Screenplay Structure Analysis

The Babysitter

Written by Brian Duffield · Horror Comedy · 93 pages · 38 scenes · 3-act natural structure · linear organization · Analysis confidence: Low

A twelve-year-old boy discovers his beloved babysitter is part of a satanic cult that needs his blood for a ritual, forcing him to survive a night of horror in his own home.

Tone
Darkly comedic, self-aware, irreverent with genuine heart and terror

Tension curve

Dramatic intensity across The Babysitter from first page to last, sampled at 40 points on a 0–10 scale. Values: 4.5, 4.5, 4.4, 4.1, 3.9, 3.9, 3.9, 3.3, 2.9, 3.2, 4.3, 6.5, 8.3, 9.8, 9.7, 9.3, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8.7, 8.1, 7.5, 7.7, 8.3, 8.9, 9, 8.9, 8.9, 8.8, 8.8, 8.4, 8.1, 7.3, 7.1, 7.6, 8.7, 9.8, 9.9.

Structure at a glance

Inciting incident
Page 22, 24% of the script: Bee and Cole watch an R-rated movie, discuss his parents' potential divorce, and Bee teases him about liking Melanie while reassuring him he'll be okay.
Act 1 break
Page 30, 32% of the script: Cole witnesses Bee stab Samuel to death and collect his blood, shattering his innocent world and launching the survival horror.
Midpoint
Page 45, 48% of the script: Cole wakes tied to a chair surrounded by the group including Bee, they try to make him eat a drugged cookie, he refuses and runs, they chase him upstairs where he locks himself in his room.
Act 2 break
Page 72, 77% of the script: Cole escapes Melanie's house and returns home to confront Bee directly, shifting from pure survival to active confrontation.
Climax
Page 82, 88% of the script: Cole reverses the SUV with headlights off, positions it facing his house where he sees Bee putting out the burning book, then slams the gas and drives the car into the house.
Peak tension
9.9 out of 10, reached about 100% of the way through; the script averages 7.3.
Average scene length
2.7 pages

Structural personality

This script operates as a tightly wound single-location survival thriller that earns its genre mashup. Act One is deceptively long (21 scenes, ~30 pages) because Duffield invests heavily in making us love Cole and Bee's relationship—the nurse's office fear, the bullying, the pizza-making domesticity. This isn't padding; it's ammunition. When Scene 21 detonates with Samuel's murder, the betrayal lands because we've spent real time in their bond. Act Two (scenes 22-30) is pure cat-and-mouse chaos as Cole uses his own home against the cult members, each kill inventive and escalating. The turn at Scene 30 isn't a revelation but a spatial shift—Cole stops running and goes on offense. Act Three becomes an emotional reckoning more than a physical one, with Bee's final confrontation in the ruined room revealing her motivations even as Cole rejects them. The structure is classical three-act, but the pacing and tonal whiplash give it a fresh, chaotic energy.

Pacing

The script front-loads character work (scenes 1-18 establish Cole's fears, his parents' obliviousness, his crush on Bee) before the horror kicks in. Once Scene 21 hits, the pacing becomes relentless—nearly every scene from 22-37 involves a chase, a kill, or a narrow escape. Scene 23 (the living room confrontation) is the longest sustained dialogue scene post-murder, functioning as both exposition dump and emotional gut-punch. The script uses time stamps sparingly but effectively ("14 MINUTES LATER" at scene 23, "FIVE MINUTES LATER" in the epilogue) to control tension. The epilogue (scenes 37-38) provides a horror sting after the climax, revealing Bee survived and is continuing her work elsewhere—a tonal shift back to dread after the emotional resolution.

Themes

Similar shapes

Screenplays whose tension curve most closely matches The Babysitter.

Scene summaries and structural markers are generated by AI analysis of the screenplay text and may contain minor inaccuracies. ScriptGraph analyzes structure and does not reproduce screenplay text.

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