Genre: Horror
Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Ben Collins
Cast: Madison Iseman, Dylan Sprayberry, Owen Teague, Lana Condor, Kathryn Newton, Elizabeth Banks, Timothy Olyphant, Toni Collette, Emily Beecham, Violet McGraw
Plot: The film begins as two parents, Anita (Elizabeth Banks) and Daniel Davidson (Timothy Olyphant) are preparing to go out for dinner. Anita is wearing an elegant red dress and after putting on her lipstick she is gathering her hair in front of the mirror. Daniel walks up to her, puts a white pearl necklace on her and then kisses her. The two open the door to Julie's room, their daughter, and whisper good night to her. The two parents seem excited by their exit and run down the stairs and into the living room. Sitting on the sofa is Annabeth (Madison Iseman), a blonde-haired, angelic-faced girl who is reading a magazine while she chews gum. The two parents make recommendations to the girl and leave the house after ruffling her hair. From the dialogue we understand that it was not the first time that the girl was babysitting in that house. Annabeth walks over to the living room window, pulling back the curtain and watches Anita and Daniel leave in their station wagon. A few seconds later the kitchen window suddenly opens, scaring Annabeth.
Peter Hale (Owen Teague), his girlfriend Grace Wong (Lana Condor) and their friend Cassie Lawson (Kathryn Newton) enter the house giggling. Peter and Grace sit on the sofa throwing the magazine Annabeth was reading to the floor and turn on the TV and tune in to the Bucks-Bulls game. Cassie instead opens the refrigerator looking for something good because she was hungry. Annabeth just makes a face without saying a word and there's a flashback from a couple of weeks ago about how Annabeth and Grace met in the school bathroom. Annabeth is in the bathroom washing her face when she is approached by Grace and Cassie. With a wry smile, Grace says she knows that Annabeth works as a babysitter to look after Prof. Davidson's brat when he and his wife go out every now and then to rekindle the relationship. With that peculiar introduction, Grace had managed to convince Annabeth to allow her, Peter Hale and Cassie to break into the professor's house the first night the Davidsons had asked Annabeth to babysit their only daughter. In return, she was promised John Wallace (Dylan Sprayberry), Peter's best friend, cutest guy in college and recently single again. At that moment Annabeth's thoughts are interrupted by John's arrival and the two young men exchange a tender smile. Grace asks Annabeth how she got to work for Mrs Davidson's bitch and Annabeth replies that the pay was good and that the baby was real sweetheart. John then kindly turns to Annabeth and tells her that she had been kind to take care of a child she had suffered a lot in the past. Cassie and Peter ask her what she meant and John replies that her mother didn't tell her much except that that baby was not born in a very balanced environment.
To Annabeth's stunned gaze, Grace was quick to say that John's mother is the town sheriff, Margaret Wallace (Toni Collette). She then asks where the little parasite was. Annabeth a little nervous by Grace's statement says that she is resting in her room because he is sick and not to call him a parasite or a brat anymore because he is a very good child. Grace says "Ok boss .." teasing Annabeth causing Cassie and Peter to laugh. At that point Grace gets up from the sofa approaching Annabeth and turning to John and Peter asks them to relax with the basketball game until they take care of the matter that everyone was there for that night. Then Grace took Annabeth by the hand, leading her upstairs to her house. Cassie soon joins the two too.
The three girls arrive upstairs. Cassie tries to ask Annabeth if she knew anything else about the biological family of Julie, the daughter of the Davidsons. Annabeth nods and says that Julie was the youngest of seven children and that her mother had died in childbirth. The year after the birth of Julie, the eldest son, 16-year-old George was found dead in the bathtub following a suicide. Then she goes on to say that with each passing year the suspicious death of another family member was added until only Julie, her father and Tina, one of her sisters, remained. Tina was twelve while Julie had just turned seven. As Grace and Cassie looked at Annabeth with a very scared face, she continued to tell the story. She says that the father, more and more destroyed by grief, had completely lost her reason and started accusing Julie of being responsible for the deaths of his wife and the rest of her children. Following Tina's death, Julie's father tried to kill her but the police were able to stop him in time. Julie was subsequently placed in foster care with the Davidsons a few weeks later and her father was put in prison where he died a year later, also committing suicide. Cassie, frightened, begins to hold her hands to her chest, stammering about the absurd story she had just heard. Grace instead shakes her head scratching her hair and at that point Annabeth asks her what she had to retrieve at Professor Davidson's house. Grace says they had to find an important item that had been requisitioned by Davidson. Annabeth said she might be in Anita's office pointing to the door down the hall.
