If a cult invaded the house where you were
babysitting, with plans to sacrifice the family, what would you do?
Some movies are made with tender love and care. Some are made by smashing your face
into a keyboard while a producer ignores better material nearby.
I wish I could tell you this tale about a babysitter taking out a cult to save the kid
she’s watching was at least entertaining, but I’d be lying. In fact, it ruins its
own premise so badly that I had more fun making fun of it than I did watching it.
Let me save you all some time. I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat the CULT OF THE DIVIDE in BABYSITTER MUST DIE.
Our story begins with a voiceover introduction from The Divide, a blue-collar Satanic cult
that borrowed their entire personality from Fight Club and now wants to complete a ritual
that grants them power, authority, and the ability to cheat death.
At this point, I think the devil offers that as his basic cable package. He saves the premium
deals for creative people – if it’s me, I’m not selling my soul for anything less
than the collective powers in The Umbrella Academy.
We cut to a rich mountain house where we meet JOSIE, a college student REALLY trying to
cling to her childhood. She still wears pigtails and dresses like she’s in middle school,
still works as a troop leader, and she’d rather babysit SOPHIA than go to a Christmas
party with her friends. She’s also basically the campy version of
Erin from You’re Next and her skill sets are introduced to us via cutesy merit badges.
Night falls and Josie and Sophia lose themselves in a game of hide and seek. Josie gets so
into it, she doesn’t notice a shadowy third player waiting outside for his chance to join.
When the game finally ends, Sophia’s parents – RICK and JEN – arrive home with their
drunk friend PATCH and his girlfriend SADIE, saying they bailed on a lame party. Turns
out Sadie knew Josie as a kid and is surprised to see her wearing a belt fashioned from her
old camp badges – including ones for Cardiology, Stealth and Concealment, and Ventriloquism.
Josie makes a limp offer to leave, before racing away to start another game of hide
and seek with Sophia. This time, Josie’s hiding…under the dining
room table where any nine year old will see her. First of all, I thought you WANTED to
stay. Second, someone needs to revoke her Stealth and Concealment badge pronto. That
or GET YOUR HEAD IN THE FRIGGEN GAME, JOSIE. While she’s hiding, the doorbell rings and
Rick answers, taking a sudden, brutal pistol whip to the face from a man outside.
The attacker steps in and begins wailing on him until Patch slams a guitar across his
back. But that only ticks the intruder off more. The attacker turns, revealing a bandage
on his ear marked with the sigil of the cult, and shoots Patch right in front of Sophia.
A second attacker enters and slaps Jen to the ground as the cult leader, who’s called
THE WOMAN in this movie because the filmmakers hate me, enters with the sigil marked on her
eye patch. Yeah, none of these guys get names, so I—in
my infinite generosity—shall bestow them as I see fit.
The woman is…MELINDA. This guy is…THUMB
And this guy is…PRINCESS-MONSTER-TRUCK Melinda sends Jen and Sophia into one room,
then grabs Sadie by the hair, takes her to the living room and executes her.
Then she does the same to Patch. I bet you’re expecting me to give you a
hundred different ways you can dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge the gun aimed at your
face. I can’t really do that. All those videos online where someone’s like grabbing
the gun and twisting it back at them at the speed of speed are absolute bullshit. You’re
gonna wake up in heaven with St. Peter slapping the back of your head.
Twisting and taking relies too much on distance, their grip, their stance, your stance, etc.
Most defense experts tell you to just give a mugger your stuff and—in the rare situation
where they give you an opening, twist the barrel toward them, but let’s be real. You’re
not doing that. The one exception is this one—you’re going
to die anyway. Sadie is in the weaker position on the couch, she has terrible leverage, terrible
friction working against her. A distraction like “who’s that?” might give you the
split second distraction you need to grab her wrist and shove it to the side, but if
you do that you’re going to want to sweep her legs at the same time, otherwise you’re
going to be in a fist fight with an armed attacker on top of you.
