Review: A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting

When I first read A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #1 in 2018, I was intrigued by the whole premise. A group of babysitters banding together to fight evil that comes from the underworld. They set up a society or a headquarter, whichever term suits you better, that is almost like Men-In-Black. To top that, they also have similar out of this world, evil-banishing weapons; while the ones used by the personnel in Men-In-Black are backed by scientific logics, and have the sci-fi-isque quality about them, the ones used by the babysitters are all backed by magic. That aside, these weapons are just cool. It also reminded me a little bit like the ones used by the Charmed sisters and the gang from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Now that I am actually listing these down, it seemed almost bizarre that the men who fight evil usually used sci-fi looking weapons whereas the women used magic; like is there a logic to this? It seemed almost sexist. 

Anyway, going back to the Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting #1 novel, what caught my attention most is that they included a male character! I think this is an important milestone in storytelling, as it helps break the stereotype that only women babysit. There are men who actually offer babysitting services, and for some reason that has been severely downplayed. It made it look like as if it is not socially accepted for men to babysit, or even look after children. The whole repeated narratives featuring men as sexual predators towards minors in many media coverage also gave men a bad rep. This will come back to hurt the society in the end. Think about this—if only women are portrayed as capable babysitters, then we will forever have that mental image in our head, and in the future, women who may aspire to be something else may end up having to settle for jobs like babysitting, not that it is a bad thing, but what if they have no interest in doing that or no skills in that field? We have seen men who are equally as capable in taking care of toddlers or children, and are equally passionate in that field, but they end up not getting the opportunity to do what they love, because of the bad representations on mass media. I personally know men who are more than happy to adopt the role of a Penguin Dad. For those of you who are not familiar with the term or have only come across it now, may wonder what exactly is it? Penguin Dad is a term to refer to fathers who are unorthodox in their style of parenting; it can range to sharing responsibilities with their partners to role-reversal, i.e. them staying at home while their partners go out to work. They are the ones who will do the dishes and cook and change the diapers and attend their children’s concerts and parent-teachers-conference. However, some Penguin Dad succumb to societal pressure to be, what society deem as normal, in which the father is the one to go out and find income and food for the family. I personally find this to be old-fashioned. As such, I find the Babysitter’s Guide to Monster hunting refreshing due to the writer’s attempt to be inclusive; the characters range from out of this world monsters/ villains to normal human babysitters, from all different races AND gender. I am glad that the movie version decided to keep this in the spirit, as that was the only thing I was impressed when it comes to watching the movie.

In terms of set and costuming, the film looks like they have limited budget to work with. The costuming for the villains, especially, look pretty ordinary even though they are featured to be having powerful magical capabilities. It really made you wonder; with all the magic in the world, why would they go for a look that is pretty ordinary. The set too left much to be desired; ordinary cage, ordinary looking lairs for the villains. In fact, the images that I had in my mind when I read the novel was similar to that of the set used by Netflix’s Stranger Things. That said, since this film is also a Netflix’s original, it made me wonder—why don’t they just re-use the damn set from Stranger Things? Add unrealistic special effects and unrealistic make-up illusions to the mix, and you have something that is, what I’d term as a major let-down to an otherwise captivating story with an equally captivating narrative style.

 

The biggest irk I have towards the film is the characters’ response to each other – for some reason their response/ reactions felt not natural; the reactions are always either too late or too premature. I am not sure if this is due to the editing or the acting. Acting wise, certain parts of the characters’ emotions felt forced and not believable; while in other parts, it really felt that the actors are just delivering the lines for the sake of delivering the lines. 

 

Will I recommend anyone to watch this? No, but I will recommend you to read the original novel by Joe Ballarini.