Honestly, babysitting is rather terrifying to say the least; after all, in its general form, it involves a child and children home by themselves. Perhaps one of the most well-known myths to have been the inspiration of many a babysitting horror film is “the babysitter and the man upstairs,” in which a young woman takes care of children at home when she begins to receive threatening phone calls only to find out afterward they are coming from inside her own house.

Babysitter horror is probably best described as that point where chips meet dips with kidnapping and home-invasion genres. Some very effective babysitting horror movies are home invasions, since you have TWO innocent yet equally vulnerable groups: the sitters and the babies. However, one of the key strengths of horror shows things in a fight for their very survival and a life completely helpless against dark forces, since in one point of our lives or another, we have all been scared or quite helpless. There’s also a peculiar kind of nostalgia across the board in horror movies regarding babysitting when the script gets flipped, and the babysitter becomes not just anything but precisely as THE bad guy.

1. The Sitter (2007)

According to many commentators, this bears some resemblance to the 1992 film The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. This horror movie was made for television. Also Known As: When The Children Sleep The lead is Mariana Klaveno as Abby, a live-in hired home health worker in the midst of juggling all aspects of her life with being part of two people who pay them off. Once she settles in, friends of the family begin disappearing. Gradually, the even more bitter Abby’s scheme for hurting those kids’ mother to make her household their own begins developing crystal clear.

2. Babysitter Wanted (2008)

While babysitting a young child, a teenage girl starts receives some alarming phone calls. A religious girl named Angie starts working as a babysitter at a description of sitting on an isolated farm that she finds in response for her while reading a college campus bulletin board horror movie. A young boy who chooses to sleep in a cowboy hat is her charge. Angie is warned by threatening phone calls on her very first night as an employee.

3. The House Of The Devil (2009)

A broke college student (2009) — The House of the Devil Photo: MPI Media Group [embedded content] A spine-tinglingly creepy and stylish flick, one that features perhaps Greta Gerwig’s most unexpected role to date. Samantha, a young college student leaves her demure dorm quickly when she is informed that someone has called asking for a babysitter on the night of yogurtl lunar eclipse. Throughout the night, she comes to understand that her “clients” are not who they said were, and there’s no baby in this house for which to babysit. With that, Samantha is left in a fight for survival.

4. All Hallow’s Eve (2013)

Fellow would-be clown artists will know that Art the Clown from Terrifier (2016) debuted years earlier in All Hallow’s Eve (’13). Horror anthology film that introduces Art the Clown from the Terrifier films. Plot An unnamed babysitter, Samantha Scaffidi, browses through the kids she is sitting’s VHS tapes and finds one containing three different stories on it, each of them about a murderer in a clown costume named Art. When they all have witnessed Art kill for the first time, the babysitter sends them to bed before she watches two more by herself. Alas, she finds the last movie all too literal.

5. Babysitter Massacre

Two leads for this horror film were cast via Facebook. This low-budget horror film updates the “babysitter and the man upstairs” trope with an opening text message to their sitter that says: “I’m not in your house…yet! Meanwhile, a babysitters club is in the midst of mourning for their friend April, who disappeared seven years earlier. Later on the babysitters find that a killer is stalking them.

6. Emelie (2015)

Emelie: a malevolent babysitter. Sarah Bolger as the title character in “Emelie” — which opens, ominously enough: A burglar, Carl Bailey, breaks into a nice house and waits for instructions. Emelie at its outset crafts an image of perhaps the worst babysitter one can imagine, letting them break rules and insinuating they should go all Lord of Flies on each other. But we soon find Emelie has plans of her own, and after the older kids get to bed to sleep their way through most of the night, it becomes clear she intends to abscond with their little brother.

7. Better Watch Out (2016)

Bloody Disgusting describes it as “a hilariously bonkers home invasion tale,” and a “pitch-black horror comedy… Straight up full of what you enjoy when watching a motion picture (…) it is an entirety from A to Z. We begin with a psychological horror based on the babysitter Ashley just doing her thing for regular sittee Luke. A twist of the storyline proves that sometimes the truth is more bizarre than fiction… You think it was somebody from outside of their house who terrorized them? 

8. The Babysitter (2017)

The Babysitter: Brought to you by a sitter who only has the young boy used her as cover for killing him. Comedic horror based on a young boy named Cole, who continues to be bullied pretty hard by some jerk male neighbour; A woman named Bee who appears to be his babysitter-seems like a sensible term for 14-year-old MR whom we will all fall in love with any day now. Of course, what Cole doesn’t know is that Bee is member of a Satanic cult who made an agreement with the Dark Lord. She’s known to experiment on young boys so it won’t be long before she brings in Cole. Also Released As: Night of the Babysitter

9. Night Sitter (2018)

Reviewing it for Horror DNA, the author took note of a German release trailer that falsely trumpeted influence from early/mid 90’s Italian psycho-thrillers; but in reality he claimed that it couldn’t properly be labeled any such animal and owed little to no debt towards giallo horror. Wholesomely unoriginal and entirely a-okay for that, “The color palette is an obvious homage to Dario Argento; the Suspiria or Deep Red, with its lurid reds and muted blues thrown in for good measure, baths creepily in greens. Amber is shocked to learn that her client is also one practising the occult, conjuring up the help of some witches known as The Three Mothers.

10. Annabelle Comes Home

These are, without question, demonic relics that Ed and Lorraine should keep shut away at all times…I guess they let their guard down when they were out of the house! Judy Warren, daughter of the legend Ed and Lorraine, is home alone with babysitter Mary Ellen. The doll conjures other spirits in the Warrens’ artefacts room once a friend of Mary Ellen’s, Daniela snoops around and lets her spirit loose. The horrors in the film are veering into being almost too camp to be frightening, but it presents Judy-her babysitter and friends-as a refreshing deviation from the doom-laden tone usual of The Conjuring branch.