Ashley is moving away, but has one more night to babysit Luke, who is hoping to arouse her and get in her pants. However, his plans come to a grinding halt when an intruder breaks into the house and terrorizes Luke and Ashley. But is this situation really what it looks like?
Not to be confused with Christmas Evil, also known as You Better Watch Out. Or Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!.
Tropes in this movie include:
- Alliterative Name: Luke's surname is Lerner.
- Ambiguous Ending: Ashley survives the ordeal and in all likelihood will report Luke to the police when she reaches the hospital. In the mid-credit sequence Luke asks his mother if they can visit Ashley at the hospital, with the implied intention of killing her. Whether he succeeds is left up in the air.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Ricky is smart enough to see that Garrett is nowhere near as bad as Luke and asks him why he’s friends with him. Garrett can’t really answer that.
- Artistic License – Physics: The killer claims one of their victims by swinging a paint can at the victim's head in a Shout-Out to Home Alone. This is a Call-Back to an earlier discussion about whether or not such an attack would be deadly in real life by Luke. While we don't clearly see the results, Luke states that the victim's head "exploded." While being hit in the face with a paint can in such a way could indeed kill someone, it's highly unlikely that it'd actually make their head explode. The most likely result would be multiple fractures to the facial bones and probably losing some teeth
. Then again, it could also be just childish hyperbole on Luke's part. - Asshole Victim: While the murder of The Dragon is debatably this at worst since he actually tried to right his wrongdoings, Jeremy did, indeed, spread a rumor that he had slept with Ashley either before or after their breakup, which is not great. Still, he didn't deserve to die in such an upsetting fashion.
- Ax-Crazy: The killer is Hot-Blooded, murderous, and will kill anyone who gets in the way of his plans to seduce Ashley.
- Badass in Distress: Ashley gets tied to a chair but manages to be extremely resourceful and patient. She even nearly manages to escape before being knocked unconscious from a trap.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: The moment that Ashley realizes how bad Luke really is comes after she finds out that he killed Garrett's hamster deliberately and lied about it being an accident.
- Black Comedy: So black that no light can escape it.
- Bolivian Army Ending: From the perspective of both characters:
- Luke: has killed multiple people and apparently coordinated a plan to get away with it. But Ashley isn't dead and is being taken to the hospital, where Luke can try to kill her, but she'll be surrounded by adults.
- Ashley: has been badly injured by Luke, but is still alive. But she's still in the hospital and Luke is coming to "visit" her, so will she be able to defend herself?
- Bound and Gagged: Ashley is taped to a chair and gagged after Luke punches her and she falls down the stairs.
- Camp Straight: Luke's father has a bit of a flamboyant personality, and a fondness for tacky Christmas ties. His wife teases him about it, asking if he's sure he's never sucked another man's cock.
- Cerebus Syndrome: It starts out having comedic elements, even after the home invasion. But as soon as Luke kills Ricky, his sociopathy is played horribly straight.
- Chaos of the Bells: The carollers sing "Carol Of The Bells" as Ashley runs away and gets knocked out.
- Corrupted Character Copy: Luke is this to Kevin from Home Alone, depicted here as a sociopathic incel who engages in Engineered Heroics and enjoys watching his traps kill people.
- Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing: After Ashley throws herself to the ground and shatters glass, she picks up a shard of the glass and, after being pulled up, she cuts the tape off her wrists.
- Country Matters: As he's driving home with Deandra, Robert comments that her friends were "being cunts".
- Covers Always Lie: The poster for the movie makes it look like a typical home invasion flick, with the babysitter trying to protect the kid. But the truth is that the kid is the invader.
- Deconstructed Trope: The paint can attack from Home Alone is re-enacted and Played for Drama to a gory, fatal result. It likely wouldn't invoke the Chunky Salsa Rule, but it's enough to be fatal. Luke even lampshades it, having discussed it earlier.
- Deconstruction: Of "Home Alone" Antics. One of the film's most memorable traps is replicated as an explicit Shout-Out and given a more "realistic" (read: bloody and fatal) result, and the "Kevin" stand-in is every bit as psychotic as the fandom jokes tend to paint McCallister as.
- Decoy Protagonist: The film opens up with Luke and he’s initially presented as the main protagonist of the film, but then focus shifts to his babysitter Ashley once the invasion kicks off.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- The killer's plan doesn't work out the way they thought it would. Luke's original plan to fake a home invasion as a means of seducing Ashley through fear (which is not only insanely creepy, but incredibly stupid) quickly goes out the window when Ashley notices the "home invader" is wearing one of Luke's masks and has the same shoulder-scratching tic as his friend Garrett does. When he tries to improvise, it almost always goes wrong for him. Ashley gets free at one point and almost escapes, and when Ricky shows up, he quickly figures out something's not right when he can't find Ashley. Then when Luke tries to kill him, he screws up and Ricky almost kills him, only being stopped by an armed Garrett. Garrett also has a change of heart and tries to free Ashley, forcing Luke to kill him. By the end, he fails to kill Ashley, who survives and is taken to the hospital. At the end of the movie, Ashley even flips off the killer, proving their plan didn't work.
