The Sitter (2017) User Reviews

Dull But Well Made

[angelakenney-52982 · 3/10 · 3 August 2020]

Charlotte (Aisling Knight) takes a job as a cat sitter for a creepy wealthy couple and, immediately after they leave, she begins hearing strange noises coming from upstairs. Perhaps their dead son isn't so dead after all and still lives in the house?

Director Simon Richardson knows how to shoot a movie and build up a reasonable level of tension at times, but his screenwriting skills leave a lot of be desired. The story could be described as House of the Devil, but with a ton of unnecessary padding. Charlotte has a best friend character who could easily have been made for an extra slaying for the body count, but she ends up being pretty useless altogether except for one well done jump scare towards the middle of the film.

Thanks to this and other detours along the way, The Sitter feels endless at about 100 minutes and could benefit from a little editing. At least 10 or 15 minutes could be cut including a few visual interesting but pointless dream sequences that appear to exist only to remind you that you're watching a horror film.

If The Sitter wasn't so well produced, perhaps its story crimes would be forgivable, but it's so obvious that the production team put such great effort in making this as polished and visually pleasing as possible which makes you wonder why they didn't spend as much time on the script.

Should you watch it?!

[molnosnorbert · 5/10 · 8 September 2018]

Yes! It's a low budget horror, but it's definitely watchable, has it's moments and far from the worst out there in the movie universe. No! If you're looking for something special, don't expect The Conjuring level.

A 5 Star only for the first 3/4 of the movie

[smileybug-356-78305 · 5/10 · 12 July 2018]

The last 1/4 is SUCH HORRIBLE RIDICULOUSNESS that it only gets a 1 star. The other reviewers weren't wrong, but I have to say I actually liked most of the movie. It was somewhat original, the acting wasn't great, but it was nowhere near as bad as many B horror movies. The house and surrounding area was extremely creepy and it really had the makings of something good, until ii didn't. Don't bother with this one, it's sadly a waste of time.

Don't bother!

[wendy-manis23 · 1/10 · 23 September 2017]

I only write reviews if a movie is really great or really awful. In this case it's because it's awful. The lead actress is the best one and that's not saying much. When the actors were speaking, there were long, awkward pauses. It was so boring!! I don't know how they can call this horror. I call it a waste of time I can't get back.

Awakening darkness

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 4 July 2018]

'Darkness Wakes' drew me into seeing it, with a cool poster/cover, an intriguing if not particularly original premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive as well as the low rating and poor reviews.

It is sadly however yet another film seen recently, hence some reiteration because the exact same strengths and flaws those films have are present here, that to me was incredibly disappointing considering its potential which it doesn't do anywhere near enough with. 'Darkness Wakes' is terrible, with a plethora of problems (huge ones too) and doesn't do enough with its potential, which was hardly small. There is next to nothing to recommend.

Lets start with the sole positive. The setting is atmospheric and spooky.

Unfortunately, it is not done justice by the rather direct to video schlocky way it's shot and edited and the drab colour palette, so much so it was hard to appreciate it, it was very clear that the film was made in a rush with no care or enthusiasm. In particular, the camera work was a nauseous assault on the eyes with its excessive amateurish-ness.

Going on further to the negatives, the story does feel paper thin, disjointed and over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their annoying and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrates.

Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The effects are ropy at best, the sound quality is obvious and utilised cheaply (being too loud in the build ups and people's reactions) and it's best not mentioning the uniformly lumbering and histrionic acting that shows a huge indifference to the situation and what is going on and extremely awkward prolonged pauses.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling, with lots of clichés, lots of unintentional humour that makes some of the film play like a really bad spoof and no depth whatsoever, while the pace goes to a standstill very quickly and drags on forever with very little going on worth caring about and useless padding, never recovering. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness, a lot of dumb and vague moments and explanations and the lack of tension and suspense. Would not have minded the lack of originality (the film is extremely derivative and in a dumbed and watered down way) if the story and atmosphere were at least alright in execution, in reality they were both very poorly done.

A lot of 'Darkness Wakes' has underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations, while too many of the things to make you jump or shocked are far from creative or scary and are pretty tame. The ending makes the film finish on an incomplete and confused whimper.

There is not enough threat, and what there is of it tends to be used poorly, it is completely unimaginative and more odd than creepy, completely failing to show any sense of horror or creativity. Everything here is neither creative, suspenseful or nail-biting. Some badly sagging momentum too. The direction is leaden and like their heart was not in it or ill at ease, with the chemistry between the characters and actors coming over as constantly random and aggressive with the subtlety of an axe.