Same goes for Patch. Melinda doesn’t HAVE to bend down to kill him. She made that mistake
and we can use that against her. Grab her wrist and pull her down in the same
movement, but you better be prepared to tear her jugular out with your teeth.
Also remember – the moment they kill ANYONE, they have given us two pieces of information
critical to our survival. The first is that they have entered your home
with the explicit intent to harm you. Your job is not to let them. Your job is to survive
even at the cost of their forfeited lives. There is no negotiating, no begging, no hesitation.
The second thing it tells us is that they intend to DO things to us. Why? Because they
could have shot us in the head just as easily as our friends.
Maybe you’ll get lucky and all they want is money…but if you were lucky you wouldn’t
be surrounded by house intruders in the first place.
Leaving you alive means there should now be a ticking countdown clock running in your
head. Don’t panic. Prepare yourself for the INEVITABILITY of a fast, relentless strike
against these people. Ideally before they start doing things to you.
Thumb destroys the family’s cell phones while Princess-Monster-Truck begins unloading
weapons in the kitchen. From her still undiscovered super-secret hiding
spot under the dining table, Josie watches Princess unroll a set of marked house blueprints
and old scrolls. In the dining room, Jen tries to comfort Sophia,
then bites Thumb’s hand when he tries to put duct tape on her mouth. In response, he
temporarily cancels her subscription to consciousness. I mean…it IS easier to restrain sleeping
people, so… Melinda yells at him, saying he could have
ruined their entire plan...which is why you don’t let dudes named Thumb join your cult
in the first place. Rick is then dragged into the kitchen where
he spots Josie, then offers money for his family’s life. Princess-Monster-Truck tells
him he’s just a little voodoo doll they’re using for their ritual. Rick then loudly announces
where he keeps a second cell phone that they can use to wire the money…and they begin
breaking his fingers. But, the information isn’t really for them…it’s for Josie.
That’s one h*ll of a way to admit you’re having an affair, but…desperate times and
all that. Also, top marks for lazy heroism, but with
any intruders with more than single-digit brain cells you’re not gonna wanna tell
them any of this, otherwise that phone is toast.
Thumb heads back to the dining room while Princess invites us to the best game of Pictionary
I’ve ever seen. Lemme guess. A…tesseract. No, a slightly
melted ice cube. No-no, it’s apparently the box where they keep their collective eyesight
because they’re all BLIND to Josie’s movements as she slips over to and out the back door.
Honestly, this is probably the luckiest luck to ever luck. If you get THIS lucky, walk
down the mountain until you reach a house or busy road, and call for reinforcements.
I think we can call this one a win…just kidding.
Josie notices an open upstairs window and scales a tree to get back inside while Thumb
starts tearing into the walls looking for the ornate box Princess-Monster-Truck painstakingly
drew for Rick. Josie creeps back inside and finds Rick’s
other cell phone, but it’s out of battery. And she’s forced to hide in the shower as
Melinda and Thumb enter to begin their search. But this movie has a tonal issue… where
it swings wildly between wanting us to fear these people AND wanting us to… laugh at
them? I think? Thumb stops what he’s doing randomly so
that he and Melinda can show us a VaultTech exposition video about their cult’s goal.
