Night of the Reaper
Emily is an experienced babysitter; she knows how to play Marina and Mark to get them to cooperate and go to bed on time, she knows the tricks they will try to pull on her in return, but she is wise to their attempts to frighten her, pretending that the Skin Eater is real, that he is in the house with them, that it is him moving the teddy bear, placing increasingly sinister notes in its big fluffy paws, the handwriting and spelling that of child, a dead giveaway…
Returning to Reedy Creek from college to visit her parents, her father unwell and her mother unsure how to behave around her, Deena finds distraction when her best friend Haddie is unable to fulfil her babysitting duties for Max, young son of Sheriff Arnold, currently concerned with an anonymously delivered videotape marked Night of the Reaper which proves an accidental death two years before was in fact murder.
Directed by Brandon Christensen from a script co-written with Ryan Christensen, the brothers who pulled the strings of The Puppetman, tied deeply with the Hallowe’en season Night of the Reaper is everything it should be, an eighties-set retro-slasher filled with creepy atmosphere, capable characters, strong performances and a few unexpected laughs.
Starring Spectral’s Ryan Robbins as Rodney Arnold, a hunky widower who finds the countless clues take him too close to home for comfort, it is SurrealEstate’s Jessica Clement who runs the show as Deena, a criminology student who finds going home isn’t all its cracked up to be, pressed into babysitter service but required to go above the call of duty when the remote house is targeted by a cloaked figure lurking in the forest mist.
A cautionary campfire story writ large opening with a slew of babysitter horror tropes before moving into the fuzzy degraded VHS title scenes of fall leaves gathered on the sidewalk as decorations blow in the breeze, while simple on the surface Night of the Reaper is smarter than the obvious late-night milk and cookies it presents as an opening gambit, a film which will withstand repeat seasonal viewings.
With misdirections and reversals strategically deployed as well as an early tip-off apparent only with hindsight, while the eventual reveal of the murderer is perhaps not a surprise that is but half of the story, the realisation of the game which has played out in plain sight and the subsequent fight back a contender for the plucky babysitter hall of fame which recalls the gleeful righteousness of sister-from-another-mother Becky.
Night of the Reaper will be available on Shudder from Friday 19th September
