10 Terrifying Horror Movies About Babysitting
Taryn is a writer & content creator originally from New York. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Media Studies from Mercy University with Summa Cum Laude honors. Originally, she planned to go into business before she realized that she should pursue her life-long love of film and she hasn’t looked back since.
In the horror genre, there are many tropes, characteristics, and premises that are frequently used to give a horror movie its thrills and chills. Slashers typically involve a lunatic in a mask. Many horror films about a group of young friends occur in a cabin in the woods. Numerous supernatural horror movies heavily rely on religious themes. Many scary movies feature a babysitter who ends up having to protect their charges from an evil entity. Some of these films provide genuine scares, while others are scary because the premise is plausible. The thought of a teenager being the sole protector of a child while a masked killer or an evil spirit is after them is truly terrifying for many reasons.
Horror films about babysitting have given us some memorable scenes and seriously chilling moments. Some of these films have probably scared real-life babysitters while working. Being in charge of another person’s house with complete access to their food and entertainment is an appealing arrangement. Unless of course, the babysitter starts to hear strange noises from within the house. Or the phone endlessly rings. Or the kids start disappearing. Here are 10 terrifying movies about babysitting:
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10Better Watch Out (2016)
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While this is undoubtedly a horror comedy, Better Watch Out blends the two genres together to create something that is both humorous and creepy. A movie that feels like a blend of Home Alone and The Strangers, it takes place on a typical suburban street during the holidays and centers around a babysitter who must defend the 12-year-old boy she’s watching from intruders. They discover, however, that this is not to be mistaken for a typical home invasion. The movie perhaps leans too much into the comedy aspect of this horror hybrid, but there is a small degree of fear here because anyone could break into your home at any time for any reason.
9The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
After she was assaulted by her doctor, Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra) reports the incident to the police. Rather than go to jail for his crime, the doctor commits suicide instead. The shock of the accusations and death caused his pregnant wife Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) to have a miscarriage. Fuming with rage, Peyton disguises herself as a nanny for the Bartel family in order to seduce Claire’s husband and murder the woman she holds responsible for ruining her life.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a horror thriller that isn’t frightening in the traditional sense as it isn’t about a serial killer or demonic spirits. It’s a personal and targeted attack on a family by a person who believes she has lost everything because of them. This is a tale of revenge, and that in itself can be frightening.
8The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)
During the dead of winter, a troubled young woman (Emma Roberts) makes her way to an isolated prep school in upstate New York. Two students at the same school are left alone there during the winter break, and Rose (Lucy Boynton) is tasked with watching over Kat (Kiernan Shipka). Meanwhile, both students are stalked by an unseen demonic force. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a slow-burning, atmospheric horror tale that lets its audience sit in uncomfortable situations without any escape.
While not technically a babysitter, Rose is instructed by the headmaster of the school to take care of Kat while they wait for their families to come pick them up. She is forcibly in charge of the younger student, which leads to some brutal and shocking moments in one of A24’s earlier horror endeavors.
7Emelie (2015)
After their regular babysitter cancels, the Thompsons ask their friend Anna to take care of the kids. At first, she is every kid’s dream babysitter. She lets them eat what they want and play with things that are usually off-limits. Her behavior becomes increasingly odd, however, and the kids come to realize that her intentions are twisted and that she’s not who she appears to be. A different spin on the babysitter-in-peril trope of horror movies, Emelie shows audiences what happens when the babysitter is the one to be feared. It builds tension and suspense in the first half, and the second half is a bit divisive as critics seem to love it while audiences feel the opposite.
6All Hallow’s Eve (2013)
On Halloween night, a babysitter watching two children finds an old VHS tape inside the kid’s trick or treat bag. The mysterious tape features three different tales of terror that are all linked together by a sadistic clown. As the night continues on, strange things start to occur in the house. It isn’t long before the babysitter realizes that the killer clown is working his way into her reality.
Art the Clown is most known for being the maniacal clown in the Terrifier movies, but his first feature-length debut was actually in All Hallow’s Eve, and the character originates from Damien Leone’s Terrifier short film released in 2011. Art is a ruthless, psychotic character that feels no remorse for his actions. The premise of having three interlinking stories on a singular VHS tape is creative, however the movie itself is subpar. Despite this, there are some genuine scares in this film and Art the Clown is a gruesome character.
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5The Babysitter (2017)
Cole (Judah Lewis) loves his babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) as she is popular and funny. One night, in an act of defiance, he stays up past up his bedtime only to discover that Bee is a cold-blooded killer in a satanic cult. Now, Cole must evade his babysitter’s band of killers who will stop at nothing to ensure he keeps their dark secret. The Babysitter is an over-the-top horror comedy from Netflix that you’re either going to love or hate. It’s a different approach to the babysitter-turned-protector trope that sees the kid have to fight off the babysitter and her fellow cult members purely by accident. It definitely leans more toward campy comedy, but it does have some decent gore.
4Nanny (2022)
A woman named Aisha (Anna Diop) from Senegal is hired by an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) in New York City to care for their daughter. Haunted by the absence of her young son, she hopes that this new job affords her the chance to bring him to the United States. However, she becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life and a presence starts to invade her dreams and her reality, threatening to destroy the American dream she’s been cultivating.
The directorial debut of Nikyatu Jusu, Nanny is a psychological horror that serves as an eerie social commentary on race and class while also utilizing supernatural elements. It relies on building an uncomfortably tense atmosphere rather than traditional jump scares to affect its viewers, showing that sometimes true horror is found in the most domestic situations.
3The House of the Devil (2009)
In the 1980s, broke college student Samantha Hughes (Jocelin Donahue) takes an unknown babysitting job listed on her campus’ job board on that coincides with the full lunar eclipse. Under the impression she’ll be watching a child, Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) informs Samantha that she’ll actually be watching his mother instead. After exploring the sinister-seeming house, Samantha realizes that her employers are harboring a horrifying secret.
Ti West’s The House of the Devil is different from some of his other well-known work such as X in the sense that this film takes its time building tension and making the audience uncomfortable. The viewer spends most of the film anticipating something terrifying to happen in moments that are made to look like something will happen to the protagonist. The house itself is enormous and every corner of it feels unsettling. It pays homage to the classic horror films that came before it and the third act takes quite an unexpected turn.
2Halloween (1978)
Nearly 45 years after horror’s most famous slasher franchise began, it’s weird to think that one of the most iconic final girls of all time was once just a babysitter. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) had already felt uneasy that Halloween, but it wasn’t until that night when she went to babysit little Tommy Doyle, and eventually his neighbor Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), that her life changed forever.
Laurie paved the way for every final girl to follow in her footsteps. She saved not only herself, but the two kids as well, and managed to stop Michael’s reign of terror, at least for a while. Halloween is an unnerving slasher partially because there’s some plausibility to it, and it also features likely the most recognizable horror theme ever created.
1When a Stranger Calls (1979)
Perhaps the ultimate babysitter horror film, When a Stranger Calls follows a babysitter named Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) who is tormented by a psychopathic killer one night while babysitting and then returns again seven years later to terrorize her once more. One of the film’s most recognized quotes, “Have you checked the children lately?”, is bone-chilling the first time you hear it, especially when it is revealed that the calls are coming from within the house.
The reason that home invasion films can be so discomforting is because it absolutely could happen in real-life to anyone. Whether it’s your own home or the home of someone you know, a house is meant to be a safe place. So when that safety is violated, it’s terrifying.
