‘Now don’t stay up late and watch scary movies, okay?‘
Newcomers to the horror genre could be forgiven for thinking that Christmas horror films are part and parcel of the festive season. The past five years have seen the release of several high-profile Christmas horror films, including but not limited to: Terrifier 3, It’s a Wonderful Knife, Red Snow and Violent Night. What people might not realise is that for years we had Black Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night (itself the subject of a 2025 remake), and that’s pretty much it. There were other Christmas horror films, of course, but they were almost exclusively low-budget, B-movie fare. The trend for Christmas horror films becoming staples of the festive season can be traced back to the release of Krampus in 2015 and Better Watch Out in 2016. Let’s dive in…
When Robert and Deandra Lerner (played by Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen, respectively) leave their precocious, 12-year-old son, Luke (Levi Miller), with their babysitter, Ashley (Olivia DeJonge), for the evening, they don’t realise that everyone in the house is in terrible danger.
Firstly, this is one of those weird films where, despite being filmed in Australia, by an Australian filmmaker (Chris Peckover), and a mostly Australian cast, we are forced to accept the conceit that everyone is in fact American and that we are in a quiet, suburban street. I understand they do it to make the film more marketable to an American audience, but it does seem silly. Secondly, this is one of those films that fully hinges on a massive second-act twist, and so it’s debatable how much rewatchability it has. That being said, the young cast carries the film through its sillier (and weirder) moments, with both Miller and DeJonge compelling and convincing, Peckover (working from his own script, co-written with Zack Kahn) mostly succeeds in balancing the tonal shifts between horror and comedy, and the narrative does a good job in keeping the audience guessing throughout.
Better Watch Out is an enjoyable slice of festive horror fun that is probably more innovative than most of the recent spate of films released in this strange little subgenre. Worth seeking out.
