WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Babysitter: Killer Queen, available now on Netflix.
Three years after helming the Netflix original horror comedy The Babysitter, fan-favorite filmmaker McG is back for its sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen. The film follows teenage misfit Cole Johnson who finds himself more ostracized than ever because everyone doubts his account of the horrific night where he barely survived a satanic cult led by his babysitter. While attending a party with his unrequited crush and girl-next-door Melanie, Cole discovers the cult has risen from the grave and is eager to take its revenge against him.
After directing and producing the original film, McG has returned to produce, direct and co-write the sequel, infusing it with even more of his prolific '80s pop-culture references and inspirations. In an exclusive interview with CBR, McG discussed crafting Killer Queen, reflected on his career and the appeal of helming coming-of-age stories, and teased a director's cut for 2009's Terminator Salvation.
What made you want to dive back into this world for a sequel?
McG: Just the opportunity to synthesize tones that don't traditionally coexist. I'm very excited about mashing things up, making films that are mixtapes and just speak to the things that influenced me so tremendously growing up. And they are, oftentimes, incongruous. If I can find a way to make that all come together, that's what's exciting to me as a filmmaker.
With Killer Queen, in particular, you really do wear your influences on your sleeve with musical cues, slasher movie influences, even nods to video games. What were some of your big inspirations putting this movie together?Â
McG: I think what you see is it's a reflection of a time period [in] which I grew up; I'm just a child of the '80s at the advent of home video. Instead of being subject to what the art house is playing two days at a time and just trying to get lucky with things I was interested in, I could go to a video store and rent the entire Alfred Hitchcock library and watch it in a weekend. That was thrilling for me. I just would fall asleep at the movie theater waiting for Star Wars to come out and watching television and listening to music with an older brother and older sister. And I think, if you just take all those things and deconstruct them and look at them, you see them reflected in The Babysitter universe.
And I think that's what I enjoyed the most about it; it's very freeing, and Netflix supports me to do my thing and take chances, and ultimately, it's kind of an experimental movie because you can't put it in a box. And I don't know if this movie works theatrically, it's too weird! Maybe if you and I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse, that might work! [Laughs] But, other than that, it's kind of odd and it's nice that films that are experimental can take place and have a home, because it's tough. You have to fit a lot of metrics to justify spending $75 million on a movie and another $100 million to release it around the world -- it's high risk stuff! There's obviously a lot of convention if you're on ABC, NBC or CBS but, to make a movie at Netflix, you're very free to do your thing and live or die by your own audience reaction, and I think that's all a filmmaker can ask for.
In talking about the freedom you get working with Netflix, you really go for broke with the gore in this particular flick. Was there ever a note where Netflix was like, "Maybe not as much? Maybe tone it down a little here or there."
McG: Yes, a lot of notes with that, but I get that note on every level, like, "The music is too loud, the comedy is too rough, the sexy is too sexy." And I think that's the aggravation that creates the pearl, you know what I mean? I'm a filmmaker that's always listening; I listen to everybody on the set and I'm not interested in your title. I'm as likely to listen to the craft-service person and the grips as I am to the producers, and I factor in everything and let that be my guiding light on what the final decision is and how we play.
The gore is meant to be grindhousey. You can see I spent so much time in the '90s under the tutelage of Quentin Tarantino, I was making music videos and commercials at [Tarantino's production company] A Band Apart. You look at Django Unchained and the way the sister gets pulled out of the way by a ratchet pole from a shot by Jamie Foxx's pistol, it's not realistic. The amount of blood coming out isn't realistic, but I find it thoroughly enjoyable. I just do things like that because I let "Hey, wouldn't it be great if..." be my North Star, and it results in this sort of film, which certainly isn't for everybody. But I'm hoping that the people that it is for really, really passionately go for it.
How much fun was it getting the band back together to make the sequel?
McG: It's fun! You look at what Robbie Amell is doing with his career. You look at Jenna Ortega and she's going to be the biggest star in the whole world; she just booked the new Scream movie, she's going crazy. Judah Lewis, Samara Weaving... it's so fun for me to work with talent and come back and work with them again and see how their lives have grown. You look at the first Charlie's Angels and the second Charlie's Angels, Christian Bale in the Terminator movie, it's very, very interesting to work with people and see where they've gone since the first time you met or made art together. So, yeah, it was tremendously fun and different. You look at Judah Lewis, he was a kid in the first movie and he's a young man in the second!
