Sober Sitter: Irredeemably (Slightly) Annoying Brothers and How to Keep Them Alive (Love Them)

Ellis Senger’s 15-minute comedy Sober Sitter is exactly succinctly named. There is one sober person in the entire crowded house, and it is the babysitter. His friends, who are impromptu sitters by association, are high. His 11 year-old charge, a brother who is irritating by obligation, is also high. Life is never fair for the eldest, forced to be sober, child.

The plans Ian (Austin Bugarin) had for the evening are ruined. His mother (Megan Truxal) is going out and his brother (Jacob Estrada) needs a sitter. Senior prank might as well be dead. But teenagers being teenagers, improvisations are made—timings maintained just right, Ian could well be part of a legendary night of setting up pranks at school. Maybe, but he will be doing it stone cold sober.

Jeremy, his brother, starts throwing up and it is not the worst thing that has happened to Ian. The narrative belongs squarely to Ian, because though the 11 year-old “twerp” ingesting shrooms (for the unfortunate medical condition of being eleven) should by all rights be a crisis, the plot divides its time between Ian’s ongoing pregame party and Jeremy’s hard lesson on psychedelics.

Bugarin and Estrada are deeply resonant: the former for his opening scene teenage rant, and the latter in the closing scene for the creepy kid smile that could rival Macaulay Culkin. In between, as Jeremy experiences his first high and bad trip, the brothers clash in undulating waves of annoyance, concern, and—who could’ve expected it—affection. The bad trip is simultaneously funny and endearing; those who don’t develop giant strawberry heads have their faces swirling in ways that faces should not dare outside the scope of TikTok filters. To a 2000s fifth-grader who is yet to encounter Facebook, it might as well be Cthulhu. The dramatic shadowy lighting is the cherry on top.

The scene is amusing until Jeremy is so gripped by his terrors it leaves him whimpering. As the joys of adolescence clash with the responsibilities of being the grown up, Ian has to decide whether his barnacle brother is worth the trouble of missing out on senior prank.

The inconvenience of family to teenagers—unnecessary rules, blood-boiling rivalries, dragging responsibilities—is at the heart of Sober Sitter. And so is the novel experience of discovering love for them. Maybe the barnacles can come along for the ride after all.

Watching Sober Sitter Short Film Trailer