- The killer also doesn't take into account modern police forensics. His intended cover story about a murder-suicide involving Ashley's ex boyfriend will quickly fall apart once police discover the lack of gunshot residue on the supposed murderer (but gunshot residue on him), blood spatters on the wrong people and in the wrong places, and so on.
- Dirty Coward: Luke hits Ricky with a baseball bat when his back is turned. When he realizes that he's failed to knock Ricky out, he starts panicking and runs away as Ricky takes the bat from him. Slightly justified, because Luke is a 12-year-old boy who couldn't possibly take out someone of Ricky's strength and stature with his bare hands.
- The Dragon: Garrett, to Luke, although he does a decidedly poor job at being one.
- Enfant Terrible: Luke, a twelve-year-old who's also a complete sociopath. Throughout the movie, he sexually harrasses his babysitter, plots highly creative murders, reacts to the resulting carnage with glee, and even kills off his best friend/accomplice.
- Engineered Heroics: Luke staged the entire home invasion to impress and seduce Ashley, and flips out on her when she finds out what he's really doing.
- Faux Affably Evil: The killer is always polite to Ashley prior to his Villainous Breakdown, even after he knocks her unconscious and ties her to a chair. But it's all just a passive-aggressive mockery of real politeness, and all it does is make him that much more despicable.
- Flipping the Bird: Ashley to the killer as she’s getting wheeled into an ambulance at the end. The killer realizes only then that their plans have just gone out the window.
- Frame-Up: Luke's endgame is to make it look like Jeremy went on a Murder-Suicide spree and killed Ricky, Garrett, and Ashley. Since Ashley survived, it's implied this plan failed.
- Gory Discretion Shot: A victim has his head caved in by a paint can. The aftermath isn’t shown, but his blood leaks down onto his pants and mixes with the yellow paint, as though to resemble ketchup and mustard.
- Halfway Plot Switch: At the end of the first act, it stops being a home invasion film and starts being a thriller about an Enfant Terrible.
- Hate Sink:
- Luke is one of the worst examples of an Enfant Terrible in cinematic history. He stages a home invasion, then murders Ashley's boyfriend and ex-boyfriend in cold blood, and later kills Garrett, his own friend and accomplice, for trying to save her when he sees the error of his ways — all in a twisted ploy to seduce Ashley, who he also then tries to kill when he realizes she won't come around to him. As much as he might initially appear to be intelligent and a good planner, his petulance reveals itself whenever his plans go out the window.
- Jeremy has limited screentime, but what we do see of him is more than enough to establish him as an all-around unlikable douche.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just when Garrett starts to listen to Ashley and untie her, he is killed by Luke.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Dragon is killed with the same shotgun that he wielded while helping Luke stage the home invasion.
- "Home Alone" Antics: Played for Horror. The killer sets up traps all around the house, but the results are predictably more gruesome than the Trope Namer.
- Hope Spot: A rare positive variation. At the end of the movie, as Luke smirks, thinking he’s gotten away with all his various crimes, suddenly an EMT can be heard saying, "This one’s still alive!"
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Set around Christmas.
- Hypocritical Humor: A dark example. When Luke and Ashley watch a horror movie on TV, Ashley makes a comment about how stupid it is to go into the attic. Three guesses as to where she goes during the home invasion.
- If I Can't Have You…: When the killer finally realizes that Ashley will never come around to him, he murders Ricky, and resolves to kill Ashley, as well.
- Improvised Bandage: Ashley survived the cut on her neck, caused by Luke, by sticking it to a piece of duct tape from her mouth.
- Insane Troll Logic: Luke came to the conclusion that since dopamine is secreted during both moments of sexual arousal and fear, the best way for him to seduce Ashley would be to scare her.
- It Works Better with Bullets: The handgun Luke wields is unloaded, as Ashley finds out to her horror.
- Karma Houdini: In his own words, Luke is "the Harry Houdini of getting away with it." He gets away with killing Ricky, Jeremy, and Garrett, while making it look like Jeremy killed them all and hanged himself. The only thing preventing it from being an all-out instance where The Bad Guy Wins is that Ashley survived and made it to the hospital, implying that she lived to report Luke's case to the authorities.
- Kids Are Cruel: And how! 99% of the tropes on this page speak for themselves.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: All of the confirmed victims are male: Ricky, Jeremy, and Garrett. Ashley appears to die but was only faking it.
- Mouth Taped Shut: Ashley is being held hostage by Luke, a boy who she's looking after him on Christmas Eve. She's all tied up with her mouth taped shut. Ashley later uses the same tape from her mouth as an Improvised Bandage to stop her neck from bleeding.
