Emelie: My Thoughts
Today, I want to ask my readers a simple question: What scares you?
I’m sure many people are afraid of things like the dark, snakes, or maybe supernatural creatures like ghosts and vampires. All of us can say that we are scared of something happening to a loved one. The need to protect those we love, and the fear of strangers, is why the Netflix original movie Emilie works so well.
Emelie is a nearly perfect horror movie. It takes a very realistic story and blends it with plenty of unsettling moments. This is awesome. Parents with young kids may want to use caution. This film is about what can happen if children are left in the care of the wrong person.
The movie opens to a scene with children playing, with calming music in the background. This is a subtle way to induce a feeling of serenity. The peace of the suburbs is quickly shattered when a young woman is kidnapped. The young woman is pulled into the backseat of a car while trying to help someone she thought was lost.
The beginning of the movie may seem cliche, but what follows is pure gold.
The woman who is presumed to be to stand-in babysitter shows up, calling herself Anna. She gives them snacks, and at first glance, it looks like the kids are going to have a good night. The movie starts pushing boundaries very quickly when the 11-year-old son is called into the bathroom and the babysitter asks for a tampon. The discomfort coming from the preteen boy is evident. The scene ends with a glimpse of the mess of menstrual blood in the potty. Even though the blood came from a common source, the blood is an excellent unsettling image.
It isn’t too long before all the children see the darker side of their babysitter’s personality. She tells the children they’re going to play a game called “animals prefer live prey.” She feeds the daughters hamster to a snake, which strangles the rodent while the children watch in horror. The scene ends with the snake coiled around its dinner.
The next jump-cut takes us to the babysitter watching porn in the living room. This is hugely unsettling when you think about the fact that there are young children in the room; the younger children are hiding behind pillows. If this doesn’t leave you with an unsettled feeling, nothing will.
The older son knows there’s something wrong and attempts to contact his neighbor on the walkie-talkie. Somewhere along the way, the original babysitter comes to check on the kids, and she realizes there’s an issue when she doesn’t recognize the woman at the door. When she starts asking questions the babysitter bashes her head into the steering wheel.
Just before bedtime, the babysitter forces the children to drink a strange blue drink that will “give them good dreams.” She then reads a bedtime story to the family’s youngest boy. We learn that the babysitter lost her child and is unable to bear more children. Fun imagery is used here; the whole story of Emily’s baby dying and her struggle with infertility is told through a storybook. She wants to raise the family’s youngest son as her own.
The movie then cuts to an eerie image of Emelie on a swing. She is swaying in the wind as she watches the kids play. The realism is the reason this film works.
However, this film falls apart in the last half hour.
We’ve already established the babysitter’s crazy and has ulterior motives. She’s not unwilling to hurt the other children to get what she wants.
We don’t know how, but somehow the parent’s car is damaged, something is wrong, and they end up going home in a police car.
Now that the day is ended, there is a drawn-out scene between the mom and dad getting home, and then finding their son, who is taking his sister and brother out of the house while wearing a helmet and driving their car? The oldest son has distracted the babysitter by putting firecrackers in a garbage can. She opens it, assuming that it is the younger boy.
While the movie still clings to realism, the ending has potholes that can’t be ignored. It almost seems like the writers had a good concept but ultimately realize they were coming up to their hour and 24-minute limit and just decided to throw out ideas and end it.