On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
For December 2024, we’re celebrating the end of the year with a stocking full of Strange Holiday TV Specials and Seasonal Midnight Movies.
First, read the BAIT: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, try the BITE: a breakdown of the movie’s ending, impact, and any other spoilers you’d want.
The week between Christmas and New Year can be notoriously sleepy, and when it comes to holiday horror, evil Santa imposters are a dime a dozen. So why not spice up your seasonal viewing with stockings of a different stripe, and slip on the wildly unsettling “Better Watch Out“? Directed by Chris Peckover, this home invasion flick from 2016 sees the masked killer skip the chimney and enter through the front door for a night that the 17-year-old Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) and 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller) won’t forget.
With snow on the ground and snacks in the fridge, the babysitter and her client begin their evening by staring down the terror of an unrequited crush. Luke’s awkward attempt to woo Ashley before she moves away for college — sitting too close to her on the couch, stealing from the liquor cabinet, and asking questions about her boyfriend (Aleks Mikic) — kicks off a film so viscerally uncomfortable it could make even ski pants look breezy.
When Luke’s obnoxious friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould) arrives unannounced, the tension is mercifully broken…. until he’s followed by a strange noise, a shattered window, and a brick emblazoned with the threat: “U LEAVE AND U DIE.” Ensnared in some kind of bizarre trap, complete with armed gunmen roaming in the driveway and trip wires across the backyard, the trio soon discovers they’re being held captive. But by who? And for what purpose?
The weird intensity of Luke’s parents (Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen, underused and mostly discussing blowjobs here?) might explain the menacing situation. But it will still be up to the kids to solve their attackers’ lethal puzzle and plot an escape.
Naughty, nice, and unceasingly strange, “Better Watch Out” is just “off” enough to make you question its intent in almost every artistic regard. The script was co-written by the director and Zack Kahn (who also came up with its story) and delivers a grab-bag of earnestly upsetting horror vignettes alongside wacky Christmas nonsense that can fall spectacularly flat. Mixed results plague almost every department, with particularly weak cinematography matching a production that seems at once wonderfully fearless and terribly confused.
Being kept off-balance isn’t a bad thing if you’re a diehard holiday horror fan, and “Better Watch Out” boasts a central concept that works well in the current pop culture landscape. It’s also a solid example of the overly glossy exploitation efforts that have started to crop up across horror in recent years. Think grindhouse listed on Zillow — a self-contradictory trend that sees disturbing and even outright objectionable material presented with a faux polish that can feel like biting into plastic fruit. For the right genre obsessives, the confounding result only grows more fascinating the longer flicks like “Better Watch Out” are left to curdle.
“Better Watch Out” is now streaming free on Tubi and Peacock.
The Bite: Hey, Evil Kevin McCallister Is a Great Idea
Ooooh, somebody is going to be in BIG trouble when the “Candyman” Scream Queen figures out what really happened in her home!
Watching Ashley give Luke the middle finger as she’s wheeled into an ambulance — miraculously having survived a stab to the neck thanks to a single piece of duct tape — isn’t satisfying enough after that insufferable groping scene. Not by a long shot. But what “Better Watch Out” lacks in a kick-ass feminist ending, it mostly makes up for with a cinematic hangover that’s borderline impossible to shake.
For years, cinephiles have wrung their mittens over the brutality of Kevin McCallister. The pint-sized Chicago native played by Macaulay Culkin rigs up a hell of an anti-burglary defense system in the original “Home Alone” from 1990. Marbles, kerosene, a nail gun, and more semi-common household items rain hell upon would-be thieves Marv and Harry across rewatches every December in scenes that inexplicably don’t kill them. But only in “Better Watch Out” (previously titled “Safe Neighborhood”) is the practical damage of a paint can taken directly to the skull so memorably illustrated that you’ll struggle to revisit “Home Alone” without thinking of it.
Several streaming services have labeled Pecker’s effort a “horror comedy,” but even accepted as satire, the undeniable terror of that paint can scene and all that gun violence makes any surrounding jokes feel queasy at best. As tonally chunky and inconsistent as fruitcake, it can be almost impossible to figure out who this veritable gag gift was intended for. One second, two preteens are discussing the sexual viability of “Adventure Time” characters. The next, we’re getting a surprise visit from Dacre Montgomery (“Stranger Things”) and literalizing a “Myth Busters” joke in complete bloody color. Even Garrett screaming, “You’re ‘Home Alone’-ing him?!” struggles to conjure the dark grin the idea itself deserves — if only because the psychosexual plot surrounding it feels so undeniably cruel and Luke’s screamingly horrific behavior is just a little too menacing. (That heartbeat monitor thing is freaky!)
Sure, incel culture may be bigger and badder than ever in Trump’s repeat America, but “Better Watch Out” is worth revisiting primarily as a companion to “Home Alone.” Far from that annual tradition, horror lovers only need to see this movie once to unwrap a midnight gift that keeps on giving. Like other After Dark selections in need of rehabilitation, this is the sort of gonzo concept worth trying again — but not until another director can go full “Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey” and actually give this to Kevin.
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations every Friday night. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
