Boys Will Be Boys HORROR TROPES AND MALE PRIVILEGE IN CHRIS PECKOVER’S BETTER WATCH OUT
An Australian–US co-production directed by Chris Peckover, who co-wrote the script with Zack Kahn, Better Watch Out (2016) is an immensely fun black comedy replete with horror tropes – as humorous as it is disturbing. It sets up a typical babysitter-versus-home-invader scenario before unexpectedly veering into a study of the twisted desires of a twelve-year-old psychopath. The film is about the moral panic surrounding adolescence, particularly the surge of hormones that leads to volatile emotions and risky behaviour. It also serves as a derisive critique of privilege, depicting the darkness concealed behind the charming picket fences of upper-middle-class suburban houses – and the dangerous expectation of male teens that they can do and have what they want, without consequence.
After a limited festival release under the fairly generic title of Safe Neighbourhood, Better Watch Out was shrewdly renamed to better reflect its yuletide-themed terrors. This is unambiguously a Christmas film. It opens with ‘Joy to the World’ playing over an idyllic winter scene: a nostalgia-laced image of an affluent suburb piled with fresh snow, its houses adorned with festive decorations. Carollers wander and children play alone outdoors, seemingly delightful until they knock the head off a snowman – an abrupt signal of the violence ahead. But, while Better Watch Out is clearly indebted to Chris Columbus’ beloved family holiday movie Home Alone (1990), it also exemplifies the holiday-horror subgenre, alongside the prototypical the-calls-are-coming-from-inside-the-house slasher