Overall, awful with no redeeming value apart from an element that is difficult to appreciate with it being complemented so badly. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Starts Out Starring Boris Karloff!

[twelve-house-books · 1/10 · 6 September 2018]

Boris Karloff enters with a bang complete with voice timbre and deadly pauses! Then the film declines from there, and by the end you ask yourself why you watched such silliness.

Oh God turn it off!

[Hayden-86055 · 1/10 · 4 June 2020]

One of the worst films I've ever seen, if you can call it a "film". The acting is atrociousness and laughable and the dialogue even worse, the man at the start sounds like he usually works as a Frankenstein impersonator at parties and not as a paid actor.

The fact that they're allowed to put 5 star reviews on the DVD case (and more so someone actually gave it a 5 star review) is baffling. Also, there's an unusually high amount of nudity in this film, and the monster is very weird and the "scares" are disgusting if you've seen this.

1/10: Truly, truly a terrible film

One of the worst Movies I've ever seen

[x_soulcrusher · 1/10 · 29 October 2018]

The only good thing about This movie is seeing the main character naked. And that's it. Awful movie.

Mind your dreams

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 3 July 2019]

Charlotte (Aisling Knight) has a dream job a cat sitting over the weekend. (I just leave out extra food, water, and litter box.) The dream job turns into a nightmare as she must contend with vivid bad dreams, house noises, and weirdo neighbors. And then things escalate.

The journey was more fun than the ending. Mr. Farrow (Richard Kilgour) sounded like a creepy butler doing Hitchcock. Worth a Redbox rental, but not much more.

Guide: F-word, sex, FF nudity (Aisling Knight, Laura Smith)

Why wait three days?

[BA_Harrison · 2 February 2023]

The Sitter has quite a few ingredients that usually make for a mindlessly entertaining horror movie: there's a pretty girl in peril, a shower scene (actually, two shower scenes and a bath!), a cat scare, crazy locals, a dream within a dream (actually, I think there were two of those as well), some sex, and one of the characters says "I'll be right back", which means that they won't. Unfortunately, despite all of this, the film doesn't really succeed because they forgot one very important thing: a decent plot.

After psychology student Charlotte (Aisling Knight) has accepted a three day stint as a cat-sitter for a strange couple who live in a remote country house, the film goes absolutely nowhere for most of the remaining running time. The three days pass (slowly), with Charlotte suffering restless nights and hearing strange noises in the house, but otherwise nothing very notable happens (except, of course, for Charlotte's ablutions, and her sexy scene with boyfriend Seth, which are a welcome diversion from the tedium). Then, when the three days are up, Charlotte is abducted and tied up by the religious weirdos that live next door, who say that the girl is in great danger from the couple who hired her.

Charlotte escapes from her captors, only to find out that they were telling the truth: her employers turn out to be crazy cultists who intend to offer her to their hideously deformed son, who looks as though he might be possessed by a demon. At this point, I wonder why we had to wait three days for any of this to happen: if the couple had wanted to offer Charlotte to their son, why not do it straight away? Likewise, why did Charlotte's rescuers leave it three days before trying to whisk the girl to safety? And if they knew what was going on, why didn't they just call the police?

It's lazy writing and makes for a frustrating watch, a shame because Knight isn't a bad actress and deserved to be in a better film.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

Great twenty minutes of a ninety-minute movie.

[SteveHistory · 2/10 · 16 October 2021]

This movie starts well with great filming, suspense, interesting characters, and eerie setting. But...that's where it becomes stupid. Once the plot starts to unfold it just turns dumb. Sad to say, this is a NO GO.

Far better than expected cult effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 8/10 · 8 March 2020]

Heading out to a remote house, a college student hired to cat-sit for the weekend continually feels like someone or something is in the house with her, and when it comes true in the form of her dreams foretelling what's going to happen to her tries to prevent it from happening.

