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A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting | 2020 | TV-PG | – 1.4.2

content-ratingsWhy is “A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting” rated TV-PG? The TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board rating indicates that “this program contains material that parents may find unsuitable for younger children.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a couple of flirting scenes and suggestive song lyrics, several encounters with a Bogeyman and Toadies that act as accomplices in the scaring and snatching of children, a few nightmare sequences with monsters and scary images, a few fights ending with children in a trance and a few scenes of children using magic to defeat monsters, and some mild language and name-calling. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.


A 14-year-old math whiz (Tamara Smart), who was attacked by a monster as a child, loses a kidnapped little boy (Ian Ho) she was babysitting and must find him before his parents get home. That’s when she discovers a secret society of child-protecting babysitters that help her defeat monsters big and small. Also with Tom Felton, Indya Moore, Oona Laurence, Alessio Scalzotto and Momona Tamada. Directed by Rachel Talalay. A few lines of dialogue are spoken in Spanish, Japanese, an Indian dialect, and an African language with English subtitles. [Running Time: 1:38]

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting SEX/NUDITY 1

 – A high school freshman girl and a senior boy smile at each other in two scenes. A teen boy talks to two teen girls and another teen girl says to stop trying to impress the girls. A teen girl pushes a teen boy up to a wall, leans against him and then closes him into a closet.
 Some song lyrics relate to dating: “Kiss like your ex is in the room,” “You kiss too nicely,” and “I want a love practitioner.”
 A teen girl wears short-shorts that bare her legs to the upper thighs.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting VIOLENCE/GORE 4

