Jacob’s initially presented as a problem child but it becomes pretty clear that the scenario is going to call for him to step up to some kind of plate. He looks into the new sitter’s bag and finds out, among other things, that her name is not Anna but rather, yup, Emilie. At this point in the film, which has been pretty relentlessly tense and unnerving, some conceptual cracks start to show. Emelie’s a malevolent presence, to be sure, but she’s also someone who wants something, and there’s this thing in movies like this wherein the ratio of aberrant behavior that’s not useful to the character’s goal and aberrant behavior that IS useful to the character’s goal goes somewhat askew for the sake of scares. There’s a point where the audience member stops thinking, “Yikes, this character is trouble,” and starts thinking, “Okay, what’s the deal with this weirdo?” So, yes, alas, the movie crosses that line.
Worse, once the filmmakers get around to illuminating Emelie’s rationale, the backstory and its attendant components are pretty weak and unconvincing tea. I know it’s not easy constructing a good satisfying basis for your evil babysitter but they should have put in a little more effort, frankly; it’s part of what would have made the difference between an passable, occasionally interesting thriller and a really outstanding one.
Jacob does step up to the plate, and the result is reasonably satisfying, but the direction shifts from tensile to muddy in the run-up to the finale. “Emelie” has enough good stuff in it that I wished I liked it better, and committed genre hounds may think I’m nitpicking here. I choose to not, however, complain about the movie’s weird mix of props: when Emelie shows the kids a very inappropriate video, it’s from a VHS tape, and on a CRT TV; while there’s plenty of cell-phone communication here, it’s mostly on flip models, and a touch-tone desk phone features prominently. I fretted a bit about all this anachronistic hardware, but then I saw in the credits that the movie was shot in Buffalo, New York, and it all made sense; those people hang on to old tech out of spite.
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