Overall, this one was a decent enough effort. Among the more likable elements here is the general atmosphere and setting of the main house. The immediate isolation, evidenced by being out in the middle of the woods with a long drive just to arrive there, this gives a great tone and feeling of being away from everyone around them. The spacious interiors, numerous floors and functional layout all add together to give a wholly enjoyable tone of something sinister happening later on that creates a fine sense of suspense about the house. The other great aspect to like here are the actual scenes of her being tormented. The various dreams, where she's being haunted by something monstrous lurking unseen in the shadows of the house where only glimpses of its long nails and inhuman proportions comes together for several standout sequences. That they hint at something potentially dangerous in the house with her, playing off the suspense of the location while being visible dreams meaning it's not enough to get her to leave makes for some chilling sequences as she goes through the house only to come upon the creature in highly-stylized, visually-dynamic sequences. These sequences are perfectly placed fodder for a perfectly dark and chilling finale. Spurred on by the glorious double-dream of the creature attacking and attempting to mate with her in some dazzling scenes, there's a far greater sense of danger here where her inability to trust anyone causes some incredibly fun scenes once the full extent of it all gets revealed in crazed confrontations with the demonic creature that's been haunting her, the abduction to the house next door and then the stumbling upon their exploits in the basement. This frenzy of activity comes about due to the setup beforehand while paying off great twists, giving this one a lot to like about it. There weren't a whole lot of issues but they are problematic. The main factor here is the complete mystery surrounding the various characters and their purposes here. There's nothing here about the mysterious man she meets in the woods nor is there any follow-up to his pervy actions despite being involved frequently once he's been introduced, much like the meeting with the dead woman that she nearly runs over. Giving their purpose as a throwaway blurb ten minutes until it ends is a wholesale mystery and complete mistake, much like the confusing nature of what their ritual is supposed to do as this implies several possible causes without giving a clear answer. These are what hold this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Full Nudity, Graphic Violence and several sex scenes.

DarknessWakes

[gavcrimson · 6/10 · 26 October 2020]

Satan's Slave (1976) type vibes abound in this film about Charlotte (Aisling Knight) a skint, sexually repressed student who is offered the job of cat-sitting at a Georgian Manor House for the weekend. Only for this (well paid) dream job to turn into a nightmare when she is bombarded by visions of offering herself sexually to a horny demonic figure. Is she going mad or are the rich, eccentric family who have employed her part of a satanic cult who want to mate her with a demon? Slight spoiler (in order to drum up interest in this one) its the latter as Charlotte comes under attack from both robed satanic cult members and an equally dangerous Christian couple who don't mind killing Charlotte in order to foil the cult's plans. Unusually for a modern day British horror film, there is a fair amount of nudity and sexuality onscreen here, but for once this comes across as being justified and thoughtful rather than gratuitous. The 'sex with the devil' theme here being a clear metaphor for the heroine's fear of entering into a sexual relationship with her pushy boyfriend. Darkness Wakes' sexual content does however seem to have rubbed some of its audience up the wrong way, the IMDb's 'parents guide' section for the film is, as per usual, comedy gold "there is nudity throughout the film. Full blown porno shots and some half back, half front it's all there even full vagina. This shouldn't be a redbox, and if you love your kids at all don't let them see this". Equally entertaining is the IMDb page for the lead actress Aisling Knight, her self-penned bio basically consisting of her trashing the IMDb and regretting having paid £20 a month for a IMDb pro account. She also categorically states that her name is pronounced 'Ash-ling', so despite the nudity she does in the film, don't go calling her Ass-Ling, y'all.

Worth a Watch

[rvg-25349 · 5/10 · 6 October 2021]

Is bad acting subjective, I don't think so, but it seems that a lot of reviewers don't know what bad acting is, I've been watching movies for 40 years and I know bad acting when I see it, I read the reviews of this movie and I've come to the conclusion that a quite a bit of them are written by people with mental issues, having said all that this isn't that bad and is worth a watch, I gave it a 5 which makes it a fairly average, but not bad, like I said most of the reviews are by people with hang ups or they just don't know what they're talking about, sorry kinda went on a rant, but judgemental people shouldn't do reviews, they can't be objective.

Sit this one out!

[bcansevgisi · 2/10 · 15 July 2020]

Very slow-paced film full of jump scares, meaningless dialogues, bad acting, crappy supernatural elements, boring dream sequences, creaky staircase sounds and a little bit of cat cameos, a touch of full nudity (not the cat), and a highly predictable ending...

Overall: A huge disappointment

+1 star for the house +1 star (I've seen worse)

Different

[ginof-22649 · 5/10 · 27 January 2020]

The movie just for looking at the actress, (she's completely beautiful) would be a 10. It's about demons or how much would a person be into a sexual relationship with that demon. After being forced the initial contact, she then goes after the demon to get some action...or was it she was dreaming it??? idk I got lost looking at the actress Aisling Knight. Also thru out the movie there's an underlying issue of this chicks boyfriend pressuring her into sex. So maybe the demon sex was just her sexual frustrations which then makes it an even more interesting movie. I guess it's all how u look at it. One way, ridiculous, the other way and there's something there that many movies have not touched on. By the end the movie does lean toward the sexually frustrated part, bcuz we all know there r really no demons lol.