Yeah, he has a square jaw now. That threw me off for a second.
McG: Yeah! He's like a baby DiCaprio in this one! I'm like, "Dude, you're too good-looking to make you the sorry misfit!" So I dressed him in a Wes Anderson, three-piece corduroy suit and I thought maybe that would help.
A common thread I've noticed in a lot of your work like The OC or Shadowhunters or The DUFF or, of course, both Babysitter movies is they're coming-of-age stories set in these more outrageous premises. What do you find particularly interesting as a storyteller about setting stories during that time of life?
McG: The intensity in which you feel things. When I reflect on my life, that's just when I felt things the most intensely. That's why I'm so connected to that window of life and I'm just a child of John Hughes. So between what I was watching and the way I felt during those years, I just felt a real point of connection to that window of life.
You were mentioning Charlie's Angels and Terminator and, as an aside, I think Salvation is one of the best post-Cameron era films. But both of those movies got rebooted last year! I was wondering if you could comment on your impact on both of those franchises as they were introduced for a new generation.
McG: It's interesting because I feel like we did so much right with Terminator but, ultimately, got just enough wrong that we got beat up a little bit by the fanbase, and it really, really broke my heart. And now, strangely, I think the film has started to age better. And there is a different cut; I have my own cut of that film and there's people online that talk about wanting to see that cut. And that's interesting!
But I think I got a lot of things right with that. Obviously, I think [uncredited screenwriter] Jonah Nolan is a very, very serious writer and he did the best he could. And Christian [Bale] is maybe the most talented actor working today and Sam [Worthington] did a really good job also. I think I've got to take the punch on that one for not quite nailing the landing on the final expression of that movie, and who knows, maybe the cut that I have of that movie hidden away is the answer. It's darker! [Laughs] I don't know, that's for the fans to say.
And, with Charlie's Angels, I'm friends with Elizabeth Banks, we've done projects together. And she pushed things forward and tried to make it her thing and made it an original offering. I was reacting to what [original series executive producers] Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg did in the '70s, and I did it at the turn of the century and then Elizabeth did it now. You just play a role and you're just sort of the keeper of the flame, be it The Terminator, be it Charlie's Angels.
It's funny, I made a joke in The Babysitter where Phoebe, the Jenna Ortega character, understands what Cole's talking about with memetic metal and he speaks to Terminator 2, and she says, "It's one of the three films in cinematic history to supersede the original." And there's a cut where he asks what are the others and she goes "The Godfather 2, Aliens and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle." [Laughs] And he goes "Aliens?!" [Laughs]
Hopefully, we got Killer Queen right because making sequels, it's hard! I don't know why it's so hard but it's extremely difficult, and sometimes they're thrilling and wonderful and better than the original, but it's rare.
In making sequels, what was something you wanted to change up or make its own distinct thing, coming back to The Babysitter?
McG: I wanted to go deeper with the idea of not being conventional. The whole thing is based off of Goethe's Faust but then there's such a giant Mel Brooks influence, and how do you make those two things link up and go down, and that's precisely what excites me. And that speaks to the fact I want action, I want comedy, I want romance, I want a story, I want heart, I want full-body, golden days of Amblin engagement, and that's what I'm trying to do.
I like to make films for those that look at things more deeply. We did that with The OC. The OC was certainly a teen soap opera but we also talked about Thomas Pynchon and magical realism. I have hidden messages on the chalkboard in The Babysitter from Gore Vidal and Morrissey, just these disparate voices. I like to be playful and put it out there with the things that I read and the things I listen to and the things I watch, and it's a strange concoction.
When you create misfit characters like Cole or Seth on The OC, do they reflect your own eclectic wide range of interests as well?
McG: I don't know if they reflect my interests in those characters so much as my reality; I just was that person. I never saw a day in high school without braces. When I graduated from high school, I was 5'2", I was stick-thin with an orange afro, I was a shit-show! And yet, I kind of was cool with everybody. I got along with the jocks and I got along with the [cool kids]. I got along with the surfers and I got along with the drama kids, I got along with the brainiacs. I just got along with everybody because I wasn't threatening and I was sort of a joke sidekick, and you see that Seth and you see that with Cole. I really have a sympathy to that experience during that window of growing up.
