Bad Behavior (2013)

I love this movie so much

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

"Bad Behavior" was both written and directed by Nicholas Brandt and Lisa Hamil (real-life couple?) and starred Hallee Hirsh as Zoë, a babysitter who shows up for what she thinks is going to be a routine overnight job while the couple whose three kids she'll be babysitting go out of town for a family member's wedding. Only the three kids turn out to be proverbially from hell: older brother Tyler (Austin Rogers, who bears an odd resemblance to a very young Tom Hayden) keeps making sexual advances towards Our Heroine; middle brother Jack (Jeremy Dozier) is a sort of idiot savant whose parents think he's getting into Yale; and the youngest child and only girl, Grace (Elsie Fisher), is obsessed with princesses and wants to wear her princess dress to daddy's dinner date. The parents duly leave and Zoë invites her boyfriend Kansas (Andrew James Allan, who's considerably shorter than Mike Nesmith of the Monkees but otherwise strikingly resembles him) over, hoping to make out with him (or more!) once the children sleep — only Kansas's presence sends the paranoid Jack off the deep end; he immediately concludes that Kansas and Zoë are "spies" sent on some sort of secret mission to destroy him and his family. Jack takes over the rest of the house and forces Zoë, Tyler and Grace to hide in an upstairs bathroom (which has a gable in its ceiling from which Jack, when he chooses to, can spy on them from the roof of the house).The movie then turns into a bizarre combination of "The Old Dark House" and "The Panic Room," as Tyler keeps dropping hints of what Jack did during his previous bouts with less-than-sanity, including setting fire to the place, slicing Tyler's ear off (fortunately the ear was recovered in time that it could be re-attached surgically) and possibly killing the previous babysitters. But like its two predecessors on Lifetime's Saturday schedule, "Bad Behavior" has an outrageous reversal in the final act. "Bad Behavior" has a few nice touches — notably some establishing shots of the exterior of the house where it takes place, in which Brandt and Hamil pull the neat trick of making a pretty ordinary suburban ranch house (except for those two gables on the roof) look sinister and almost Gothic — but for the most part it treads so much on the thin edge of silliness, and all too often goes over, one wonders if Brandt and Hamil were doing a serious Lifetime movie or a parody of one. I'm really tired of the penchant of modern-day thriller writers for ridiculously unbelievable reversals, especially at the ending — when O. Henry pulled this sort of thing he was at least able to make the finale seem like it had some relationship to the course of his story before that, but writers like Nicholas Brandt, Lisa Hamil and Brian McAuley simply don't have that sort of knack.

This is a great scary movie, especially if you are a babysitter. This is also a great date movie. Cozy up for the scary, pop out stuff. This movie isn't about gore, it's a suspense, thriller. It's not about Sci-Fi or aliens, it's just about a simple babysitting job. But that's what makes it so scary, the babysitter is sitting for what she thinks is a normal family, in a so called "safe" neighborhood. One of the kids she is watching is psychotic and very scary. That's what makes this movie so scary. This could really happen. I know a lot of babysitters. They will freak out if they see this movie (but maybe they should see this movie so they can prepare themselves). This is like a public service announcement for babysitters :)

A typical day for young babysitter Zoe quickly goes wrong after she puts the kids to bed. Within a few hours she is not only fighting for her life, but the lives of others as well. This movies spins quite the tale of family issues, sibling rivalry, drug dependence, delusions, denial and their own past. This all leads to quite the culmination as we learn that one child has psychotically violent tendencies, that have been getting worse, and can happen at any time. It is up to Zoe to save the others when the inevitable does happen. This film makes one think about how they would handle themselves in a similar situation. How would you react?

If you think this babysitter looks familiar she's been in a lot of stuff. I remember her back from the show ER. She was Dr. Green's (Anthony Edwards) bratty daughter. She is great as Zoe, the babysitter, in this movie. She is in charge of three kids. I was wondering why they needed a babysitter since Jack seems old enough to care for the other kids. But you soon find out that there is something not right with this guy, so no wonder they need a babysitter. Those parents are cruel to leave a babysitter basically alone in the house with Jack, knowing full well what he is capable of. Forget about doing a background check on babysitters. After you watch this movie, babysitters will want to do a background check on the parents and the kids they are supposed to be watching!