Main cast: Judah Lewis (Cole Johnson), Emily Alyn Lind (Melanie), Jenna Ortega (Phoebe Atwell), Robbie Amell (Max), Andrew Bachelor (John), Hana Mae Lee (Sonya), Bella Thorne (Allison), Ken Marino as Archie Johnson), Leslie Bibb (Phyllis Johnson), and Chris Wylde (Juan), and Samara Weaving (Bee)
Director: McG
Before you ask, yes, Samara Weaving is in this movie, but only for a fraction of the screen time. If anything, the general lack of Bee in The Babysitter: Killer Queen demonstrates how that character was the super-strong glue held the previous movie together. Without Bee, the other characters are exposed to be the bland, boring gits that they are.
Two years have passed since the previous movie, and Cole is now considered crazy by even his parents, as no evidence surfaced after the climactic denouement of the previous movie. There is no Bee, no dead bodies, nothing. Since then, he’s bullied in school, and Melanie has somewhat drifted apart from him too. Still, she tries to include him in her and her friends’ activities, so she can’t be too bad a friend… until she invites Cole to a gathering of her friends, murders one of them, and announces that she needs Cole’s blood to seal a pact with the Devil and make her dream of becoming the best influencer ever come true. That’s right, Melanie isn’t sporting clothes and a hairstyle reminiscent of Bee for no reason—she has made a similar pact as Bee did in the previous movie. Worse, Bee’s minions from the movie are back, having made their own pacts with Satan to come back for 24 hours to help Bee succeed in her plans. Should they succeed, they will live again for good, only this time they will be living out their dreams.
Luckily, there is another hot chick, the new girl in town called Phoebe that acts all edgy and crap, to help Cole live out his John Green teen soap opera fantasy.
This movie is the embodiment of the meaning of the term “unnecessary sequel”. It relies heavily on throwbacks to the previous movies, repeating the same gimmicks and scenes in a way that feels lazy and uninspired. All this only drives home how Melanie is just a bargain bin version of Bee—Emily Alyn Lind isn’t too bad, really, but she’s done no favors by the script forcing her character to be like Bee way too much—and the rest of the cast, including Cole, are so forgettable and dull without Bee to interact with. The cast, in fact, feels unnecessarily bloated. Aside from the stooge minions of Bee reincarnated again here, the movie also gives Melanie her own stooges that feel like cheap knockoffs of the original stooges. More bewilderingly, these stooges are quickly rid off in a throwaway scene later on, making their presence in this movie both a pointless bloat and utter waste of time. It’s like the people behind this movie didn’t know what they want or even what they are doing; instead, they just throw everything on the wall and hope that at least one or two turds will stick.
The humor this time around is even worse than that in the previous movie, as its gimmicky “freeze frame a scene and add in phrases to drive home the punchline” shtick had been done already and hence the novelty factor is no longer here. I don’t even smile once throughout the movie. Everything, from the blood spurts to the hammy, flailing antics of Cole, feels like a dull, tired retread that has long outlasted its welcome.
There is some cute gore here, but such scenes are far and few between, and these scenes are more often than not ruined by really bad CGI. Is it just me or this sequel is cheaper than the previous one? That probably explains the lack of Samara Weaving too. They probably can’t afford her anymore, and she likely generously consented to walk in one afternoon to film her scene for free.
Bee does show up late in the movie, and seriously, Samara Weaving’s presence is a sight for sore eyes. Alas, she’s not long enough to rescue this movie from being an inept effort to recapture the vibe of the previous movie. Mind you, the previous movie isn’t that good in the first place, and this one manages to make the previous movie look so much better in comparison.