In speaking of musical influences and your professional background, do you write with a soundtrack in mind as you're putting the film together?
McG: Absolutely! I literally called my company Wonderland Sound and Vision because I treat the music and image with equal importance. And I feel like you got to be able to turn the picture off and listen to a movie and be able to understand what's going on and feel the emotion, and you got to be able to look at a movie and turn the sound off and still feel the emotion. And should you put those two together, the whole is greater than its parts; that's the whole goal, and I'm always hearing music in my head when I'm directing a scene or thinking about the rhythm of the cut or the overall expression of the movie in general.
There's such a decidedly musical feel, and that's just the result of growing up on The Sound of Music and West Side Story and Flashdance and Grease. You see it all out there and the music component is huge. Before I was making movies, I was making records and shooting music videos and trying to tell stories in those videos and show other worlds.
I was lucky, people took that well and I took that aesthetic to Charlie's Angels, and it was very dangerous at the time. I was going to get fired at three different times on that film because nobody understood what the fuck they were looking at [in] the dailies, it was just so odd! It's going to feel new and feel different like oxygen is coming into the theater, and I'm hoping to do that with The Babysitter also, especially in this time where Netflix has allowed all of us as fans to try out more and more and be experimental and look at different things. I don't know that this movie works theatrically and you certainly couldn't put it on network television, so it's perfect on Netflix. So is The Crown, so is Stranger Things.
I have to ask because you've been working with this show a long time: Supernatural is coming to an end this year. I was wondering if you could speak to your experiences bringing it to television and to millions of fans around the world for 15 seasons.
McG: It's humbling and absolutely thrilling. Jensen [Ackles] and Jared [Padalecki] are incredible and [Eric] Kripke, who invented it; I remember the day he came in and pitched me the show like it was yesterday. [Kripke was like,] "It's like Star Wars in Truck Stop America!" And I was like, "Okay, man..." And he was like, "There's this car and they're brothers and there's demons," and just everything he did. I just remember setting that show up with him and going with him to New York when it got picked up with Jared and Jensen.
And to just reflect on 15 years of that... if I'm not mistaken, it's the longest-running American science-fiction show in history, and I think only Doctor Who is longer, and being British... it just blows my mind. It's humbling and I'm proud of it. I have nothing but smiles when I reflect on that show, and David Nutter did the pilot, and just the relationships with the people that ran The WB into what became The CW now, Peter Roth. So many smiles there.
Was there anything you'd change looking back at that 15-season run?
McG: I think not because I think they benefited tremendously from me being at arm's length, Bob Singer and the other showrunners and the things they brought to it. The way I like to run the things I produce is if it needs me, I like to get involved and, if it needs me less, I hope I have the wisdom to stay away. And there's a chemistry and, if the chemistry is working, don't upset the apple cart. And that's hard for me to do because I'm passionate about the stuff we make and I want to be involved as a fan, but knowing when to get involved and when to let it breathe, it took me a long time to learn that.
And I think Supernatural benefited from being shot in Vancouver -- I'd be up in Vancouver a lot, making movies and other shows, what have you -- but nonetheless, it wasn't out on Warner Bros. soundstages like Chuck was or Lethal Weapon was. I wouldn't change a thing.
Without going into spoilery details, there certainly is room for a potential third Babysitter installment. I know it's early days yet, but have there been any talks with Netflix about a future for this franchise?
McG: Yeah, we have the story, and I firmly put it in the hands of the audience; If the audience wants it, they'll see it and we'll do it and, if they say, "No, I don't like this," then we won't. And I would love to because I would love to conclude the arc of the Cole character. I love the surprises from the second movie. I love that Melanie is the bad guy -- I like to flip a card at the end of the first act and, whoops, it's Melanie! In the third act, I flip another card, that it was all under control by Bea, and Bea was Phoebe's original babysitter and she's the one that sold her soul for good purposes, whereas all the other kids, as a reflection of social media and its influence, sold their souls for lightweight purposes. I love those surprises, and there's a couple of big surprises left for the third one.
Directed, produced and co-written by McG, The Babysitter: Killer Queen stars Judah Lewis, Hana Mae Lee, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino and Jenna Ortega. The film is available to stream now on Netflix.