- Near-Villain Victory: By the end of the film the killer is 100% convinced that they have got all their ducks in a row to get away with their crimes. All of the witnesses have been seemingly dispatched and the evidence seems to be pointing towards the true culprit being one of the victims (who can obviously no longer defend themself) while the killer has set up what seems to be an unbreakable alibi on top of being a highly unlikely suspect to start with. Then they hear the Wham Line revealing that one of the victims is Not Quite Dead thereby throwing their schemes out the window.
- Never Sent Any Letters: Luke claims Ashley texted Ricky. She didn't. This tips Garrett off that Luke always intended to hurt Ashley.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers make the movie appear to be a bloodier take on Home Alone, with Ashley's exes as the invaders. The actual plot involves Luke staging a home invasion, holding Ashley hostage and killing her boyfriend and ex.
- Not Quite Dead: Ashley survives by duct taping her neck wound, although Luke hopes to finish her off in the hospital.
- Oh, Crap!: Luke, upon hearing that he wasn’t as thorough in his crime spree as he thought.
- Precocious Crush: Twelve-year-old Luke has a crush on the older teenage Ashley. It turns out to be far less precocious and more of a Love Makes You Crazy situation.
- Reckless Gun Usage: The killer casually brushes a pistol up against their own face and never observes proper trigger discipline. Justified, it's unloaded the whole time.
- Redemption Equals Death: Garrett eventually gets around to turning against Luke, and tries to free Ashley. For his efforts, he’s rewarded with a shotgun blast.
- Red Herring: Garrett’s “bad influence”, the pizza man, Jeremy, and, of course, the home invasion itself.
- Rescue Romance: Luke tries to set this up with Ashley by staging a home invasion. Things rapidly go From Bad to Worse after his plan is exposed.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Garrett is the film's biggest source of comic relief and is killed about 3/4ths of the way in.
- Shout-Out:
- To Home Alone. Aside from being set around Christmas, the killer sets up booby traps around the house, and at one point, even reenacts the paint can scene Luke and Garrett had been discussing earlier. It works, with unseen, but obviously messy results. Even the tagline lampshades this.
- There's also two to Adventure Time. Luke's Wi-Fi network is named "Finn and Jake." Later, Luke and Garrett have a brief discussion about which girls from the series they'd want to have sex with.
- Smug Snake: The killer is not nearly as capable as he imagines himself to be. It bites him in the ass in the end.
- The Sociopath: Luke, big time. He uses superficial charm to hide his sociopathy from everyone else and is shown to be manipulative, getting his best friend to help him stage a home invasion. He shows absolutely no remorse or empathy for those he harms, killing three people, including his friend. He also shows something of an inability to plan ahead; none of his original plans go right, and he is forced to improvise. At one point, he molests Ashley over a game of Truth or Dare; precocious sexuality is actually one of the early behavior problems typical of a sociopath.
- Spanner in the Works: Luke thinks his plan has worked perfectly, until he finds out that Ashley is still alive.
- Staircase Tumble: Ashley is knocked out after she gets punched by Luke and falls down the stairs.
- A Tap On The Head: Ashley gets hit hard on the head twice and knocked out both times, apparently for a while: once by falling down the stairs, then by smacking her head trying to escape. She suffers no ill effects from this and is still able to defend herself.
- Toilet Humor: Garrett tries to keep Ricky out of the kitchen where Ashley is tied up by claiming Ashley has diarrhea. Luke is annoyed.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Oh, sweet Jesus. Luke is more or less a Serial Killer in the body of a twelve-year-old boy.
- Unhand Them, Villain!: Ashley tells the killer to put down a paint can. He obliges by pushing it off the bannister it was resting on, killing his target.
- Villainous Breakdown: Luke has one when he catches Garrett trying to free Ashley, blowing him away with a shotgun while screaming at him. Shortly after, he attempts to kill Ashley when he finally realizes she won't give in to his advances.Luke: I told you not to touch her, you asshole!
- Walking Spoiler: Virtually every spoiler on this page concerns one particular character turning out to not be who they seem.
- Wham Line:
- "Wait… that's your mask."
- "This one's still alive!"
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Luke. He's knowledgeable in things most kids wouldn't know at his age, like that dopamine is secreted in moments of sexual arousal as well as fear. He's a particularly dark example, being a manipulative schemer who is totally zen about his crimes.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Subverted. The killer tries to work this into their plan after things start going pear-shaped, but they generally make their own situation much worse. All of Luke's attempts to salvage the situation end up getting more people killed, including people he didn't intend to die. The final shot of Ashley flipping off Luke implies that she's going to report him to the authorities, and that he won't get away with it.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Luke disposes of Garrett when he tries to help Ashley, then coldly brushes him off as an annoyance.
- Your Head Asplode: Ricky’s death, at least according to Luke. See Gory Discretion Shot above.