At that point the scene moves to the ground floor. The game was over and Peter found a music channel by turning up the volume. Peter asks what he thinks of Annabeth. Meanwhile John was walking around the living room looking at the family photos hanging on the walls and leaning against the furniture saying that she is really very nice and kind and then they started to gossip about John's old girlfriend, Melissa O'Malley. Suddenly John said it was very strange that there wasn't even a picture of the Davidsons with Julie as they had been living together for almost two years. At that moment the two boys were distracted by the sound of someone's footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Annabeth and she was alone. Peter asks where she was her girlfriend and Annabeth said she was in the bathroom because she cut her finger in Mrs. Davidson's study. At that point John, with a chuckle, asks if they had found the murder weapon to which Annabeth only replied with a glare and asks Peter to follow her upstairs to help her search until Grace was cured and asks John to stay there and stand guard and warn them in case the Davidsons arrive. Peter and Annabeth go up the stairs and then approach the door of Anita's study and enter. Meanwhile, John rummaged in the drawers looking for images that portrayed Julie. As he was examining useless papers, a male scream froze his blood. John throws his cards in the air and runs upstairs calling for Peter. Suddenly the door to the room at the end of the hall swings open with force and bloody and screaming, Peter walked out and met John's gaze and yelling at him to run away. Behind him appears Annabeth, who slams the door to the room and locks it. The girl now wore some kind of emerald green tunic that covered the ordinary clothes she was dressed in. The girl's long blond hair was hidden under the hood of her tunic. Around her neck hung a large medallion with strange, unknown symbols. The two ran and shut themselves in the bathroom. At that point John noticed that the deep wound on his friend's arm had almost severed it. Peter was crying and kept saying softly that he wanted to go home. The girl started knocking on the door, ordering the two out, while John tried to dab his friend's wound with towels. "His eyes ... Oh John, his eyes !! And that mouth, oh what a horrible mouth !!", repeats Peter as his friend rummaged in the medicine cabinet for the first aid kit. John was slipping on Peter's blood but manages to keep his balance by holding on to the shower so as not to fall and in doing so he tears the curtain. John backs away unable to speak. Peter, too, with little strength left, looks on and starts to vomit. Grace lay dead. Or rather what was left of Grace. Her body was as if withered: the hollows in the eyes of the empty sockets, her body a body devoid of lymph. At that moment they hear Cassie's screams coming from the hallway beyond the bathroom door. The girl has her hands tied and a wound on her stomach from which she is dripping blood onto the floor. The girl cries and screams as Annabeth talks to the boys saying that if they didn't get out right away their friend would have a bad end. The two, however, were unable to speak, mumbling only monosyllables. At that point Annabeth makes a face saying "Ok ..." and grabs Cassie by her hair and pushes her into the door on their right and immediately locks it. At that point, after a few seconds of inhuman screams, silence returned. Meanwhile, they noticed from the small bathroom window that the Davidsons' car had returned and the couple were walking into the house holding hands. John and Peter exchange a hopeful look.
The two boys heard the front door open but they haven't heard Annabeth's footsteps coming down the stairs and they begin to think the girl might have fled. Peter was very pale from abundant blood loss and John starts asking for help. John heard someone coming up the stairs but avoids opening the door in case Annabeth was still somewhere. He suddenly he hears the voice of Daniel Davidson asking Annabeth what was going on and after a few seconds of silence he heard the girl say that Wong and Lawson were dead and that the other two had barricaded themselves in the bathroom and had decided. At that point Anita's voice is also heard asking worried if Julie was safe in her room. John and Peter exchanged looks filled with genuine confusion and terror.
