“As their parents head out for a date in the city, the three young Thompson children immediately take to their new babysitter, Anna (Sarah Bolger, Into the Badlands, Once Upon a Time), who seems like a dream come true: she’s sweet, fun, and lets them do things that break all of their parents’ rules. But as Anna’s interactions with them take on a more sinister tone, the kids realize that their caretaker may not be who she claims to be. Soon it’s up to big brother Jacob to protect his siblings from the increasingly nefarious intentions of a very disturbed woman whose weapon is trust, and whose target is innocence.”
Emelie is a decent start to the year for Dark Sky Films. While the story is nothing original and doesn’t provide us with anything new on the “evil babysitter” storyline, it keeps your attention long enough to enjoy what you have already seen in other films.
The acting was actually pretty great. The children are convincing as terrified and Sarah Bolger is convincing as mentally unstable and completely psychotic but I think they may have fallen victim to lazy writing. There was a lot of potential to make the film much scarier and to speed up the pace quite a bit; instead, Anna is beyond easy to get away from and it really hurts your brain trying to figure out why the children do not do more to escape. Besides, Anna has one particular target in mind that she easily could have just taken but for reasons beyond my understanding, she feels the need to mess with the two remaining children instead. There really is no explanation to it. The writers really needed to flesh out the storyline to make more sense of everything that is happening.
I am bothered by the lack of research the parents do on Anna before inviting her to babysit their kids. What kind of parents trust someone they have met for two minutes with their children? They really deserve everything that happens based soley on their apathy. If I were a parent, Emelie would really make me think twice about who I trusted alone with my kids.
As I said before, the acting was pretty excellent. I would have loved for it to come with a better film but we take what we are given. Emelie isn’t a bad film, honestly, it just comes off as lazy. You could certainly pass an hour and a half with it and not be angry about it but its sort of like an appetizer: it takes away the edge but you’re still hungry for a full meal after.
Emelie is now available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital download from Dark Sky Films
http://https://youtu.be/XZoLut2Ti0U
