The Babysitter (2017)
Directed by McG
No — The Babysitter is not woke, scoring 0 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Babysitter arrives from 2017, a year when Netflix was still in the business of acquiring finished films and dropping them on a Friday, and it concerns a twelve-year-old boy named Cole who stays up past his bedtime and learns that his sitter runs a devil-worshipping cult.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes actors of diverse backgrounds, but their presence is natural to the story and not framed as a deliberate representation agenda.
There are no LGBTQ+ themes, characters, or subtext in the film.
The film features a female antagonist with agency, but it does not advance or comment on feminist themes.
Race is not a subject of commentary or thematic exploration in the film.
There is no environmental or climate-related messaging.
The film contains no critique of capitalism or wealth inequality.
There is no body positivity theme or messaging.
Neurodivergence is not represented or discussed.
The film is not based on historical events and does not revise historical narratives.
The film is a genre entertainment and does not contain preachy or lecture-like messaging.
Why it received this score
The Babysitter arrives from 2017, a year when Netflix was still in the business of acquiring finished films and dropping them on a Friday, and it concerns a twelve-year-old boy named Cole who stays up past his bedtime and learns that his sitter runs a devil-worshipping cult. McG directs with the energy of a man who has been told no too many times and has decided to stop asking. Samara Weaving stabs a boy in the skull within the first act, and the film never apologizes for it. This is genre entertainment, assembled from familiar parts, and it knows exactly what it is.
The cast is diverse in the ordinary way that casts are diverse, which is to say the actors arrive, do their work, and leave without anyone pausing to explain them. Hana Mae Lee plays a goth. Andrew Bachelor plays a wisecracker. Race is not a subject here, nor is it asked to be. The women in the cult are given agency and knives, and the film declines to comment on either. There is no climate anxiety, no critique of the wealthy, no meditation on bodies or brains. The devil, it turns out, does not care about your politics. He cares about the blood on the ancient book.
Some films carry a message. This one carries a machete and a cheerleader. It is a clean specimen, ideologically speaking, and we record it as such: a horror comedy that wants nothing from us but our attention and perhaps a flinch. The ledger stays blank. That is not a failure of the film. It is simply what the film is.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When Cole stays up past his bedtime, he discovers that his hot babysitter is part of a Satanic cult that will stop at nothing to keep him quiet.
Questions about The Babysitter
Is The Babysitter woke?
No — The Babysitter is not woke, scoring 0 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Babysitter have any woke elements?
No. All 10 markers score zero.
How does The Babysitter compare to other 2017 movies?
It ranks #281 of the 309 films from 2017 we've scored; their average is 19. The wokest is I Am Not Your Negro (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.