Basically, they’re looking for a box that contains black masks they need to jam into
the family’s faces before feeding their blood to the house… which will somehow turn
them into Jeff Bezos or whatever. Meanwhile downstairs, Princess-Monster-Truck
tears up the carpet and begins sledging the concrete floor open to uncover one of the
hatches from Lost. Suddenly, the doorbell rings – it’s the
movie-est pizza guy to ever movie. He comes in the house, misses the dead guy lazily covered
in a blanket laying like ten feet away, and loiters around outside once he learns the
house belongs to a famous music producer. Josie uses the distraction to slip out of
the bathroom and reach a front-facing room, where she tries to signal for his help, almost
succeeding when he takes a picture of the house…
He’s just not quite smart enough to realize he’s in danger before Melinda and Thumb
come out to handle him… very slowly. They even let him get away from them, at which
point he lightly jogs toward the woods until Melinda can shoot him in the back and Thumb
can finish him off with a blade. Now. A lot of this is silly. His high-kneed
jaunt away, them letting him go in the first place, etc. But if you ever find yourself
pursued through a wooded area by an attacker, sprint if you can sprint, use any physical
object that blocks their vision to increase your distance away from them, and if you can,
hide. The problem with being pursued is that you
can’t keep your eye on them, while they CAN keep their eye on you. Reversing this
dynamic is ideal – both if you want to attack or escape. What matters most is LOSING them.
Giving them so many options about where to potentially search that they stop trying,
at which point, pick the direction that leads you toward a road but away from their home
base. Josie races downstairs just as Princess-Monster-Truck
goes outside… but she DOESN’T, oh I don’t know, lock the doors OR untie the two adult
members of the family who could help her fight. The bad guys are all outside, dipshit. What
the h*ll is happening? She then heads upstairs as the electricity
cuts out and just… wanders around? Dude your shoes are so loud, the only person who
can’t hear you coming is the guy with one ear. And you know where the kitchen is—grab
ALL THE KNIVES at least. The Intruders catch her immediately. Thumb
literally has his hand poised to snap her neck… and she’s saved at the last second
because Princess-Monster-Truck reveals that Jen is dying from cranial hemorrhaging caused
by Thumb whipping her head into the table. How does he know this? I dunno… magic.
In any case, they keep her as a backup for their ritual which requires three people and
tie her to a chair in the living room. Then they just… leave her alone.
She notices a letter opener on the coffee table nearby… just as Sadie suddenly bops
back to life at her feet. She asks Sadie to retrieve the knife even though her hands are
very loosely tied to the chair and her legs aren’t tied at all.
Josie, my brain cells can’t take this kind of torture. Do you need it drawn in crayons
for you? Stand up. Let the chair slip out from between your arms.
Instead she makes the girl who’s been shot go get it, which finally finishes her off.
She props Sadie’s body up in the chair and dips upstairs to a bedroom, keeping the letter
opener and grabbing a bat just as Princess discovers she’s missing and starts ransacking
the house looking for her. Josie sneaks up on him from behind, but he
knows she’s there, and taunts her that she won’t actually do anything. Then he tosses
her on the bed to prove his point. He pulls a knife on her, and fulfills the cliché of
every movie bad guy, promising to grape her. He stalks closer telling her she has no chance
unless she’s prepared to crush his skull to pulp… and like… why did you even ENGAGE
if you weren’t up for that, Josie? Why didn’t you just run away when you were outside? Why
are you WASTING MY TIME, YOU IDIOT. She drops the bat and we get more obnoxious
merit badges before she kicks out his leg and chooses A FIST FIGHT – excuse me, a
martial arts fight with a knife-wielding psycho – instead of braining him with the bat.
Anyway, she knocks him out in like three seconds, THEN retrieves the bat anyway. He comes at
her slashing with the knife before she pushes him outside and foists him over the balcony.
Yeah, this is what writers call too much business mucking up what could’ve been an interesting
fight. To start, you aren’t approaching Princess
UNLESS you are prepared to swing that godd*mn bat while his back is turned. We’re not
wasting time. We’re not hesitating. We’re cracking his head like an egg.
If you AREN’T willing to attack… well… then you shouldn’t have returned to the
house after escaping earlier. Ignoring that, find a good hiding spot—like the attic—where
they’re placing zero of their attention. She could have grabbed that charger, headed
up, plugged it in, called 911, and just waited. Seriously.
If you ARE willing to attack, hitting hard and fast from behind is ideal. Second best
is drawing them to a location of your choosing where you can greet them at the door with
a bat to the face. What you’re NEVER going to do is try and
get fancy with it for no reason. Especially when your attacker has a knife and your weapon
offers you better defensive maneuvering and range.
