9 Unfairly Underrated Movie Villains From The 21st Century

Spoilers Inbound

On the surface, Better Watch Out looks like a perfectly rote home-invasion flick. Even its seasonal backdrop seems to be highly derivative of Home Alone, but make no mistake, this is all part of the plan. You see director Chris Peckover is wilfully disguising his film as a by-the-numbers exercise, so that he can conceal a killer twist.

Whilst the intentions behind this are admirable, the strategy may have backfired a tad. After all, without a marketable USP, Better Watch Out looks about as appetising as a warm glass of tap water. This impression must have been tricky to dispel, as the release made a negligible impact at the box office, failing to secure a meaningful following of any kind.

The bitter irony of this is that the horror-comedy is actually quite subversive, having more in common with things like You're Next than it does your average slasher. Indeed, the script peppers in moments of dark humour throughout, cleverly playing with genre expectations and throwing in a couple of diabolical curve-balls along the way.

Chief among these twists is the identity of the villain who, in a shock reveal, turns out to be none-other than Luke, a pubescent boy who is hopelessly smitten with his babysitter. Over the course of the night, it transpires that this Machiavellian sociopath is the true ringleader of events, orchestrating all manner of atrocities in a misguided attempt to seduce his crush.

Once this has been unveiled, the story takes a sharp turn into Hitchcockian suspense and the emphasis shifts onto Luke's ingenious cover-up. We subsequently marvel at the little tyke's crafty manipulations and find ourselves rooting for him to get away with it, because he's just too devious to hate. Like a grounded verion of Eric Cartman.