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As Kelly, a high-school misfit and math whiz still perturbed by the nighttime hauntings of her childhood, she’s given little to do here but look progressively more wide-eyed as her adventures in babysitting get more complicated and CGI-heavy.
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The film at least has a promising lead in Tamara Smart, doing double YA-slop duty this year after a small role in Kenneth Branagh’s “Artemis Fowl,” and hopefully on her way to projects that better challenge her game, inquisitive screen presence. Only in a handful of more subtly spooky creature effects - giant detached tentacles thrashing against glass tanks, a slithering “shadow monster” that expands and contracts like an elastic spider - does one sense an inventive horror mind at work amid the content-generating machinery.
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“A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting” gives the director her largest canvas in a while, yet the film feels more programmed than imagined.
A BABYSITTERS GUIDE TO MONSTER HUNTING TV
It’s been 25 years since Talalay directed a theatrical feature in the chaotic, cult-bound “Tank Girl,” having cut her teeth bringing more style than required to such undistinguished horror filler as “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.” Since then, her wit and ingenuity has had little room to flex in TV assignments.