Dont Even Give it A Chance

[wolfqueen2020 · 1/10 · 20 January 2020]

This is NOT TV-14 like its stated above. It's actually rated MA for all the porno shots in this. Dont come near this one. Somehow the ratings didnt match how severely nasty this film was before we watched it and now magically they barely skim the surface of how bad this was. I ALWAYS check so I dont have to see this crap. We got lied to thanks to misinformation on this site. This crap is an xrated porno flick, NOT a tv 14.

Awful

[royeighmey · 1/10 · 2 March 2020]

Short and to the point. Low budget, aweful, non compelling movie. Complete waste of time. Don't bother, just don't.

Save yourself the bother!

[trthrjgpx · 1/10 · 28 January 2023]

Don't watch. The main actress is somewhat alright but the acting from the others is less than amateur! You can tell it's a very low budget film. There were a few jumpy bits and the film has the potential to be good however it nearly seems like this is draft one of ten! On the whole, terrible!

I'm not sure why the film seems to have different titles either? I thought it was called The Sitter but when I looked up some of the actors and actresses it seems to say that the film is called Charlotte Wakes or Darkness Wakes? I mean if you can't even settle on a film title no wonder all the other choices were terrible.

This Is a good Horror Movie

[30066Guy · 7/10 · 28 April 2023]

Anyone who is a horror junkie can understand a majority of horror's can't quite make it through to beginning to end. It's a oversaturation with films and for years most are looking for that horror edge to be different.

With that said I think this movie has resemblance to others. It also is very scary up, that is until the boyfriend gets snatched. The whole kidnaping part could have just been cut out, and gone straight to the last 6 minutes.

The man is creepy, the house is very creepy. The actress is a shy personality in the movie but I think she showed the fright with her acting as its 90% her in the movie.

Watch it if you are a fright/suspense fan. If you are aware of the how horror movies work. Judge for yourself. If you are expecting any horror movie to be tits until the end then you are looking for needle in the haystack nowadays.

Creepy, moody horror.

[parry_na · 9/10 · 10 September 2021]

The cons: the 'odd' couple, especially Richard Kilgour as Mr. Farrow, make what might kindly be described as bizarre acting choices, and they are amongst the very first characters we meet. Later on, in context, their OTT melodrama has more meaning, but to open a film with these two proves a major stumbling block.

The pros: everything that follows is hugely effective and on occasion, genuinely frightening. Jump scares, so often and repetitively featured in such films, actually do their job here. The main antagonist is extremely creepy, made all the more so because the camera only allows us fleeting glimpses of him.

The cast provide competent performances throughout, but Aisling Knight carries the whole thing beautifully as Charlotte. Her journey is made compelling due to the performance, even when the character's choices are - typical of horror films - not always wise.

Director and writer Simon Richardson has put together a terrific story here. There are enough revelations and intrigue to keep things compelling, but the whole thing is also directed very well, making the most of the darkness and the stunning locations.

Some online reviews have been unnecessarily harsh on this film, I think. Perhaps the theatricalities of some early scenes put people off. My advice - stick with it. 'Darkness Wakes' gets better and better as it rolls along. I had a great time watching it. My score is 9 out of 10.

NOT BAD AT ALL

[nickeyblack35 · 7/10 · 4 January 2020]

It's 1 thing i love in a movie is creepiness. This film definitely had that, but there are moments in this film which prevent it from being a great movie. The storyline is 1 factor. I think it would've been better as psychological thriller/horror. Where the girl didn't realize how much a big house in the middle of nowhere can make a person mental. Certain nude scenes were unnecessary, although she's good to look at. Kudos for feeling free Aisling.

I don't care what the music is trying to tell me...

[foxinsox-86283 · 24 January 2024]

Halfway into the movie, and I still don't care what the jump scare music is trying to tell me. Toasters popping, cats running across the screen, seeing yourself in a mirror, and bottles of wine are not scary, even if you add an annoying, screeching soundtrack and a jumpy camera.

So far, the first supernatural thing I've seen is a weird dream, which looks like it's real, then she wakes up and gets scared at something else, which, it turns out, was also a dream.

I suppose the premise of the movie of the scariest part: a college girl has to go 3 days without proper cell reception. That's the real nightmare.