It's Saturday!!! And last night I watched Emelie, a 2015 horror film directed by Michael Thelin and written by Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck (DANG). Starring Sarah Bolger in a terrifying babysitter role, Emelie is unlike anything I've ever seen. Let's jump into it!
EMELIE 2015
"...it made her mind crack. It didn't break, it just cracked."
Emelie opens on a young girl walking, talking on the phone to her friend about taking a last minute babysitter job. A car pulls up, inside someone asks her what her name is, and then someone comes up behind her and promptly kidnaps her and drives away. So soon after when the new babysitter is picked up by the Father, Dan, answering to the name Anna, we know this isn't her. And when the parents leave their children with this stranger she begins to terrorize the children in increasingly creepy and awful ways. There's Josh, the oldest and moodiest, Sally, a red-headed high-energy young girl, and the youngest son Christopher with a bad ass teddy bear whose face lights up and I want that?!
Overall the story is pretty solid - Emelie is a young mother dealing with the tragic loss of her own child which she accidentally smothered in her sleep. We learn this through a terrifying story she reads young Christopher referring to her dead child as "young cubby". She then tells Christopher how she's trying to find a new cubby, and soon we realize she has her sights set on him.
Throughout the movie Emelie puts the kids through some terrifying moments including putting Sally's hamster into the snake pen and making them all watch in an ICONIC scene as the snake slowly crushes the hamster. There's an incredibly uncomfortable scene where Emelie lets Josh find her on the toilet and asks him to get her a tampon. She even puts on a home sex tape of their parents and makes them watch it. This movie is so uncomfortable but you can't turn away. There's so many scenes where you almost want to scream but you can't. There was a lot of audible gasping and clutching of my chest.
But once Josh finds out who "Anna" really is and realizes she's trying to steal his younger brother, Josh really steps up. But Emelie puts up a hell of a fight involving some really great cat and mouse type scenes, and some brutal violence. Josh manages to trick Emelie in the end though as she gets more desperate and while the ending is kind of sub par, I wasn't too let down.
What I didn't love about this film though - the story line with the boyfriend. Maybe I totally missed something, but Emelie spends a lot of the film sending texts to this mysterious guy who you only see a side profile of, keeping him updated of what's going on. Then near the end she tells him to basically buy more time before the parents come home so he slams his car into their car and kills himself? Right? Is that what happened? I have no idea. I was super confused about all of this.
Also the film kept flashing back and forth to the parents having their dinner while all these horrendous things are going on at their home but I actually hated this. I get that it's supposed to sort of keep you on edge and show the contrast of both scenes but whenever it skipped back to the parents it was hella boring.
Sarah Bolger delivers one hell of a performance and the kids aren't annoying which is a huge win! You know I can't stand kids in horror movies most of the time but these guys did a great job.
I did love this movie quite a bit. It's definitely an experience. I highly recommend it and if someone could clarify that boyfriend sub-story line please do.
9/10
Stay Spooky!
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