Review of The Babadook (2014) by Krista T — 09 Nov 2015

Ever started watching a movie where you have no idea what you're getting into? The Babadook was one of those for me. I hadn't watched the preview or read any of the reviews. So here I am, in a living room on Halloween night, expecting a funny, cheesy Halloween move and instead coming face to face with, The Babadook.

Like The Exorcist, The Babadook takes a look into the terror of the anxieties surrounding a single mother's relationship with her child. To paint the picture, the Amelia (Australian actress Essie Davis), is a single mom raising her boisterous six-year-old Samuel. Samuel is tortured by nightmares and waking dreams of monsters. He spends his time building slingshots and other ad hoc weaponry, practicing magic tricks and getting booted from elementary schools for scaring the other kids.

Amelia's stresses are compounded by the fact that Samuel's birthday - also the day of her husband's death- is quickly approaching. The deep, deep sorrow that she suffers over essentially substituting her husband for her son is made worse by what an terror Sam is. "I can't stand being around your son," grumbles Amelia's sister (Hayley McElhinney). "And you can't stand being around him yourself.".

One day Samuel finds an old book and asks his mom if they can read it. The disgusting and disturbing book ends up convincing Samuel that the Babadook is the creature that he has been dreaming about. He becomes infatuated with the Babadook and even seems to be possessed. Later on in the movie after several unfortunate events, the Babadook also possesses Amelia. The events that they read in the book start happening in real life and Amelia begins to fear that she is going to be the one to kill her son.

Like most ghost stories, the haunting in The Babadook works as a stand-in for a deeper-rooted issue in Amelia's life. Houses are not made haunted, they become haunted. In The Babadook, Amelia's guilt (for surviving the accident that killed her husband and for her own hatred toward her son) starts to come back to the surface in two forms. First is her slowly declining mental state. And the second is Mister Babadook.

I thought this movie was really well done. Jennifer Kent did an amazing job writing a story that keeps people interested and makes them think. The last scene of the movie is so confusing but if you really take a minute to think about it you realize that the "babadook" was really just the fear and bitterness that was haunting her since her husband died.

I think they could have done a little bit better with the animations; it kind of threw it off for me. I would be a little freaked out by a scene but as soon as I saw the supposedly scary "babadook" I was instantly remember that he's just a character because of how fake he looked. Overall though, I really enjoyed The Babadook and I would recommend it to anyone who is able to stomach a terrifying yet intriguing story.