drops her Walkman. I believe that she is talking to Megan, and describing the apartment. I love the old school Coke cups. Haha, while talking about the babysitting gig, Megan says something like “Who knows, maybe the kid was from hell”. Sam is really worried about how she is going to pay for the new place.
Heather wakes up, tells Sam that some dude called for her. Heather is a good roommate. She calls back. He apologizes for earlier today. He is in dire need of her services tonight and will pay her $100. I have a good feeling about this job. I enjoy the music. Apparently there is an eclipse tonight, and Meg is giving Sam a ride. She offers to stay with her so that it’s not weird. Meg just begs her to let her stay. Megan seems like a great friend.
This house is way out, kinda in the country. It’s a huge, beautiful house. There he is, Tom Noonan. I love this guy. Mr. Ulman is all about the eclipse tonight. He asks to speak to Sam by herself. He wanted to make sure that she understood that he would only be paying one sitter. He says that his wife is very on edge. Mr. Ulman says that he hasn’t been completely honest. They don’t have a child, but his mother in law. Mr. Ulman has a great cane. Sam isn’t interested. He ups the ante to $300, and she asks for $400. Megan is superfly pissed at Sam. Meg’s issue is that it seems weird and it is too good to be true. Sam reasons that this pays her first month and then some. Boy, she is pissed. Megs pulls off near a cemetery for a smoke. Some dude comes by to offer her a light and freaks her the fuck out. She’s like, where the hell did you come from? And he asks if she’s the babysitter, she says no, and he promptly shoots her in the head. Shit just got real. He gets in the car and has a smoke.
At the house, he says that Sam won’t have to check on her, and she is able-bodied. He goes up to get his wife. We overhear him say: “I’ve done everything you asked…..Well, there’s not going to be any more mistakes…..No, this one, she’s perfect….We’re not missing a thing. After tonight, everything will finally be complete…..Please stop worrying…..I have it all under control.” We see that Mrs. Vivian Ulman has come downstairs, and she talks to Sam and tells her that she’s a godsend. Vivian is very nice and complimentary. Oddly, she supposedly came from downstairs, but he went upstairs and held that conversation. Vivian says that her mother is very private. Mr. Ulman has mentioned the pizza place’s number on the fridge 3 times. I like him. And he is a gentleman. He opened the car door for his lady.
Sam calls Meg, and just gets the answering machine. She’s gonna order pizza!!! YAY. The guy answers and says “Pizza pizza whatcha eating?” I loved that. Looking at the credits, the guy who shot Meg I believe is Victor Ulman, and that sounded like his voice as the pizza guy. She has spent an inordinate amount of time going through the house doing nothing. Time to do some homework. Nope, candy bar time. She watches the news, puts her Walkman on, and plays some pool and does the typical 80’s dancing when you think that you are alone. She is jamming out, goes upstairs, and her boney ass hits the vase. Well boney compared to today’s conventional bigger asses. She opens a closet door and finds some furs, but Vivian says that the furs were in the basement. She finds some pictures and notices the Volvo in older pics show a child in them. There’s a van outside, and that wasn’t there before. It’s Victor I’d surmise based on only seeing his feet and seeing him put out a cigarette.
Sam tries calling Meg, still not home. Same grabs a sharp kitchen knife to feel safe. She is wandering, and there is 3 people in a satanic circle, and I think they may have been the family in the picture. Uh oh. Hey, the pizza got delivered. She gets it, throws him a $20 and proceeds to hold the box vertically. It was delivered by Victor. She slammed the door shut before anything because she is panicky.
She called Meg, still nothing. She didn’t like her pizza, she threw it out. Didn’t taste good. She finds hair in the bathtub, like locks of hair. She goes upstairs, almost to the door where the people are, and turns on the light. The power went out. She saw flashlights under the door. She passes out in the hallway as she has been drugged by the pizza delivery guy.
She wakes up in the pentagram surrounded by candles and tied down. Here comes Mr. and Mrs. Ulman in black robs, followed by Victor, and now we have either grandma or a demon. We will call her grandma, and she is drawing a pentagram in blood on Sam’s belly. Grandma is doing some work. Grandma pours blood from some skull thing down into Sam’s mouth. Same escapes, but Victor gets her, and she quickly jabs his eye. She runs downstairs, slides and falls over Megan’s dead body. Victor gives chase. She has her knife, so he shoots her in the shoulder. So he’s an idiot and gets too close, so she slices his throat open.
Vivian goes upstairs, and Sam is having visions and has blue veins on her stomach. Why keep going up? You need to go down. Vivian tells Sam that it’s not going to stop no matter what she does. Vivian takes off her wig, reveals very thin, grey hair. While she prays, Sam stabs her in the back because everybody forgets that Sam has a knife. She now gets Victor’s gun. She goes to make a call, but these visions keep happening. Mr. Ulman is telling her to wait. He is bleeding from the stab wound that she inflicted when she first broke free. He catches up to her in the graveyard, and he tries talking to her, saying that they are calling to her, and she is the chosen one. He says it’s only moments away, so she shoots herself in the dome.
Well, we are in the hospital, and there is Sam in a hospital bed, her head all wrapped up. Silence. The nurse says that she will be fine, then says “Both of you” and touches Sam’s belly.
End Film
I really enjoyed this film. It was a welcome trip back to the ’80s for me. This was well done, and fun. It has this nice vibe to it. It’s not going to set the world on fire with ingenuity, but it was simple, it had a story to tell, and it was well-acted. It didn’t try going in over it’s head, and that matters. Some horror films try too many things instead of focusing on the task at hand.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- MPI Media Group (presents)
- Constructovision (in association with)
- RingTheJing Entertainment (in association with)
- Glass Eye Pix (production)
Please go find a copy and support the creators.