GeronBook/Ch13/data/aclImdb/test/neg/3047_2.txt

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This starts out interestingly, as there's a carnival right next to someone's house with an oil rig right there too and some kind of store-front church across the street with a neon "Jesus Saves" sign, all right in one tiny area....Now that's pretty dazzling, if improbable...and then we go right into the movie which takes improbable to new levels. Of course this is a lame remake of the 1979 thriller starring Carol Kane as the babysitter Jill Johnson....now Jill is some chick that ran her cell phone minutes up so high her evil parents are punishing her by making her work it off, probably something that the audience this movie targets can identify with. Jill is taken to this huge and fancy house on a lake in the middle of nowhere (of course) by her dad to babysit for the Mandrakis family. The children are already nestled all snug in their beds when Jill arrives, and the housekeeper is still there, huh, she couldn't babysit? Of course, despite the remote location one of Jill's friends pops by, one whom with which she apparently has issues as in "boyfriend stealing" or something. Anyway, of course the alarm in the house goes off for no reason and then calls from someone start coming in, calls from someone that wants to kill her. Of course Jill calls the cops and since there hasn't been any actual threat on her life they blow her off, but tell her to call back if there's anything else they can do for her. Check out the scene with Jill calling her friends at the high school bonfire/pep rally or whatever it's supposed to be, it looks like some kind of "Burning Man" festival, ??!!?? There's all kind of contrived scares in this including the cool cat Chester who of course pops up here and there, one of the tiredest "horror movie" clichés there is. I will admit that I dozed off at some point during this, and did I miss anything? Hard to tell, or care, really. This is one of those films that makes me wonder how bad the remakes of "Amityville Horror", "House of Wax" or "The Fog" could have been. Anyway, from reading online reviews, it seems like the folks that were the most scared by this were 12 year old girls, and I can only assume that from statements like "it made me pee-pee my pants". Well, one can only hope that this will put an end to Hollywood remakes of films that weren't exactly stellar to begin with, but don't bet on it. 2 out of 10 and I'm being overly generous.