Suburban Survivalism: Better Watch Out (2016)

My dear readers, it is but one slender week until Krampus perfects his victim list for the year. Soon he will bear himself aloft into the wintry night, slipping quietly into sleeping households and snatching mischievous children from their beds. But for some, of course, Christmas is actually a celebration, one that involves a bit of gift giving. My own family never celebrated in quite this manner but I did used to fantasize about what I would request. There was a lovely pocket knife I coveted most severely at that age and even fancied, once or twice, that I could feel the weight of it in the pocket of my coat. In this little daydreams of mine its name was Widow’s Agony and its history was long and bloody, just the sort of thing one might want to find tucked into their stocking.

Luke (Levi Miller) is another young lad who has strong ideas about what he wants for Christmas. He is a complex little chap whose needs cannot be met with boiled sweets and the latest electronic gaming console. Instead, he wants Ashley (Olivia DeJonge), his babysitter, to take a sudden romantic interest in him. And from his somewhat underdeveloped perspective, things are looking bright. Telephone chats with her current boyfriend reveal something of a rift and young Luke has managed to pilfer some of his parent’s champagne.

But this little scamp’s courtship designs are put on hold when a strange figure lurking outside the house makes its presence known with a brick thrown through the window, inscribed with the words, “U leave, U die.” The killer knows nothing strikes fear in the populous more than shoddy spelling and soon he has stirred the pair of them into quite a state. Thoughts of a September-December romance must be put aside in favor of procuring firearms and hatching escape plans.

String lights are both festive and functional

I must confess, it is difficult to watch Better Watch Out without being reminded of Home Alone, another violence-forward tale of plucky youngsters at Christmastime. I have heard all manner of objections to the latter film’s commitment to realism, as some joyless plausibility zealots grumble about the likelihood of surviving even one of the young McCallister’s elaborate traps, let alone two films worth of them. Well grouse no longer, discontented viewers! Better Watch Out, obviously inspired by the same do-it-yourself spirit of suburban survivalism, is constructed by filmmakers with a greater attachment to the physical realities of being hit in the face by a swinging paint can. Admittedly, it does lose a bit of its family friendliness in the process but one cannot expect to satisfy parties of all ages when reframing a familiar narrative with a resolute adherence to feasibility.

Better Watch Out runs 89 minutes and is rated R for disturbing violent content, language throughout, crude sexual references and drug and alcohol use.