Hello, Horror Fans, and welcome to another Halloween season.  The air is getting brisk, the days are getting shorter and you’re seeing decorations everywhere you go, unless you live somewhere that sucks.  For me, that means it’s time for another ’31 Days of Halloween’ celebration. 

As genre fans, we all have our own method of lauding the horror-friendliest holiday we have.  I know many of you do as I and gorge yourselves on horror movies like you snarfed down trick or treat candy as a kid.  But, maybe you don’t have a tradition or perhaps you just don’t have time to rifle through the stacks to pick the movies yourself.  If you like, you may come along with me.  But I always have a theme. This year, apart from my yearly staples:  Halloween I-III and Trick ‘r Treat, my Halloween journey will take me through films all about various obsessions.  Some of them will be straight up horror; some of them will skirt the fine line between genres.  But all of them will feature characters who are willing to go to extremes to achieve their desires.  And you never know what those might be.  With 31 films to choose, I’ll have to reach out there to keep it interesting.  

My first selection for this season is The Sitter, AKA While the Children Sleep (2007).  If you’re thinking to yourself that it sounds like a Lifetime movie, you’re right.  Check out the cast, too: Gail O’Grady and William R Moses.  Those names just scream TV movie. They, the poor things, need a nanny to live with them so they can both work.  Daddy is on his way back up after a harsh setback in the old career, and Mommy is having to reenter the workforce to make ends meet.  For the majority of us, their ends meeting would be wrapping it around a couple of times.  Enter Mariana Klaveno (Abby, the seductive young sitter, of course).  She arrives just in time to disrupt lives and kill a handful of people.

Sound familiar?  Well, it should.  I made the statement while watching this flick that, “apparently The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is the Jaws of the obsessed babysitter movies.  No one seems to be able to make one since, that isn’t either incompetently derivative or a blatant ripoff.”  Did I just quote myself?  Can you even do that?  

I mean everything from the twisted arm bully threatening scene, all the way to the putting the mom in the hospital is represented in The Sitter.  So, if you’re obsessed with obsession movies, check this one out to mark it off the list.  It’s entertaining like only these movies can be.  But, if you’re looking for more inventive kills than heaving victims down the stairs, in some cases multiple times, stay away.    Better yet, stay in.  Don’t call this sitter.

And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, just for Jason because I’m in the Halloween spirit, I’m going to give these movies number ratings out of five.  The Sitter:  3/5
Rent it online here.