 – A flashback shows a 5-year-old girl in bed, startling awake as a T-Rex toy in a rocking chair makes the chair rock, then disappears and appears on her side table, roaring at her while at the same time a man’s long fingers comes out of a creaking closet door surrounded with white smoke and the flashback ends as the girl, now 14, stops daydreaming in a class (the closet man looks and sounds like a cross between Johnny Depp’s characterizations of Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter). A flashback shows a teen girl holding up a glowing light bulb, and throwing it at a man with a pale face and straggly hair wearing an ornate long coat, who’s in a closet; the man catches the bulb, slams the girl into a wall, sings, and the girl passes out in a trance (she later is seen unharmed but groaning).
 A 5-year-old boy has insomnia because of monsters and watches his closet door creak open and white smoke and long fingers come out as a toy robot says, “Enemy alert”; a man in the closet sings to the boy after pulling a tentacle out of a small aquarium (we see the tentacle extend under the man’s coat), he makes the boy’s mouth stick shut so he can’t talk, and the bed shakes and three two-foot tall Toadies appear (one looks like a shapeless ogre with big blocky teeth and the other two, one pink and one bluish, have soft spikes on their heads, large dull teeth, and googly eyes and they all chatter and mumble throughout the film); a teen girl sees a lump under a blanket and pulls it off, and an ogre jumps out, steals the boy in a canvas bag after trying to eat a large light bulb that only stretches in its mouth and the girl calls the police, but they hang up on her.
 A Bogeyman releases a young boy from a canvas bag in an ornate room where he has 51 rare gases in tanks and says, “You and I are about to ruin the world.” A Bogeyman puts a helmet with a hundred or more glowing fiber optic lines running from it on a boy’s head and tries to hypnotize him to sleep, but the boy stays awake; the man finally uses a cat’s eye amulet to hypnotize the boy, who fidgets and groans in his sleep.
 Two teen girls struggle for several seconds with one of them in a trance; she tries to hit and stomp the other girl, but fails and the second girl zaps her with a shockwave device, makes her fall, and brings her out of the trance unharmed while saying, “You tried to kill me,” and the trance girl says her five-year-old brother was kidnapped by the Bogeyman.
 Two teen girls enter a house and using a black light, find the words “The Time of Nightmares Has Begun” on a wall. We see shadows of odd shapes on a wall, and a shadow of the first teen girl punching what looks like a spiked Toadie several times in a few scenes. An ancient book turns its pages by itself, landing on a page that says a Bogeyman smells like wet mud, a thousand farts, and a pile of rotten eggs; it also says a spider woman in a long dress with a wide skirt had eight spider legs under it and enjoys drinking blood of all kinds, the younger the better. We hear that a spider woman fed a Girl Scout troop to many black cats.
 Two teen girls, one carrying a baby, follow three Toadies through long tunnels after finding what looks like burn marks on a lawn; one girl says an ancient book says Toadies love the smell of newborns and they love to eat them as she puts the baby on a floor and sprinkles baby powder around it to protect it from evil; three Toadies emerge from a hole in the floor covered in dirt and they scuffle with the girls, who capture one in a canvas bag and later dump him into a garbage chute and release the Toadie in the basement where it jumps and bangs into things, yelping; they X-ray it and we see a squat humanoid skeleton and a goose-neck lamp, the girls plant a GPS monitor on it and let it go.
 A teen girl falls through a trap door and down a long chute to a room containing large tanks of red mist and she climbs a tank and jumps across to another tank as a Bogeyman hits a second teen girl, who slides across the floor but seems uninjured; the first girl leaps off the tank with a large lit light bulb in her hand as the man stretches his arm four feet up and catches it when a third teen girl appears and all three girls struggle with the man; one girl jumps and grabs the light bulb, slamming it into the man’s chest, where it glows and after a few seconds, the glow becomes an expanding blue and white shock wave and the man disappears, a teen girl steps on a cat’s eye amulet and a young boy wakes up.
 A teen girl shows a large neck scar that she says was left by a “Class 2 Oozer,” and another teen girl and a teen boy say they also received scars and a paper cut. Three teens show a grenade-teddy bear and one girl throws it, making a muffled explosion and releasing smoke. A teen girl says they must kill a Bogeyman with a Monster Punch that drives a light bulb of Angel Fire into his heart. A young boy says, “I can make monsters” and “I dreamt my teddy bear was on fire and when I woke up, he was burned”; we see crayon drawings of a large red tentacle with suction cups and a small green ogre and a babysitter makes a joke by looking under his bed and yelping at a dirty sock and the boy says it’s not funny and monsters are real.
 A pile of clothing in a laundry room rises from a basket, falls back down and a Toadie jumps out and bites some electrical cables, causing sparks; two teen girls open a closet door and hear scuffling and groaning and slam the door shut as lights come on and we see a short daddy long-legs type creature scuttle and slip under the closet door; one teen girl flashes a light at it and it screeches and runs back under the door; one of the teen girls runs upstairs followed by the creature, she runs to the edge of a balcony, asks the several teens below to take cell phone photos, and the lights from the phones disable the creature as the girl jumps to the floor, unharmed.
 Two sets of two teen girls argue for several seconds. A teen girl berates a senior girl for bullying a freshman girl. A teen girl argues with her parents over the phone. A teen girl argues with a teacher briefly, because she solved a complex problem in her head. A Bogeyman argues with three chattering Toadies in a few scenes. A Toadie appears at a young boy’s bed with a sledgehammer to put him to sleep, but a man shouts at it, making it pout and whimper. A Bogeyman with a long red tentacle slaps a teen girl with it, and she falls but is unharmed. A Bogeyman scares a teen girl by imitating her missing little brother’s voice and she gasps.
 We hear that a Cat Lady is a silent screen star turned Class 5 Witch and we see many black cats printed on wallpaper move; two teen girls go to her house and she releases at least 100 black cats to eat one of the girls, who runs as the cats chase her, but she shines a laser pointer into a multifaceted chandelier and distracts the cats with red dots and escapes while the other girl has a coughing fit because of a cat allergy and is put into a trance. A teen girl throws a grenade-teddy bear smoke bomb into the mouth of a Toadie and it coughs, screams, and falls down; she throws a black umbrella like cloth to encase another Toadie and she and another girl leave. A teen boy and a teen girl take a glowing lasso, capture a daddy long-legs creature, and put it into a box; we see through the box’s window that the creature has four googly eyes, purrs, and slams itself into the glass, scaring the teens, who yelp.
 While asleep, red magic mist flows from a young boy’s brain into a large tank that now is filled with red mist; the child walks into the tank, shouts, and tells indistinct shadow monsters and a floating long spine attached to a skull to disappear and they do so.
 On a street at night, teens and adults wear costumes of a stalk of broccoli, a skeleton, the Tin Man, a robot, 18th century soldiers, the Ice Queen, someone in a long white cape, and some wear old clothing and big hats. A plastic skeleton is seen on a food table at a party. A baby burps loudly, a young boy burps after we hear he drank 12 glasses of warm milk, and a Toadie flatulates loudly after he falls, unharmed. A Toadie swallows a large black rubber bag and burps loudly. A Toadie pulls a wet cell phone from the mouth of another Toadie. Two teen girls find a wet computer tablet and shake slime from their hands. A Bogeyman says, “The babysitter buffet is officially open,” meaning he plans to eat a few babysitters, but he does not.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting LANGUAGE 2

 – 1 scatological term, 1 mild anatomical term, 1 mild obscenity, name-calling (crazy, insane, imbecile, child, stupid, blithering idiot, ridiculous, twerp, worm, loser, monster, mean girl, slutty teenagers, weak small pathetic insignificant little girl, sad small cruel insignificant little heart, Monster Girl, Ice Queen, Crayola Monster, CSI Rhode Island, Casanova, Sister of the Year), exclamations (gosh, man, what the…, boo-yah, hootie-hoo, whoa, whooo, pshoom, shhh), 3 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, God). | profanity glossary |

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting SUBSTANCE USE

 – Teens in a lab gather ingredients from around the world to make a potion and we see green and red mists, a green mist hypnotizes a young boy and two teen girls, and a young boy asks for an energy drink and chocolate covered espresso beans to stay awake and is refused. A teen boy at a party spills a drink from a red cup (which usually indicates alcohol but we see no alcohol containers) onto a girl.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Bullies, mean girls, narcissism, nightmares, insomnia, fears, belief, science and magic, witchcraft, monster legends, following rules, food allergies, listening to children, helping others, danger, conflict, intelligence, problem-solving, working together.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting MESSAGE

 – Both science and magic can help children overcome their fears.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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