The Babadook is an original, frightening, and profoundly sad look at a woman’s psyche, at the effects of trauma, at the relationship between a mother and a son. It doesn’t shy away from certain staples of the horror genre; rather, it utilizes them in unique ways, taking cliches and structuring them around character instead of around plot or style. As a result, this is 90 minutes of engrossing psychological horror, a (scary) breath of fresh air in what is presently a very stale genre.

Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman anchor this film as Amelia and Samuel, respectively, giving stellar performances throughout. At the beginning, Kent builds up the tension by focusing on Samuel, the child, and his penchant for testing your patience. What starts as a story of a child being troublesome, however, quickly becomes darker and darker, and Sam’s vulnerability is always present behind his behavior. This becomes extremely important later on because we find out that Oskar, Amelia’s husband, died in a car crash while driving his wife to the hospital. That’s all I will spoil, but it’s needless to say that the effects of that death still linger in the present day, still play a huge role in the relationship between Amelia and Samuel.

Kent steadily chips away at this relationship throughout the film, and through a children’s book–Mister Babadook–she derives the maximum amount of horror possible. What makes this film so effective is the fact that it relies on the psychological more than the supernatural; this is not so much a story about a monster chasing people through the dark as much as it is a story about internal monsters manifesting themselves in external terrors. The film takes a look at loss and loneliness and grief and repression, and it digs into the recesses of our minds, focusing on the story of a mother and son as it still brings the scares. As it barrels toward its poignant ending, we begin to wonder: who really is the Babadook, and where exactly is it coming from?

GRADE: A-

OTHER THOUGHTS:

-Alexander Juhasz created the storybook, and he did a fantastic job with it. Kent and co. expertly tie those pages in with the set itself, one put together on a $2.5 million budget by production designer Alex Holmes, cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, and Kent.

-Kudos to Jennifer Kent for this project. It’s tough for female directors to break through in this industry, sadly, and I hope we will be seeing more of her in the future.

-I don’t normally seek out horror movies, and the last one I saw–The Conjuring–was a bit disappointing. I’m glad I saw this, though.

-I’ve read from trauma victims and people who have suffered from depression and parents in general that this movie is very good at capturing their experiences.

SPOILER SPACE:

-The answer to “Who really is the Babadook?” is the following: The Babadook is a manifestation of Amelia’s mental struggle, of her repressed feelings, of her grief. After all, we get two big instances in which the film nudges us toward the fact that Amelia was the one who wrote the book: she says at the party that used to be a children’s book writer, and at the police station, she has charcoal on her hands. She probably wrote this in the wake of her husband’s death.

-The husband’s death is a really interesting foundation for this movie. I’m sure most parents don’t feel the urge to hurt their kids, but on some level or another, there’s this tension at times in the relationship, one that you just want to end. Here, there’s another element, because if Samuel wasn’t born, the husband wouldn’t have died.

– “I’ll soon take off my funny disguise and once you see what’s underneath, you’re going to wish you were dead.” Fitting that what Amelia sees is her husband at the end of the movie.

-On the ending: it’s really excellent. I wasn’t keen on it at first, but once I thought about it a little, it made sense. The Babadook will always be there. Amelia can’t get rid of it, so she has to keep it in her basement and feed it worms. It’s a down ending in that she can’t get rid of it, but there’s a glimmer of hope here because once she’s locked it away and acknowledged it, she can hope for a better life.

-On the worms: worms fertilize the earth, so that’s an idea that can be applied to Amelia and her improvement. Another thought is that by having the worms be the Babadook’s food, the Babadook doesn’t, say, feed on her or her child anymore.

-I like that the woman who comes over is named Mrs. Roach, and Amelia sees roaches.

Photo credit: Causeway Films, The Babadook