Anita and Daniel learn that John Wallace, the sheriff's son, is also in the bathroom. Annabeth begins to apologize to the couple saying that she didn't know who he was otherwise I would never have let him go there risking compromising everything. Anita sympathetically puts her hand on Annabeth's shoulder saying that nothing has happened that cannot be remedied. She then she asks the girl to go down and prepare the other guest. She then orders her husband to go down and get her ax. John and Peter haven't said a word and are listening to Annabeth's and Mr. Davidson's footsteps coming down the stairs. Anita starts knocking and orders the two to open immediately. Meanwhile, inside the bathroom, John broke the mirror and took a large piece of glass and ordered his friend to follow him. Suddenly John opens the door and throws it wide without giving Anita time to react. With a firm blow, he slipped the piece of glass into the woman's left leg. The two run down the stairs to find Annabeth near the door and Daniel brandishing the ax. Peter looks at his friend and whispers the word goodbye and pounces on Daniel who fell to the ground. In the fall, however, Peter had his head against the tip of the ax killing him instantly. Meanwhile John tried to reach the back door which was in the kitchen and took two knives chased by the two enemies calling them Satanists. At that point Daniel bursts out laughing almost hysterically leaving the boy speechless. Daniel states that the being they serve is much older than any known demon or devil.
He then says that each of the offspring of this mighty being requires sacrifices, each year more and more stating that he, his friends and a drug addict he and Anita had captured that night. Daniel says Julie was born after her mother, Sally, also a cult member, became pregnant with a mysterious being they worshiped who left the message that when the baby was born she had to continue feeding on a member once a year. of his family at a time. Sally's husband, Ethan, immediately changed his mind and decided to leave the cult by taking away his pregnant wife and the six children the couple had already had but it didn't take them long to find them. At that point they remained prisoners of the cult until Sally gave birth to Julie and was devoured by her own child a few hours after her birth. As long as Julie had one member of her family to feed on, the sacrifice of just one individual was enough, and each year Julie fed on a different family member. Daniel says that the family members are gone now and that Julie is growing up and three to four people is the perfect number of sacrifices that would satisfy her for a long time. Suddenly Anita, limping down the stairs, attacking John by surprise, who defended himself by sticking the knife into his heart. Anita dies giving Daniel one last look whispering something. Daniel, full of anger at the death of his beloved wife, pounces on the boy who manages to stick the other knife in his throat. Meanwhile, Annabeth watched the scene with particular tranquility. John quickly took the knife from Anita and ran to Annabeth who was standing still. Annabeth smiles as she looks at the boy running towards him. When the boy was near her, she suddenly drew a large ceremonial dagger with a curved, serrated blade from under her tunic and there was only silence.
It is 0.30 at night. Sheriff Margaret Wallace gets out of her car after arriving at the Davidsons' house. The place is full of policemen and ambulances. Agent Karen Norton (Emily Beecham) was already there with a grim and serious face. Karen says there was a terrible carnage, she states that there were seven bodies, four of dubious identification and the others of the spouses Davidson and Peter Hale. Margaret is shocked to see her son's friend die like that. Margaret bends down to quickly examine the bodies of the Davidsons. Karen then accompanied Margaret upstairs. The ME puts a hand on Margaret's shoulder and walks into her in the bathroom where he immediately recognized Grace Wong's body. As soon as the coroner showed the other body to Margaret, the woman fell in tears to the ground. Three bodies lay in the room, which was a child's bedroom, little Julie's bedroom. One of them was John Wallace, and not even her mother would have recognized the body as it had been hollowed out were it not for her mark on her left arm, a triangular mark that Margaret knew very well belonged to her son. The woman screams and cries comforted by Karen Norton. Meanwhile, the car Annabeth drove is racing fast along the highway. "We'll be home soon, Julie, we'll be with Dad soon," Annabeth said to the passenger in the back seat who's looking down as she's reading a children's booklet. At that point the little girl looks up at Annabeth and a small devilish smile painted her lips.