Fake surrendering is a really decent strategy in a desperate situation, but only if you
have a second weapon on you. Instead, you just ticked me off, so… no
nerd approval for you. Josie goes down to the kitchen and gears up
with stuff – pans, a wine bottle, string, etc. Basically, stocking up on the Jason Bourne
starter kit. Meanwhile, Melinda opens the portal to the
underworld, then puts Rick and Jen to sleep, telling Sophia they’re going to stay up
till dawn to greet the new world. Upstairs, Josie finds a phone charger and
plugs in the phone – leaving it in PLAIN SIGHT when she’s forced to hide under the
bed as Thumb returns. He retrieves a box from the wall containing black iron maiden masks
before noticing the obvious phone and breaking it.
Josie then lucks out, when he gets distracted by an old blood trail, allowing her to sneak
up on him and knock him out. I mean, I’m glad she struck him, but…
a Thumb that big isn’t going down with two strikes… and I’m proven right almost immediately
as he wakes and chases her downstairs, drawing his gun when they reach the kitchen.
Apparently, these guys are so terrible at everything, Josie had enough time to rig an
entier Home Alone chain reaction trap… one that’s so pointless it made me mad again.
Thumb starts firing wildly for no reason when he sees a figure ahead of him, but it’s
Melinda and she shoots him down. He tells her the babysitter is free.
Melinda VERY easily takes Josie’s bat from her and Josie bolts upstairs.
Josie retrieves the box of masks and tries to use them as leverage, but it doesn’t
work. Melinda simply grabs a knife and Sophia and threatens to kill her if Josie won’t
hand them over. Then, the movie forgets how ears work.
Josie calls out to them, luring them up to the attic, where Melinda somehow mistakes
the source of her constant talking as a nearby wardrobe, when she’s really under a blanket
at their feet. After Melinda walks past, Josie leaps up ARMED
WITH DARTS and holds them to Melinda’s throat, threatening to puncture her arteries and kill
her in ten seconds…all while Melinda has a f*cking kitchen knife to Sophia’s throat.
STOP GIVING HER TIME YOU MORON. Ten seconds is MORE than she needs to slit that kid’s
throat. It’s also enough time to fight you, which
is what happens. They fight until Melinda grabs the knife and lunges for Sophia anyway,
who’s narrowly saved when Josie catches the knife with her hand.
So dumb. You know what doesn’t keep you alive? Melodrama.
You know what you don’t need in your survival movie about home invaders? Melodrama.
Killing Melinda comes down to timing and REMEMBERING YOUR ENTIRE MOTIVATION FOR BEING HERE. Melinda
has Sophia, so as a general rule we’re going to keep Melinda AWAY from the brat for the
duration of this fight. Find a weapon. Agree to come down. She won’t
suspect you’re armed because you have to carry this heavy box with both hands. It DOESN’T
mean you have to bring the masks down. Pretend they’re in there. Keep the letter opener
in your pocket, and when she goes to grab the box, slam that baby into her remaining
eye. If you don’t have an edged weapon, find
an aerosol can in a bathroom, spray her throat or eye, then slam the box across her face.
Honestly, once she tossed her gun, Josie could have just walked around this staircase out
of sight of her and dropped the heavy mask box on her stupid head.
In the end, they survive, but Sophia walks away with a new obsession with Marsellus Wallace’s
soul. Yeah, this was the longest 70 minute movie
of my life. For how slow these cult doofuses were, Josie
could have easily fled when she got out of the house and reached help before any of the
family members died. Once you’re battling your home invaders,
simple traps, stealth movements, and common f*cking sense would’ve dispatched these
posers SUPER quickly. For those reasons, I think BABYSITTER MUST
DIE was Beaten. And remember the number one rule of all self
defense: DON’T GET FANCY WITH IT.
